Abstract to Concrete: How To Make People Give A S*** About Climate Change

     As long as they keep talking about global climate change, they are not gonna go anywhere. ’Cause no one gives a s*** about that.-Arnold Schwarzenegger, CBS News, 28th May 2023    

In an interview with CBS News last year, Arnold Schwarzenegger said that "no one gives a s***" about climate change.    

Sounds awful, taken out of context.    

But it's actually part of a smart strategy.    

When "Arnie" was Governor of California, he faced a battle to pass environmental legislation.    

There was opposition from his own party, the Republicans, and challenges from lobbyists and big business.    

Plus threats of lawsuits.    

And many environmentalists didn't trust him, thinking his green pledges were just empty campaign promises.    

But Arnie has never shied away from a challenge, so he faced it head on with a brilliant approach.    

One of his key insights as a newcomer to climate action was that the phrase 'climate change' was a turnoff. Climate change is abstract, slow-moving, politically divisive, and scary.    

So instead, he reframed the problem around the health dangers of air pollution.    

Since pollution is a popular issue, and pollution causes climate change, he decided to focus the message on pollution instead.    

Air pollution is something everyone can understand. You can see it, smell it, and directly experience its consequences.    

Climate denialists have numerous tricks up their sleeves ("climate change is natural", among others), but nobody denies the existence of pollution.    

Although pollution causes climate change, you don't have to even believe in climate change to want to take action against pollution.    

The switch of focus to pollution made it easier for Arnie to get bipartisan support for climate initiatives, without having to mention the climate itself.    

Brilliant.    

The Bigger Lesson: Reframe It In Concrete    

Some have called this approach a rebrand.    

But a rebrand is mostly about cosmetic changes. A change of surface-level language, colours, logo. A change of packaging. As veteran environmental journalist Roger Harrabin writes, this can cause a lot of problems: among other things, it can be misleading, trivial, or elitist. Rebrands of climate language can also be associated with "greenwashing".    

I don't see Arnie's approach as a rebrand at all, because he wasn't changing the presentation of climate change. He wasn't directly talking about climate change at all.    

His approach worked because he switched focus "upstream", from the abstract to the concrete.    

Pollution = concrete, upstream cause of climate change    

Climate change = abstract, downstream consequence of pollution    

He switched the focus of communications upstream to the immediate, concrete, and undeniable, to gain support for the larger, more abstract, unappealing long-term battle.    

In a speech to the Austrian World Summit last year, he said:    

Outsiders always bring a fresh set of eyes to our mission. When I got involved, one of the first things I saw was that our marketing wasn’t working. We were talking about climate change when we should have been talking about pollution and the 7 million people who die every year choking on air poisoned by fossil fuels.    
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It's a vivid speech, framed in very simple, easy-to-understand language with a clear, concrete call to action around green power plant construction: build, build, build!    

We can all learn from this example.    

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