Climate Change and Environment

Conversations about climate change and our environment can’t wait, but they must be navigated carefully. The right frames avoid dead-end debates and despair.

The right frame can take climate change out of the boxing ring and into the public square.

Metaphors help translate science and reach a broad audience. For example, “heat-trapping gas” is more accessible and effective than “greenhouse gas.”

FrameWorks’ unique approach to science translation has shaped this strategy, which tens of millions of Americans have heard and seen over the past two decades.

Explore how to frame a wide range of environmental issues.

Featured Work

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Entering Climate Change Communications Through the Side Door

Advocates can make progress on polarized issues by finding new ways into engaging people in different perspectives, rather than trying to knock down the front door with a barrage of facts.

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Communicating about Climate Change in the time of COVID-19

As climate communicators, we have a long-standing, deep appreciation for a concept that the pandemic has brought into sharp relief: interconnection. This moment calls us to lift up our values,...

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Reframing the Ocean: A FrameWorks Guide

This communication guide outlines how to talk about the ocean to improve public understanding and increase support for solutions. Based on comprehensive research with the UK public, it reveals a...

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Showing 25 – 36 of 39

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We Need a Ground Crew for Environmental Health Working Upstream: Using Explanatory Metaphors to Improve Public Understanding of Environmental Health and its Workforce

People believe we should live free from health threats in their environments - but lack ways to think about the work that takes. Two metaphors can help.

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Getting to the Heart of the Matter: Using Metaphorical and Causal Explanation to Increase Public Understanding of Climate and Ocean Change

How can we help people understand the science that connects climate change to extreme weather - and to human health? New, tested metaphors can help.

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Talking Environmental Health: A FrameWorks MessageMemo

How can we frame environmental health in ways that build support for the infrastructure and funding it takes to do the work? This MessageMemo offers a strategy.

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Just the Earth Doing Its Own Thing: Mapping the Gaps Between Expert and Public Understandings of Oceans and Climate Change

This report examines the differences between the ways that experts and the general public understand climate change and oceans.

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Using Values to Build Public Understanding and Support for Environmental Health Work

This report details the findings from an experimental survey designed to identify values that elevate public support for the environmental health field.

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The Media Narrative of Environmental Health

This report analyzes media coverage of the field of environmental health. Dominant media frames related to environmental issues were identified and analyzed.

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People, Polar Bears, and the Potato Salad: Mapping the Gaps Between Expert and Public Understandings of Environmental Health

People don't know the term 'environmental health' - and think it must have something to do with keeping our planet clean and green. How can we reframe?

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Conceptualizing US Food Systems With Simplifying Models

Findings from TalkBack testing.

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Upside Down Fate: Analysis of a Priming Survey Exploring Views of the Food System

This report summarizes findings of a national telephone survey of 3,294 adults conducted for the Frameworks Institute in March 2006 to determine the effects of various conceptual frames on...

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Not While I’m Eating: How and Why Americans Don’t Think About Food Systems

Findings from the TalkBack Testing.

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Harmful and Productive Patterns in Newspaper Representations of Food Systems

This analysis, funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and building on previous research on how Americans think about food systems, examines the ways in which the topic is presented to readers,...

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The Food Chain: Linking Private Plate to Public Process

An analysis of qualitative research exploring perceptions of the food system.