ClimateBites
a climate communication toolkit
Make Your Climate Message Stick 
ClimateBites offers metaphors, soundbites, quotes, humor, cartoons, stories and graphics for everybody who talks about climate change and wants their message to stick.
This updated USGS image is a striking reminder of our vulnerability (click to enlarge). In wet areas of the world—like northeastern U.S.—we take ample water supplies for granted, but globally it is a precious resource.
Our food supply depends on clean, fresh water Continue reading
As public pressure grows for cutting fossil fuel subsidies, activists are turning to social media to keep the heat on governments around the world.
Climate communicators are experimenting with fresh ways to use the two dominant social media, Twitter and Facebook, to spread messages and organise action. Click on Twitterstorm to learn what happened on June 18 and 350.org for updates on the campaign to urge the Rio Earth Summit to end subsidies. Continue reading
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a bubble. Actually, we all live in our own custom-made bubbles that are shaped by our life experience and our education.
The world in my bubble is different from the world in your bubble. The TV show Madmen dramatized this in an early episode, when Betty comes home with her drycleaning. After a few minutes, the kids come running out of the bedroom Continue reading
A conservative specialist in environmental law—Professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University—lays out a thoughtful conservative approach to tackling climate change in a recent post at The Atlantic magazine.
Climate hawk David Roberts (Grist) accurately describes Adler’s piece as “an eloquent, principled case for the simple notion that ’embrace of limited government principles need not entail the denial of environmental claims.'” Continue reading
Thank god for parody— the best tool for puncturing puffed-up politicians who parade their ignorance.
Here, Stephen Colbert skewers the North Carolina legislature’s proposal to outlaw use of climate models in coastal planning.
A few snippets: Continue reading
Canadian artist Franke James gives reign to her ‘inner trickster’ to produce delightful visual essays that advocate for action to address climate change.
Charles Darwin (left) famously said,
“It is not the strongest nor the most intelligent of the species that survive, it is the one most adaptable to change.”
The most adaptable characters in many oral storytelling traditions are characters known as ‘tricksters.’ Continue reading
Simply the best short videos on climate. Ever.
That’s the only way to describe EOM’s “How to Talk to an Ostrich” series of short clips answering common skeptical questions. It’s a spin-off of the PBS series “Earth the Operators’ Manual,” starring Dr. Richard Alley Continue reading
“Sooner or later, everyone who learns about the rapid advance of manmade global warming must deal with the question of fear.”
Veteran climate reporter, ABC’s Bill Blakemore, has written an interesting piece on embracing fear (5/6/12) and using it to mobilize climate action. In recent years, communication researchers have warned that “fear is not enough,” and may even be Continue reading
Watch this 13-min video, and you may never want to get up in front of an audience again without uttering, at some point, the seven magic words in the title. Why? Because. . .
“Story is how we are reminded, and how we remember. If we want it to be memorable, it must be a story. . . We are not built to memorize lists, or unrelated facts. We are built to remember narrative.” Continue reading
People who say we can’t afford switching to a low-carbon economy almost never consider the cost of not making that transition. This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite cartoons. (1)
Yes, moving to a low-carbon economy will be difficult, bumpy and entail costs. Yet by almost any measure it will be far, far more costly Continue reading