Concern isn’t power: Rethinking climate communications strategy for the next decade

10 June — by Nikola Casule and Martin Zavan

Over the past decade, a single idea has underpinned much of the strategy driving the climate movement in Australia: that the most effective way to get climate action is to mobilise the people who are already deeply concerned about the climate crisis. 

This has become an orthodoxy of sorts, based on the audience research in the seminal 2009  ‘Six Americas’ Yale University study into opinions about global warming, then operationalised in Australia several years later in the form of the Climate Compass campaign tool.

The logic is simple enough. Energise the ‘Alarmed’ to take action, and use their influence to persuade the ‘Alert’ and ‘Concerned’. But is it working? And is it the right model for the decade ahead?

The Climate Compass audience segmentation, here shown for Australia, widely used by climate campaigners.

Built for a different time

The focus on mobilising the already-convinced made sense when it emerged. It offered an alternative to the pointless debate with sceptics, and it helped campaigners prioritise limited resources. Importantly, it allowed people working on climate to hold two ideas at once: that even though not everyone could be reached, many still could, and that real progress was possible, not by converting opponents, but by activating latent support.

In hindsight, it’s clear how much of this strategy was shaped by the context: a fragmented movement, polarised debate, and a media and political environment in which the basic facts of climate science were still contested.

In that setting, steady persuasion felt strategic and necessary.

It is also worth noting that the central assumption of Climate Compass was never made explicit and was rarely tested: namely, that someone’s level of alarm about climate was the best predictor of their ability to persuade others to act. 

We might imagine, for example, a very different approach where well-connected ‘Concerned’ segment people who are influential in their communities were to become the focus. Once they had been convinced of the need for climate action through targeted campaign work, their greater influence could be leveraged to bring their communities along with them.

The gap

Today, the context is different. There's widespread public concern about climate and extreme weather. Renewables enjoy broad and growing support. The political centre has shifted.

But despite these shifts much remains unchanged. New fossil fuel projects continue to be approved and gas is still promoted as a transition fuel, perhaps more than ever.

The promise that awareness would translate into action has arguably not materialised. Climate change has moved from the margins to the mainstream, but we’re still not seeing the widespread climate action needed. What’s more, the 2020s have become the Greenwash Decade, with corporations preferring to pretend to take action on emissions reduction rather than actually doing so.

It’s hard to look at this and not wonder whether this dominant theory of change has run its course.

The trouble with persuasion

Persuasive communication can be powerful, but it has limits.

At best, it moves people emotionally. At worst, it reduces politics to personal belief, something you feel or don’t feel, rather than a system you can change. When relied on too heavily, persuasion risks becoming a substitute for strategy. Messaging becomes a performance, optimistic, value-driven, message-tested, but disconnected from the realities of power. 

We see this in the tendency to avoid naming villains. In the preference for stories of progress. In the idea that we just need better ways to tell people that solutions exist.

None of this is wrong. But on its own, it’s not enough.

A different kind of work

The challenge now isn’t to persuade people that climate change matters. It’s to confront the systems that continue to produce it.

That means communications work that is more integrated with campaigning and more focused on strategic leverage, as opposed to a sole focus on broad ‘mindset shift’ narrative goals in isolation.

It means shifting from describing solutions to creating the conditions in which they become politically inevitable. From aligning with audiences to applying pressure to decision-makers.

It also requires more honesty about trade-offs. Not everything will be popular. Not every message will land with everyone. But that’s not failure, it’s the nature of power-building work.

What comes next

This isn’t a call to abandon persuasion. It’s a call to put it in context.

Climate communications shouldn’t just reflect where people are. They should help build the conditions for change. That involves risk, clarity, and a willingness to speak to the hard parts, not just the hopeful ones.

The movement has more reach than ever. But reach is not the same as power, the kind built through organising, deep relationships, and strategic pressure.

If we want to close the gap between concern and consequence, we may need a new playbook.