Dr Sam Illingworth on the Orinoco Communications Podcast

Shortly after his return from the Conference of Parties (COP24) climate talks in Poland, Dr Sam Illingworth appeared on the Orinoco Communications podcast to talk about climate communication. “How can you talk about climate change without getting angry? Or without getting upset? It’s just not possible” Sam posited to Peter Barker from Orinoco Communications, pointing out that

My Climate Poem

The Climate Communication Project team member, Dr Sam Illingworth, has created a new poem using responses from the MyClimate Twitter campaign that was run by the Priestley International Centre for Climate and Leeds Climate Commission during Green Great Britain Week in Leeds 15-19 October 2018. During this campaign, members of the public tweeted using the

The role of framing and message-tailoring in communicating climate change

Communicating climate change is a tricky business. Giving people facts about, for example, increasing global temperature or rising sea level doesn’t always result in positive changes in behaviour. A different – and perhaps more effective – strategy is to use framing-based approaches and tailor climate messages for different audiences. Framing involves emphasising certain elements of

Communicating the 1.5°C target

International climate negotiations are conducted in the language of headline numbers, such as global average temperatures and calculations of how many more gigatonnes of greenhouse gases remain in our planetary budget. These calculations are essential to setting targets and monitoring progress of different countries in meeting their obligations to international agreements. However, this technical and

Emotions and climate communication

Climate change is an issue with a huge emotional range. It can elicit passionate opinions and emotions in some, and complete indifference in others. However, while emotions are forceful drivers of behaviour, there are chronic issues in their study and use in climate change communication, in both research and practice. While certain emotions tend to

Values, worldviews and ideology

Values Public engagement with energy and climate change can’t be easily reduced to a simple rule of thumb, but some aspects of human psychology are more fundamental – and explain more variation in attitudes and behaviours – than others. People’s attitudes on different topics may morph and shift over time; they may switch allegiances between