Is 1.5°C dead? Jad Mouawad on reinvigorating climate communications
We are delighted to announce that one of our newest Climate Counsel members is Jad Mouawad, former Head of Communications at the International Energy Agency. An expert climate communicator with over two decades of experience, he sat down with our Senior Associate Kenza Essalama to discuss how best to communicate climate change.
Q: What’s one thing that’s inspired you recently?
A: I had decided, like many Parisians, to leave Paris during the Olympics. But I quickly regretted my decision, I caught the fever, so I went back to Paris to catch a bunch of events, but also to be in the city and participate in this amazing celebration. One of the iconic images of the Olympics is the flame. And after it was unveiled at the Opening Ceremony, I found out that the flame was not actually not burning any fossil fuels. It’s an electric flame! It’s a powerful beam lighting up water vapour. And it really shows you that everything can be electrified, even the Olympic flame. And I know the Opening Ceremony was a bit controversial, but what I took out of it was its message of openness and tolerance and creativity to bridge across borders. So I thought that was a really inspiring kickoff to the games and it’s gotten me to change my mind about it, and join the party.
Q: “Everything can be electrified” is a great line. Talk me through your journey to becoming a climate communicator.
A: I started my career as a journalist 25 years ago or so, and I think the silver lining was my interest in energy. I covered energy for a long time, and I became very interested in the climate aspect of energy consumption. So throughout my years as a journalist, that was one of the main topics that I cared about. I eventually left journalism and jumped to the other side, if you will, to join the International Energy Agency (IEA). I led their communications at the time when the IEA was establishing itself as the main advocate for the clean energy transition, and really help the energy industry decarbonise itself.
Q: What an exciting career! In a sentence or two, can you explain why communications is so essential to tackling climate change?
A: We have to tell the story of the energy transition more effectively. Journalism has a role in telling that story but we also need to think about ways to empower our audience to understand that opportunities and solutions exist. And I believe communications really is quite essential to that conversation. We need a strong, positive and empowering new narrative to explain to the public what we're going through, and what are the actual, real life, affordable, existing solutions to tackle this very complicated problem.
Q: You worked at the IEA, a huge organisation, so I'm sure you faced internal blockers to getting comms taken seriously. What have you found to be the most effective mechanisms to get colleagues to adopt comms as a tool for change, rather than just a nice to have?
A: I really like the way you frame it. It's a tool for change and not a nice to have. In fact, I would position communications as a strategic imperative for any organisation. I don't put comms at the very end of a process. Think of a widget: you build the widget, you sell the widget, and then you talk about the widget. I work at the very start of the process with strategy. Once you look at it within that strategic viewpoint, then all of your discussions about your audience, your theory of change, your impact in the world, your desired outcome - these don't become an afterthought. These become baked into the way that you build your widget, or you talk about your widget, or you sell your widget.
Q: This actually links quite nicely to my next thought. I've also worked with think tanks and policy experts before, and one of the biggest challenges I found was making the data and the report and the experts themselves accessible and interesting. What advice do you have for communicators trying to achieve that?
A: This is a common problem in science communications. It's a problem that you have with science in general, where there seems to be a disconnect between the people who think about something and the people who talk about something. And I think we're all better served if we can help the scientists better communicate with a general audience. As a complement to some of the work that they're doing, we need to develop messages and narratives that are essentially distillations of the work that they do. I think it's a problem that organisations solve well once they lay out the terms of what they're trying to do. When you are trying to have an impact, it comes down to how legible your messages are and how effectively you can reach your audiences.
Q: Do you think that 1.5°C is an effective framing tool?
A: It has been very effective to focus the attention of the world and certainly the attention of policymakers to the urgency and scale of the carbon challenge. I think it’s a very effective, simple message that the climate community has managed to put out over the last decade. I think 1.5°C has become the vernacular of change. But outside of the climate community, we need to think about different ways to communicate the urgency of the matter. Because I think more generally, 1.5 and other monikers aren’t effective. ‘Net zero by 2050’ is a great rallying cry, if you understand what it means. But what does it mean for the public at large? We need to think about simpler ways to talk about how our climate is evolving, the dangers that we are seeing ahead of us, the type of actions that we need to be taking in order to limit the temperature increases. I'll give you a simple example. We have, on a daily basis, weather reports that are telling us we're already exceeding - in any given city or country - average temperatures by way more than 1.5. So how do we square this long-term, global average of 1.5 with what people are seeing every day on the news? That's a real challenge that we need to think about. One of the great ways to communicate that effectively is to try to talk about weather and climate together. I live in France, and French national TV has reshaped its weather report to call it the ‘weather and climate’ report. So every day, instead of just getting the weather, you're getting the weather and a larger discussion about climate impacts. It's a very good way to frame what is happening on a global level with what you're seeing everyday.
Q: That's really fascinating. Do you think that there is a magic formula to telling those kinds of stories?
A: That's a good question. The key is essentially how we reframe what our new normal is in a way that also doesn't minimise the risk. We were just talking about how on a regular basis, we're beating global temperature records. So these stories get a lot of engagement because people are horrified by them. But they get very little follow up action. I think the responses we're seeing to these events is that it's becoming very quickly normalised. Instead, what we really need to start doing is talking about the actions we can take and the benefits of those actions. To empower people to act in favour of climate action, we must focus a lot more on the benefits of taking action, such as reducing your energy bills. There's a huge amount of public information and public engagement we still need to do, frankly, as communicators, to help people understand and support the policies that we're trying to put forward to be able to reduce our carbon emissions.
Q: That really speaks to the danger of repeating negative messages and potentially normalising those realities. A friend of mine, Thomas Coombes, is one of the pioneers of the hope-based approach to communications. He once said to me that “the thing you shine a light on is what grows” which really captures what you just said. So how do you manage the tension between not minimising the urgency and the risk of climate change, but also not just being doom and gloom?
A: I think you have two issues here. You have the issue of trust: how do you ensure that people trust the messenger? But the other issue is the key principles of effective communications. They apply to climate change and we need to think about a framework for action here. I would highlight these very simple principles when we talk about climate communications:
Stay positive
Focus on the benefits to people
Be specific
Talk about real people
Meet your audiences where they are
Q: So hope really is the way forward. But a tricky element with social media algorithms specifically is that they reward sensationalism and alarmist content, so making hope cut through the noise is difficult. Do you have any advice on approaching that?
A: That's a hard question! I think that's a huge challenge. Social media platforms, as much as they have been a force for democratising access to what's going on in the world, are also acting in a way that is so incredibly harmful. For us to break through the noise and the conflict and the divisions, I think we have to be very clear now that we're seeing a resurgence of climate denial on those platforms. And it's not just denial: it's attacking the solutions through disinformation and fake news. We have a real challenge on our hands and a real problem that we are going to have to address either through regulatory intervention or through other means of regulation. And I know this is sort of antithetical to the internet ethos, but in reality, these platforms have turned into weapons of disinformation and it pains me to to think that this is where the internet is taking us. It's just become, in some cases, a toxic sludge of misinformation, and we need to acknowledge it before we can deal with it.
Q: Let’s end on an action-oriented note. What are your three non-negotiables when it comes to climate communications?
A: Facts, benefits and action. You're entitled to your opinion, but not your facts. I think our communications should be grounded in science and data but let's also be clear about the real life benefits. And action. I think we need facts and benefits but we also need to give our audiences levers to be actors in the transition.
Q: Facts, benefits, action. I love it. Thank you so much for your time, and we’re thrilled to have you on our Climate Counsel.
A: Thank you!
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