E128: How to Win the Climate Communications War with Josh Garrett
Everybody in the Pool
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Let's be honest: the climate conversation is having a bit of a PR crisis. The word ‘climate’ itself has become politically charged, federal funding is under threat, and media coverage has gone quiet. But the technologies are still working, the solutions are still scaling, and the people building them haven't gone anywhere. So how do you keep telling that story?
This week on Everybody in the Pool, Molly sits down with Josh Garrett, CEO and co-founder of Redwood Climate Communications, a specialty PR and strategic communications firm that works exclusively with climate tech companies and climate-focused nonprofits. Josh has been communicating about climate for 14 years, and right now, his expertise has never been more needed.
We talk about:
- How to craft compelling stories about climate tech and policy
- Why silence is not a strategy — and how to keep talking about climate even when the political winds have shifted
- Simple word swaps that works across the aisle, like saying "pollution" instead of "greenhouse gases"
- How the fossil fuel industry built a century-long messaging machine — including the origin story of "now we're cooking with gas"
- Why climate advocates over-explain when they should be keeping it simple and repeatable
- The power of leading with co-benefits: affordability, public health, energy freedom
- How to be a “Climate YIMBY,” and why showing up to your local zoning meeting might be the highest-impact thing you can do right now
- Balancing fear and hope: why disasters are our current reality, yet progress is inevitable
Links:
- Redwood Climate Communications: https://www.redwoodclimatecomms.com/
- Yale Center for Climate Change Communication: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/
- Potential Energy Coalition: https://potentialenergycoalition.org/
- Emily Atkin’s Heated Newsletter: https://heated.world/
- Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/merchants-of-doubt-9781608193943/
- Greenlight America: https://www.greenlightamerica.org/
- All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
- Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/
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