The communications industry should go down in history for our role in stopping climate change.

It’s our role to shift the mindsets of our customers, our executives, our investors to understand, embrace, and accelerate sustainable solutions. Using effective marketing and communications strategies, we have the power to convince customers to buy the most sustainable products, to encourage executives to lead sustainable initiatives, to persuade investors to only choose sustainable funds – and to influence the public in taking climate action.

Right now, many people condemn our industry for exacerbating climate change. Decades ago, oil giants used communications to effectively squash concerns about climate change and sow misinformation. The impact is still being felt today.

The moment is now to educate ourselves and to act: 80% of people want their country to do more for climate change; 53% are more worried about climate change this year than last year. (source) At a time when trust in institutions to address climate change is low and dispute over climate change is high, we have a collective responsibility to shift mindsets toward climate-positive decisions, navigating challenges around greenwashing, disinformation, the environmental, social and governance backlash, and more.

Research shows that sustainability is good for business, for society, and for our communities. Let’s apply this knowledge to help our communities and our employers.

To succeed, we need to use all the tools in our toolkit, apply all of academia’s research, and implement all of our lessons learned. This report is your toolkit to do so. In it, we’ll introduce you to the strategy, tactics, and behavioral research needed to effectively and impactfully communicate about climate change. Later this year, we’ll release full chapters deeply exploring each of these topics and providing examples of successful campaigns to emulate.

Let’s use our platforms for good.

Let’s right the history of climate change and the communications industry’s role in climate change.

Let’s start today. The moment is now.