This memo overviews recent polling and provides guidance for local elected officials on how to effectively communicate about climate and clean energy to align with Americans’ economic concerns. Our core recommendation: keep messages simple, focused, and personal—centered on the direct costs people are experiencing in their daily lives.

Harmony Labs and partners set out to map Energy Transition Materials (ETM) narratives, in 9 nations and 3 domains, and experiment with communications that build support for a just energy transition.

The Clean Power Information Project is a hub for the facts on how clean energy powers communities across the United States. This hub includes fact sheets, memos, press releases related to clean energy news in the USA.

A social media toolkit drawing attention to clean energy tax credits and savings that are at risk of being cut by Congress this year.

National TV news largely failed to connect Hurricane Beryl, the first hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic season, to climate change. From July 1-8, corporate broadcast and cable news networks aired a combined 701 minutes across 343 segments about Hurricane Beryl, with only 15 segments (4%) mentioning climate change. Cable news networks — CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC — aired a combined 520 minutes across 234 segments about Hurricane Beryl, with 9 mentioning climate change. Corporate broadcast TV networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — aired a combined 181 minutes across 109 segments about Hurricane Beryl, with 6 mentioning climate change. 32 segments mentioned rapid intensification, a climate signal.

HEATED analyzed 133 breaking news stories about recent climate-fueled weather in the United States. The results were dismal—but there were some bright spots. Only 44 percent of digital breaking news articles mentioned the climate crisis or global warming. Stories about heat waves fared slightly better, with 52 percent mentioning climate change. Only 25 percent of stories about extreme rainfall mentioned climate change. Even fewer stories about this month’s climate-fueled extreme weather explained to readers why the climate crisis is happening in the first place. Of 133 articles about unprecedented heat and flash floods, only 15 articles—or 11 percent—mentioned fossil fuels, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Only one article, from the BBC, mentioned deforestation. No articles mentioned animal agriculture. Yet despite the dismal numbers overall, some news outlets stood out for consistently mentioning climate change in all their breaking heat and rainfall articles this month. Those outlets were numerous, but included NPR, Vox, Axios, the BBC, and Agence France-Presse (AFP).

In July 2023, as the world experienced its hottest day, week, month, and year in recorded history, UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared that “the era of global warming has ended” and “the era of global boiling has arrived.”1 The world is not acting quickly enough to respond to the pace of climate change. As NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus observed, “we are losing Earth on our watch.” We are living through a crisis that touches every aspect of our lives, and therefore has a place in every contemporary story. Today, films set in the present or near future that do not include climate change can be considered what they are: fantasy. But there are too few studies examining whether popular films reflect our climate reality. This gap in knowledge prevents us from understanding climate visibility and represen- tation in popular entertainment, as well as the related challenges and opportunities. The Climate Reality Check, a Bechdel–Wallace Test for a World on Fire, pro- vides audience members, screenwriters, filmmakers, studios, and researchers with a straightforward way to evaluate whether climate change is represented—or omitted—in any narrative.3 This two-part, binary evaluation tool is simple, illuminat- ing, and powerful.

How are you measuring your organization’s efforts and advances towards meaningful long-term change? Would you like to begin the process of identifying a unique set of metrics that best suit your organizational goals and power-building strategies?

Use media behavior to learn how to reach and move people toward a narrative for all major household appliances and vehicles that is pro-electric. “Lifestyle conservatives” look like a key audience: Better understanding the factors underlying their consideration of and conversion to electrics seems important; this may point to supply-side work that needs doing. Excellent message research on EV’s exists: focus on the policy infrastructure for mainstreaming EVs means it may be of limited utility in understanding consumer choices for lifestyle conservatives, given how lukewarm they can be on government policy for just about anything; also any emphasis on climate is not likely to help here. Most important is to start making content: think about putting content out into the world and testing it with audiences in quick iterative loops that connect back to and constantly update strategic assumptions.

A roundup of science-based reporting resources can help bring climate change context into a range of stories. Most adults in the U.S. (72%) are convinced that global warming is happening, yet only 58% understand that human activities are the main cause. Local news is uniquely positioned to fill these knowledge gaps and inform the public on the causes and consequences of climate change — especially during extreme weather events. A new report from Nielsen and Climate Central analyzed four recent extreme weather events in the U.S.