We spend a fair amount of time talking about messaging with our clients. What’s the best way to explain your point of view? Who are your audiences and what do they need to know? Why should others care about what you have to say?

The Obama Administration has provided myriad examples of both good and bad messaging in recent months. With such an ambitious agenda, they were bound to make at least some mistakes. And when you look at how they’ve dealt with climate change legislation in the two months since the House passed its version of the bill, you can see what I mean.

Despite overwhelming public and business community support for action to arrest the growing impact of a warming planet, the President has been largely silent on the matter this summer. His silence is surprising given previous statements that climate change was a signature initiative for the administration in this calendar year.

What happened? To paraphrase a line from the movie “Cool Hand Luke,” what we have here is a failure to communicate. Climate change legislation has seemingly fallen off the administration’s to-do list: they basically stopped talking about it, which sent the signal that other issues were more important. In the process, they lost a real opportunity to advance their agenda.

Although the President is not a client, if he were, I’d offer him these suggestions for his messaging on climate change: 

1. Lead, don’t follow: Both the public and the business community want action: the former worries about the environmental impact of doing nothing and the latter frets about the economic impact of the lack of certainty that makes planning for the future very difficult. Although the margin of victory was very narrow, the House did pass a bill requiring real changes. If you want climate change legislation to pass this year, make it a priority and demonstrate your support for it in word and deed. Waiting for Congress to take action signals you don’t think this issue is a priority and makes those members on the fence think twice about risking a vote on such a controversial issue.
2. Keep the high ground: The legislation is complex, and there are many potential outcomes. But focusing on the controversy and challenges (or allowing others to do that with no reply) is a mistake. Instead, you should articulate a vision of why legislation is needed and how it will help. The president’s job is to identify national problems and propose solutions. State your principles to Congress and keep the pressure on them to act.
3. Give people something to believe in: Despite contentious battles over health care and financial security, the public still generally supports positive action on issues such as climate change they believe require it. By putting climate change legislation in a positive context that stresses solutions to real problems, you give the voting public something to be for and position legislative action as a societal benefit.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done. But that’s exactly my point: if you want action on your climate change agenda, you need to start talking about it.

Tags: Climate Change, Congress, Environment, Presidency of Barack Obama

Posted by Ben Finzel on 09/14/09. Categories: Blog, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response