The Solutions Project is proud to release Climate Justice: The Narrative Shift, a comprehensive look at where climate storytelling stands today and where it needs to go. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with more than 50 grassroots organizers, communications strategists, academic researchers, and media professionals, this report offers a candid diagnosis of the barriers facing climate communicators and a roadmap of high-potential strategies for breaking through them. It arrives at a pivotal moment: the 2024 election reshuffled the political and media landscape, and the climate movement must navigate genuinely new terrain.
“We can’t assume that a robust and enduring climate constituency will emerge from a single perfect message or frame—it will likely be built through many culturally resonant entry points that meet diverse audiences through issues they already care about, messengers they already trust, on platforms where they already spend time.”
One of the report’s key findings is that the problem isn’t that Americans don’t care about climate action. It’s that they haven’t been asked, met, or equipped to act. Polling shows 60 million Americans are already alarmed or concerned about climate change, and majorities across demographic groups support clean energy and climate action. This new report examines how climate communicators can close this “mobilization gap” with exciting new tactics. The report also challenges the assumption that there’s a single “movable middle” to persuade on climate. Instead, practitioners and researchers aligned around a more nuanced truth: a winning climate constituency will be built through many culturally resonant entry points, and via messages that connect climate to affordability, health, jobs, and community safety through messengers people already trust, on platforms where they already spend time.
The report identifies several high-leverage opportunities for the field. It highlights that community storytellers, including neighbors, doctors, teachers can be valuable persuasive climate communicators. It also highlights the variety of untapped platforms and creative spheres that could be better leveraged – from Spanish-language media to gaming platforms, podcasts, influencers, artists and more. Perhaps most importantly, the report makes a strong case for hope as a strategic tool: not naive optimism, but grounded, action-oriented hope that pairs honest acknowledgment of the crisis with concrete, winnable pathways forward.
The path forward for climate communications, the report concludes, requires funders and organizers alike to embrace “coordinated flexibility,” resourcing multiple simultaneous communications approaches tailored to different audiences, built on consistent values. It means investing in community storytellers, creator ecosystems, and cultural infrastructure for the long haul rather than simply extracting stories or chasing one-off moments. The millions of Americans already alarmed about climate aren’t waiting for the perfect message. They’re waiting to be met. This report is an invitation to do exactly that.
Read the full report at thesolutionsproject.org