Communicating Earth

Put the whole picture on the table and trust people with it

Nick Oldridge came to climate campaigning from manufacturing, marketing and insurance. He is a cofounder of Climate Science Breakthrough, which pairs climate scientists with comedians, and he set up the National Emergency Briefing with his brother Simon.

In November 2025, they hired Westminster Central Hall, seated close to 1,300 people and put nine experts on stage to brief MPs and national leaders on the climate and nature crisis. The film made from that evening has passed a thousand community screenings across the UK.

Tom Clark speaks with him about assembling an event of that scale without an organisation behind it, and about where fear belongs in climate communication after years of correcting for despair.

In this episode:

• Why the briefing was built to look like government, from the venue to the suits
• How inviting 1,300 people became possible once supporters were deputised as inviters
• Why the briefing covered everything at once, from national security and food to health and economics
• Why fear on its own isolates people, and what changes when outrage is added to it

Nick is blunt about the trade off underneath this. The turn towards positivity was a fair correction to doom, but he thinks it cost climate its salience and left people assuming the problem is handled. Research with the University of Bath suggests the alternative holds up: most leave the screenings better informed and more motivated to act, and 93% say the UK public is not being told the full story.

Recommended culture: The Language of Climate Politics by Genevieve Guenther.

Follow Nick at: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nick-oldridge-b7a36421/ 

Additional Notes:

• National Emergency Briefing, including how to host a screening: https://www.nebriefing.org/ 
• Climate Science Breakthrough https://www.climatesciencebreakthrough.com/ 
• Zero Hour, the Climate and Nature Bill campaign https://www.zerohour.uk/ 
• The Language of Climate Politics, Genevieve Guenther https://genevieveguenther.com/books/ 
• Civic Square, Birmingham https://civicsquare.cc/ 
• Kris De Meyer https://www.krisdemeyer.com/ 

Released: 30/9/2026

Run Time: 56 minutes

Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Can climate communicators learn to collaborate?

Ali Wines talks to our host Tom Clark about building the Climate Communicators Alliance for closer professional collaboration and why strategy - not virality - should be how we measure our work.

Ali’s varied career which has seen her shift from law to communications via management consultancy. She founded the Alliance in 2024 after noticing that talented people working in climate and nature comms were all independently reinventing the same wheel. Meanwhile those who would mislead and confuse around the realities and urgency of climate working like a cartel: pooling their money, data and messaging. She’s asking if we can do things differently and learn from past mistakes and each other.

Listen and hear Ali share her learning on:

• Why the competition for funding keeps our sector siloed

• Building a community from a standing start

• Measuring comms against climate impact not Insta analytics
• Selling the sizzle.

It’s a candid account of what it takes to organise a profession alongside practical advice on audience empathy, evidence-based practice and how we can keep our human connection in work that can take its toll.

Recommended book: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel

Follow Ali at: LinkedIn

Additional Notes:

• Climate Communications Alliance - https://www.climatecommsalliance.org/
• Uncommon Ground - https://www.we-are-uncommon.com/
• Protect Our Winters Canada - https://protectourwinters.ca/
• Climate Action Network Canada (CAN-Rac) - https://climateactionnetwork.ca/
• Sell the Sizzle, Futerra - https://www.wearefuterra.com/thinks/sell-the-sizzle
• Less is More by Jason Hickel - https://jasonhickel.org/
• Indigenous Leadership Initiative - https://www.ilinationhood.ca/
• The Narwhal - https://thenarwhal.ca/
• The Guardian, climate crisis - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-crisis

Released: 23 September 2026
Run Time: 50 minutes

Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Communication is the solution, not the add on

Bernadette is a meteorologist who forecast the weather on television in the US before joining Climate Central, where she worked alongside Ed Maibach. This year, she founded the Talking Climate Collaborative with Katharine Hayhoe.

In 2011, just 54% of TV meteorologists in the United States were convinced the climate was changing. That was lower than public opinion at the time. By 2017, the figure had reached 95%. Bernadette Woods helped make that shift happen, and in this episode she explains how.

Tom Clark speaks with her about the practical mechanics of changing a whole profession's mind, and about why communication is still treated as something bolted onto climate work rather than as the work itself.

In this episode:

• Education, content and network building: the framework that reached broadcast meteorologists
• Why news management turned out to be the barrier
• Four rules for anyone who wants to talk about climate and gets stuck: know the audience, meet people where they are, simplify, make it personal
• Why the biggest piece of climate misinformation in the world is the belief that people do not care.

What comes through is how ordinary the method was. Bernadette's argument is that the approach is repeatable anywhere people already trust each other, and that the point of building a hub for climate communication now is to stop everyone learning the same lessons separately.

Recommended culture: The Lorax, and the word unless.

Follow Bernadette at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadette-woods-placky-ab2497146/

Additional Notes:

• Talking Climate Collaborative  https://talkingclimate.com/ 
• Landscape assessment  https://talkingclimate.com/landscape-assessment/ 
• Climate Matters at Climate Central  https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters 
• Yale Climate Opinion Maps https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/ 
• The 89 Percent Project, Covering Climate Now  https://coveringclimatenow.org/projects/the-89-percent-project/ 
• This Is Planet Ed, Laura Schifter https://www.thisisplaneted.org/ 
• Ed Maibach on Communicating Earth, episode 3 https://climateacceptancestudios.com/podcast_ep003 

Released: 16/9/2026

Run Time: 59 minutes

Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Bursting digital bubbles: how do we connect people who disagree?

Ingmar Rentzhog talks to our host Tom Clark about the work he leads bringing the world together to talk about the issues that matter most at the digital platform We Don’t Have Time.

Ingmar describes himself as an entrepreneur for the future. His work has focused on applying his entrepreneurial skills to the particular work of communications in the climate and nature space. From the Buy More Time campaign at Cop 29 that galvanised high-impact action on Methane, to creating W Social a new social media platform that will burst digital bubbles, to his current focus on defunding fossil fuel influence and advocacy, he has a great deal of learning to share.

Listen to hear what Ingmar has learned about:

• Creating momentum for a collective boycott to defund the fossil fuel industry
• Why we must never give in to the narrative of doom
• The need for tangible numbers that demonstrate our progress
• The essential role of professional communicators in this movement
• De-polarising the conversation in new digital spaces where differing views can be heard.

Listen and watch this essential episode of Communicating Earth to gain practical knowledge from Ingmar about what works, alongside an inspiring strategic perspective on how we de-power the fossil fuel business - and much more.

Recommended film: Don’t Look Up https://www.netflix.com/watch/81252357?source=35

Follow Ingmar at: LinkedIn

Additional Notes:

• We Don’t Have Time - https://app.wedonthavetime.org/  
• W Social - https://wsocial.news/
• Buy More Time session at COP29 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPgo8iRRD0M
• Exponential Roadmap Initiative - https://exponentialroadmap.org/
• Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman - https://rutgerbregman.com/books/humankind 
• My Octopus Teacher - https://www.netflix.com/title/81045007
• UNEP Climate and Clean Air Coalition - https://www.unep.org/topics/energy/methane/climate-and-clean-air-coalition-ccac 
• The Nordic Museum (Nordiska museet) - https://www.nordiskamuseet.se/en/ 

Released: 9 September 2026
Run Time: 57 minutes

How do you build a climate event that would still happen if you cancelled it?

Adam Lake talks to our host Tom Clark about nine years of building Climate Week NYC into one of the largest climate events in the world, and why the engagement is the work rather than the thing you do around the work.

Adam identifies as a campaigner. For him that means picking a goal, picking an audience, and then getting creative about the methodology that moves one towards the other. He came to climate via A level economics and theatre studies, a short acting career, a politics magazine and the Press Association, and he now leads communications for a week that draws around 250,000 people onto the streets of New York.

With this year's Climate Week focused on the energy, the impact and the action we drive together, his story of action is a fitting one. When COVID hit, every other major climate summit was cancelled or postponed. Climate Group decided to go ahead, and Adam's worry was not the main stage, but the wider week, the hundreds of community groups, school groups and artistic collectives built up over years, and whether that bubble would burst without people meeting in person. It did not. He says that year broke every record any climate week had set anywhere in the world up to that point, with more events and more people than ever before.

Adam talks about:

• Why Climate Week NYC events platform is still only a cog in something much bigger
• Building an audience one cafe in Queens and one launderette in Brooklyn at a time
• Choosing agencies, and being honest about when shared values matter and when effectiveness matters more
• Communications as a listening rather than a talking sport
• Why engagement built up over years is what matters

A producer got in touch out of the blue with an idea to take over every late night show, and three months later, Kimmel, Fallon and Colbert had all given over airtime to climate. There was no grand plan behind it. It came from years of turning up and talking to people.

He ends on the one thing he would ask of every communicator: keep evolving.

Recommended culture: CWNYC / Street Art for Mankind collaboration

Follow Adam

Additional Notes:

• CWNYC
• CWNYC Events Calendar
• Climate Group
• 50 Shades of Green podcast
• Climate Clock
• Potential Energy Coalition
• Climate Central
• Per Arnoldi, works 
• Kris De Meyer

Released: 2 September 2026
Run Time: 58 minutes

His subject in this episode is extreme heat, the way most of us will experience climate change first and the risk the sector has barely learned to talk about. Turning up the air conditioning is not an answer when many people do not have any, when running it emits more of the problem, and when nothing else exists at scale. Jamil describes how a set of parallel conversations, a serendipitous funder and two very different partners became a working consortium with Climate Mayors and the polling firm Northwind Climate, producing a communications toolkit now being used by mayors across the US during heat season.

Listen to hear what Jamil has learned about:

• Convening partners who are already circling the same idea, and knowing when not to own the relationship
• Getting specific, and why one message that resonates with everybody is the wrong goal
• Building audience personas that shape the message rather than decorate it
• Turning a large research exercise into something a busy political leader can act on
• Measuring impact when the most interesting uses of your work are the ones nobody planned for

Jamil is candid about what is still unresolved: converting a strong communications guide into real world action, the mental health toll of the work, and a climate story that remains heavily skewed towards one Western viewpoint. He also makes the case for retiring the idea that we will one day defeat climate change, and replacing it with navigation, the way a sailor treats the ocean.

Follow Jamil Wyne at: LinkedIn

Additional Notes:

• Hazelwood Network
• Jamil Wyne
• Climate Mayors Extreme Heat Cohort and toolkit
• Smart Cities Dive on the toolkit
• Northwind Climate
• Switch 5
• Potential Energy Coalition
  ILO, Working on a Warmer Planet
  Grist
  

Released: 20 August 2026
Run Time: Approximately 62 minutes

How do we get climate and nature stories on Coronation Street?

Rachael Orr is the CEO of Climate Outreach, the organisation behind the hugely impactful Britain Talks Climate and Nature research project. 

Her career has shifted from social advocacy in the public housing sector to climate engagement - and she has seen first-hand the challenges we face as communicators around the green transition.

Rachael tells our host Tom Clark the story of where this project comes from and how her team have delivered it so successfully. She unpacks the need for research that helps climate and nature communicators to reach across the political and social spectrum and speak persuasively and actively about the subject matter in everyday ways.

Hear Rachael give valuable practical advice about: 

• Creating space for open dialogue with stakeholders
• Shifting communications from awareness raising to implementation and progress
• Creating people-focused stories of action that anyone can relate to
• Empowering internal teams so they can work as a collective when the pressure is on.

If you want to move past data and facts, learn how to involve your stakeholders from day one and discover why we are actually the winning team, this conversation with Rachael Orr is an essential for your listening queue.

Recommended movie: Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy Sustainability | BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY

Connect with Rachael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-orr-9421a959/

Additional notes:

Climate Outreach: Britain Talks Climate and Nature 2025 - https://climateoutreach.org/btc/2025/report/

Climate Visuals library https://www.climatevisuals.org/

The Climate Diplomat: A Personal History of the COP Conferences by Peter Bett https://profileeditions.com/product/the-climate-diplomat/ 

Climate Spring - https://www.climate-spring.org/who-we-are#our-mission

Heard https://heard.org.uk/

Climate Reframe https://climatereframe.co.uk/ 

Edward Stourton  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Stourton_(journalist)

Why stories are so memorably by John Millien https://www.johnmillen.com/blog/4-reasons-stories-are-so-memorable

Carbon Brief  https://www.carbonbrief.org/

Ed Milliband  https://www.gov.uk/government/people/ed-miliband

Released: 1 August 2026

Run time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Caroline Prak is a former Communications leader at Friends of the Earth and Oxfam, and creator of https://understories.io.

The Understories tool she created (after joining the MIT’s Sustainable AI Program) evaluates messaging against peer-reviewed research studies, scores it across eight evidence-based criteria and suggests revisions while also flagging ethical risks. The goal of the tool is to help us realise the power of using the 70:30 hope to doom ratio in our climate comms.

Caroline talks to Tom Clark about why she thinks:
Climate communication could do much better at cutting through the noise

Why it’s hard to connect the dots between communications science and our day-to-day work pressures

How AI could maybe help us do better?

Caroline talks to Tom Clark about why she thinks:

1. Climate communication could do much better at cutting through the noise
2. Why it’s hard to connect the dots between communications science and our day-to-day work pressures
3. How AI could maybe help us do better?

Join Caroline and Tom as they take a deep dive on her “contrarian bet” that merging AI with climate and nature comms is a necessary strategy for saving the planet.

Recommended book: "Hope in the Dark" by Rebecca Solnit - https://canongate.co.uk/books/46-hope-in-the-dark-untold-histories-wild-possibilities/ 

Follow Caroline at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolineprak/

Additional Notes:

Understories.io 

The Case of the Century / L'Affaire du Siècle - laffairedusiecle.net 

Oxfam Davos Inequality Report - https://www.oxfam.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-oxfam/fight-inequality/oxfams-global-inequality-report/ 

MIT Sustainable AI Program - https://climateproject.mit.edu/events/sustainable-ai 

The 89% Project - https://89percent.org/ 

The Long Reads Interview with Rebecca Solnit (4 March 2026) - https://longreads.com/2026/03/04/questionnaire-rebecca-solnit/  

Justiça Ambiental! - https://justica-ambiental.org/ 

Anabela Lemos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabela_Lemos

Don’t Look Up - https://www.netflix.com/title/81252357 

Maibach et al. (2015), "Do Americans Understand That Global Warming Is Harmful to Human Health?", Annals of Global Health -

Released: 2 June 2026

Run time: 60 minutes

Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Boaz Paldi, former Chief Creative Officer for the United Nations Development Program, talks to Tom Clark about his inspiring work in climate communications. In particular he shares what he learned from the highly successful “Don’t choose extinction” campaign which highlighted the absurdity and damage done by fossil fuel subsidies.

Listen to hear what Boaz has learned really works for:

• Campaigning and influencing audiences and policy at a global level
• Ways to use humour and relatability in climate messaging
• The power of taking creative risks
• Communication that speaks to the “climate majority”.

In this honest recounting of the campaign’s development and delivery, Boaz doesn’t gloss over the challenges: bureaucracy, organisational blockers, the overwhelming nature of the subject matter. It’s a brilliant listen for anyone working in climate and nature comms who is wondering “does what I do make any difference?”

Recommended: We don’t have time - https://app.wedonthavetime.org/ 

Follow Boaz Paldi at: LinkedIn

Additional Notes:

Full Frame Advisory - https://fullframeadvisory.com/ 

UNDP - https://www.undp.org/ 

Don't Choose Extinction campaign video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaTgTiUhEJg

Weather Kids - https://www.weatherkids.org/ 

An Optimist's Guide to the Planet - https://www.bloomberg.com/originals/series/an-optimists-guide-to-the-planet

Activista - https://www.activistalosangeles.com/

Frame Store - https://www.framestore.com/

Jurassic Park - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park

The Simpsons - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons

Rosie the Riveter - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter

Released: 27 May 2026

Run Time: 49 minutes

Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Fuzieh Jallow, CEO and Founder at Terra40, talks to Tom Clark. Fuzieh describes herself as a “strategic architect” who supports the work of climate advocacy organisations in global forums. She says her business, Terra40, is the agency “I wish I had hired” when she was Senior Director at Environmental Defense Fund seeking to influence at the highest levels of policy making. 

In this fascinating conversation she shares her experience and learning - from recent experiences stewarding a delegation of 11 representatives for 57 Afro-descended organisations at the first International Conference on Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, to her professional advice for those at the start of their careers in climate advocacy. 

Listen to learn more about Fuzieh’s expert approaches to:

• Developing cultural intelligence
• Teaching the public about their pathways to power
• Nurturing authentic relationships
• Measuring success at global forums.

Fuzieh shares what works when it comes to getting the right people - those who are often excluded but who have the most at stake in the climate crisis - to the negotiating table, fully prepared and ready to make change.

Recommended book or film: An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth 

Follow Fuzieh Jallow at: LinkedIn

Additional Notes:

Terra40 - https://terra40.com/

Environmental Defense Fund - https://www.edf.org/ 

International Conference on Transition Away from Fossil Fuels - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Conference_on_Transitioning_Away_from_Fossil_Fuels 

Dr Beverly Wright - https://dscej.org/beverly-wright/ 

Deep South Centre for Environmental Justice - https://dscej.org/ 

Africa Rising: Youth and Climate Justice - https://www.worldwide-climate-ed.org/africa-rising

Ground News - https://ground.news/ 

People’s Climate Vote 2024 - https://peoplesclimate.vote/ 

Released: 20 May 2026

Run Time: Approximately 48 minutes

Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube