By Dr. Michael Shank

This year at the Climate Change Preparedness Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, which I was helping to chair, I rolled out a framework for doing climate and sustainability work in a way that felt as American as baseball and apple pie. It was a 4H framework – coined deliberately since many of us grew up with 4H clubs – that I shared with the conference attendees, who ranged from California firefighters to county and city-based sustainability directors.

Quick background on the conference: The “preparedness” framing of this conference is somewhat unique within the climate conference circuit. The organizers, SyllabusX, are still developing the model, and it shows bipartisan promise in providing an open forum for practitioners preparing for the impacts of climate change in the United States.

So, what’s the 4H model? It is intended to be a memorable shorthand for doing the work. Could there be a fifth or sixth H? Certainly. And conference attendees were quick to add to the list of Hs, which was both welcomed and necessary. But if you only remember these four, it’s a great place to start and could transform climate and sustainability communications and engagement.

Let’s jump into the 4Hs.

The First H: Leading With Household Concerns.

It’s understandable why the environmental community would think that climate should be a household concern. But poll after poll illustrates for us what Americans are prioritizing as household concerns. It’s jobs and the economy, inflation and prices, housing and healthcare, immigration and security. These are consistent household concerns. And for many years, instead of tracking with these household concerns, the environmental community kept pushing to make climate change a top household concern. But it has never made its way far up this ladder, however hard we’ve pushed. And, for many years, our attempt to make climate change relevant to these persistent household concerns has appeared tokenistic or unfounded. Climate leaders would talk about “millions of green jobs” without specificity or citation and so it was hard to take the messaging seriously.

If we want to be taken seriously when leading with household concerns, we need to both build new knowledge and capacity in these spaces and partner credibly with those already leading them. That means becoming knowledgeable in the housing space, for example, so we can understand what the UN special rapporteur for adequate housing is talking about when stating that our inability to address the housing affordability crisis is what will lead to the far right rise in places like Europe. That means we engage climate leaders like Canada’s new prime minister Mark Carney – when he says that one of his top priorities is to build, baby, build – in order to help him prioritize retrofits and low-carbon construction. That means we’re involved in Congressional efforts to address America’s housing crisis so it’s done in ways that are socio-economically and environmentally sustainable.

A big learning curve for many of us, to be sure. But a necessary convergence of cohorts to ensure we’re working across sectors and silos and tracking with household concerns. Whether it’s housing or healthcare, jobs or inflation, immigration or security, it’s our job to be informed and relevant within each of these.

The Second H: Leading With Heart.

It’s understandable why the environmental community has long led with data and science, hoping we could win the hearts and minds with facts and figures. The data and science are compelling and overwhelming and should be sufficient to move the needle. And we may think we’ve led with heart and passion, but it’s often just anger, fear or frustration expressed when the data and science aren’t taken seriously. We could do a lot more leading with heart, sharing what we love, what we don’t want to lose, and where and when we’re vulnerable. That’s compelling. That’s what builds trust and compassion. That’s what builds a following and a movement.

If we want to lead with more heart in the climate change preparedness space, that means more storytelling. What kind of storytelling, exactly? Stories about what we love, why and how we’re trying to save or create it, and the challenges and opportunities along the way. If we’re storytelling at all right now, it’s often about the finished product – something that corresponds with the climate action plan – that has been delivered. But little else. While those deliverables need storytelling, too, it’s often hard to emotionally connect to it unless you show what’s happening behind the curtain and bring some humanity to those doing the work. By leading with heart, we diversify how and where our communities experience government sustainability staff, so that it’s not so official or bureaucratic. The public’s impression is often limited to official offices, badges, hearings, committee meetings and forums. Not a lot of heart there. So, let’s diversify.

A learning curve, to be sure, but we’re already liking and loving this kind of storytelling on social media. Let’s just take a lesson from there and apply it to our day jobs and professional communication. The research tells us human stories are the most trustworthy and effective way of increasing support for climate action. Now it’s time to start telling those stories.

The Third H: Leading With a Holistic Approach.

It’s understandable why the environmental community has worked in silos historically because that is how these sectors and areas of study were established, especially in government. But we can’t work in silos anymore. The environmental community is beginning to understand this, which is why the word ‘intersectional’ is finally landing and getting traction in climate and sustainability spaces. Climate change is impacting every aspect of our lives, from our health and economy to our housing and security and more. And yet many of our government departments and structures remain siloed with little interdepartmental or intradepartmental communication, coordination and complementarity.

If we want to lead with a holistic approach to climate change preparedness work, then we need to not only embed this work within every relevant department – whether it’s housing, health and human services, economic development, public safety, education and labor, parks and recreation or other – we need to create new mechanisms for how this work is analyzed and strategized as if it’s a whole ecosystem, because it is. We do this in other aspects of government work: in security, for example. We set up interagency collaboration and prioritize interoperability across departments to ensure more efficiency and efficacy in a national security response. First responders have been prioritizing this for years. Now it’s our turn to do the same.

A learning curve, yes, but one that’ll yield substantial gains the more we coordinate, collaborate and cohere on these efforts. There’s even a vision in here where climate and sustainability offices have aligned so closely with the other departments that it’s indistinguishable where the work is originating. Because we’ve been so successful in embedding sustainability mindsets into other departments. The very departments that are dealing with the household concerns mentioned above.

The Fourth H: Leading With What’s Happening Here and Now.

It’s understandable why the environmental community would be warning of climate changing realities expected in 2030, 2040 and 2050 because they’re very likely to happen and we should start preparing for them now. And yet, most of us are thinking about 2025 with a few of us looking into the future and planning accordingly. The point is, with those household concerns above dominating our mental and emotional bandwidth, there’s little energy left to think about, care about, or plan for a half-decade or full decade ahead.

If we want to lead with what’s happening here and now, there are ample stories and storytelling that we can employ and deploy. There are stories about how people’s lives are better with things like weatherization and electrification, induction cook stoves and heat pumps, accessible and affordable transit options, electric vehicles, solar power, battery backup and more. Those are all human stories that are happening here and now and that we can tell. This will also help with social norming since neighbors seeing neighbors doing any of this are more likely to do all of this.

And yes, this too is a learning curve, but a necessary one. We need to track with the moment we’re in, not the one coming down the decadal pike, as frightening as that one might be. People are tracking with what’s happening this summer, this fall, and next year, and we need to be right beside them offering ways to engage here and now. That’s how we build momentum and a movement.

There are many more Hs that one could add to this list, but these 4 Hs are a healthy starting point. Leading with household concerns and heart, holistic approaches, and what’s happening here and now will get us a lot closer to our communities, what they care about, how they think, communicate and organize. With the 4Hs, the closer we get to stuff that’s as American as baseball and apple pie, the more likely it is that Americans will rally behind the saving of it.

Michael Shank PhD is adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.