By Michael Shank and Julia Peek

One of the lessons that 2025 is teaching us in the climate and sustainability space is that we're long overdue in revitalizing our communication about climate change. Old approaches are not working fast enough to help people understand what's at stake and rally around it. While there is no quick fix, there is one key thing we could do much better as a movement: be more human.

Every approach is needed, of course, but for those looking to move forward and work around the oppositional fight and positioning that this White House is keen to keep us in, there is another way. And it’s simple: It’s about being more human.

Here’s the pitch that we rolled out recently for cities and counties across the United States: We need to be more human in our work at the city, county, and even state level. Thinking like a human, talking like a human, and showing more humans in all that we do to cool the planet and make life more livable. That’s how we make it real. And there are three specific ways to do that.

First, think like a human.

Take a look at any 2025 YouGov, Pew or Gallup poll and what you’ll find is that people are continuing to prioritize issues like immigration, housing, healthcare, inflation, jobs and the economy, taxes and government spending, and national security. You get the point. The findings are consistent across multiple data sets. And while there is an uptick in Americans’ understanding that global warming poses a threat to our way of life, it’s not ranking as a priority relative to the other issues mentioned above.

What does this mean for our work? It means we think like an American human when we communicate the work. For years, we’ve been trying to push up the priority of climate change on the YouGov, Pew and Gallup surveys. But those rankings have remained fairly consistent over time, so why not switch up our focus and instead lead with what Americans are thinking about, and integrate and translate climate impacts so that our communities understand its relevance to what they’re consistently prioritizing.

The action, then: Lead with healthcare and housing, for example, and show how global warming will impact these concerns. We tend to do the opposite, leading with climate, first, and then perhaps building a bridge to these other socio-economic concerns. But not only does that look transactional and tokenistic, we may have lost the audience by then. It’s time to flip the script and lead with what Americans are thinking about first, which will require both a skilling up in these other spaces and intentional partnershipping with leaders in those spaces to ensure accuracy, trust, and authenticity.

Second, talk like a human.

While it sounds like a no-brainer, you can still hear the climate and sustainability community using decarbonization, net zero, and carbon neutrality language both internally and externally. And this just isn’t how most Americans talk. They’re not using this language and likely never will. So, why do we keep insisting on this when 2025’s politics and projects are clearly demanding a rethink? Similar to the first point, we’ve been trying to normalize and institutionalize climate language for years and to no avail.

What does this mean for our work? It means we talk like an American human when we’re describing our climate and sustainability work. As Anat Shenker Osorio has soundly suggested, we sell the brownie and not its recipe. For years, we’ve been selling our communities on the concept of a climate action plan – the recipe, in other words – versus how life is going to be better. That’s the brownie that people ultimately want to eat. And yet, we’ve been stuck in recipes and paid too little attention to the product.

The action, then: Lead with how the air is going to be cleaner, how energy bills are going to be lower, how mass transit is going to be more accessible and affordable, and how life is generally going to be better. That’s talking about the brownie versus explaining the recipe. Now, for the chefs there will always be an appetite for a recipe chat about ingredients. But we don’t need to lead with that. That comes after people have eaten – and loved – the brownie. Then they’re keen to hear about the recipe.

Third, show a human.

We’ve largely ignored this third point, despite knowing about the power of social-norming and movement-building. We know, and research supports with good data, that when someone sees their neighbor with solar power, they’re more likely to get solar. Or when someone hears that their neighbor has a lower energy bill, they’re more likely to do something to lower their energy bill. There’s so much incredible climate action happening in our communities that we can amplify and elevate on city, county, and state government communication platforms to tap into that social norming and movement-building potential. By featuring real people doing real things to make real lives better.

What does this mean for our work? It means we show more humans on our communication platforms, and that can include us as climate and sustainability leaders walking the talk. We know that real people with real stories outperform conceptual ideas in terms of trustworthiness. We also know that human stories are far more effective narratives – when increasing support for government action on climate – than narratives about holding polluters accountable, dangers from extreme weather, or the increasing costs and damages.

The action, then: Lead with real humans and their everyday needs (see “thinking like a human” above), how they’re responding in this moment to meet those needs, and how we can leverage those actions to build more movement and momentum across our communities. There’s so much potential in this space, inviting our government colleagues and communities to tell their story of how they’re making their lives better.

The time to be a human is now: thinking like a human, talking like a human and showing humans in our work. And doing that over and over and over again. Climate and sustainability are part of every aspect of our lives, it’s time we thought that way, talked that way, and showed the way.

Dr. Michael Shank is adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and a visiting scholar at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Julia Peek is Chief Strategy and Partnerships Officer at the Urban Sustainability Directors Network.