The clear, simple messages Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders repeat, repeat and repeat are helping to propel their campaigns beyond expectations.
Trump will Make America Great Again. Sanders will Make the Economy Work for All, not just the 1%. Public opinion is shaped by simple messages repeated all the time. The proof is all around us.
But what is our simple message about how humans are changing the climate, and what to do about it? Sadly, the climate movement doesn't have either. Our messages are way too complex to stick in the brains of the public, and we don't like repeating even the ones we have.
This is one of the biggest factors why far too many remain confused at best about climate change. Only 53% of the country even believes that humans are changing the climate - not enough to win, and only a small subset of that number understands the urgency of the situation..
I submit we need to go back to basics and unify around a proven, tested message that works. Then repeat it every time we open our mouths for the next few years. Put it in our every communication. Till we are sick to death of it, and then some. Hey, it works for Donald and Bernie.
Why is this important? Because public opinion still rules. Take the Supreme Court delaying Obama's Clean Power plan this week by one vote. Think the Court isn't affected by public opinion? Gay marriage proves you wrong. The messages, spokespeople and imagery of that campaign won the day, more quickly than most people imagined it could. If we had the public united and demanding action, that 5 to 4 would likely have been reversed.
Or take the defeat of climate legislation in the Senate early in Obama's term. It all hinged on one Senator's vote - Lindsay Graham. When he dropped out, it was all over. Whenever you are down to one vote in the Senate, it means you have not won the battle for public opinion.
What might our simple message consist of? Only by putting together a great group of creative people and then testing their best messages can we know for sure. But here are some thoughts:
1). We must visualize in language HOW humans are changing the climate. Most people still don't know and when pressed profess "I don't know the science." Dr. Katherine Hayhoe of Texas Tech has a great candidate for this visual message - she says our fossil fuel gases are putting an extra blanket around like the earth, warming it up, giving the earth a fever. Instead, we talk about "carbon pollution." Most people do not know what carbon is. This language is unlikely to work.
2) We could also say "That's why we call them heat-trapping gases. They trap heat. How hot should we let it get?" Repeat repeat repeat - "Fossil fuel emissions trap heat and keep it from going back out to space, heating our planet." Please don't assume people understand this. Not enough do.
3) 99% of climate scientists agree we are heating our climate and dangerous consequences are already happening. 99%. 99%. 99%. Remember Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan? Don't laugh. This stuff matches how the brain works. The other side knows this. Dr. Tony Leiserowitz's research at Yale shows that informing people of this one simple fact - 99% -- consistently raises people's concern by 20 points. When's the last time you said it? When's the last time you saw TV and print ads and billboards and social media posts proclaiming it?
4) A solutions message is vital. It might be "we need to charge for dumping pollution in the sky, and give the money to the people." Words like "carbon" and "tax" won't win you the New Hampshire primary, promise. And we need to perfect how we explain that solar and wind are quickly on their way to being the cheapest forms of power, so let's hurry up and put them everywhere (especially as their cost goes down the more we do).
We need to craft, test and then use simple messages for the general public and the general zeitgeist - because remember, in America perception informs reality sometimes more than the other way around. But we also have to deliver specially crafted and targeted messages to particular audiences.
One of the most important audiences are honest conservatives and libertarians, of which there are many in this country. We cannot win without attracting a significant portion of them. We don't reach them now, period, but we could. Climate change is the greatest threat to our liberty, security and prosperity. Military and business leaders agree. Pricing pollution is the free market solution conservatives can support. When will we talk to them (there are now some great Republican spokespeople, but they are underfunded and insufficiently visible). When will we break the conservative media blockade which keeps that audience uninformed? True, there is resistance to facts in all populations due to their own biases, but this is not insurmountable.
Another important target audience are the people of Texas and Oklahoma. In case you haven't noticed, Texas has a lot of influence in this country. Whose job is it to start educating Texans that the fossil fuel industry is not going to be their payday much longer, but huge opportunities for profits await in renewables and energy-saving technologies? Of course we have to start doing this at scale.
Another target would be to take 20 key Congressional districts and turn public opinion in those. Of course we could do that.
Bernie and Donald have much to teach us about modern communications. (Perhaps our message should be that addressing climate will "make America great again and the economy work for all"). Of course, resistance in our community to simple messaging is understandable. It indeed would be better if we lived in a society -- and had a media environment and format -- which communicated complexity and depth. But we don't. The future of humanity is truly at stake. Let's start talking simple, over and over and over and over...
David Fenton is the Chairman and Founder at Fenton Communications, the social change agency.