Leading with trust is harder than it sounds, with Gallup showing broad trust in institutions, business and media near historic lows. The workaround, according to the research, is credible, authentic messengers. The study points to Science Moms' Super Bowl commercial as the model: it featured nonpartisan climate scientists who are also parents, and named the victims clearly — their children.

"By the time she takes her first breath, 9 billion more tons of carbon pollution will be in the air," the spot's messaging said.

When urgency does not bring action

The fashionable tactic of tying everyday weather events to climate change — the "climate change is already on your front door" approach — may actually backfire.

Heatwaves, drought and floods carry 80% of all coverage, yet all sit in the bottom five range on emotional intensity. Biodiversity loss, environmental justice and climate tipping points average 16.6 on the emotion scale, near the top of all topics examined, but represent just under 1,000 articles each — a 36-to-1 coverage disparity. Across all 20 topics, emotional intensity falls as volume rises. Saturation numbs; scarcity sharpens.

The heatwave numbers make the point concrete. Coverage jumped from roughly 150 to roughly 1,150 articles a day in the first week of July 2026 — about eight times the media attention — but emotional intensity never left the 9–11 band. Two weeks later, biodiversity loss hit 34 on the emotional scale, the summer's peak, in only a handful of articles. Reach came from the weather; feeling came from the blame, with top emotions including victim identity, human origin and vulnerability.

The fairness gap

Fairness delivers the highest emotional intensity among all drivers, at 14.6, yet appears in only two of the 20 topics. Framing climate communication around injustice, equity and who bears responsibility — rather than disaster and fear — offers greater probability of emotional resonance with significantly less competition.

The research distills into three principles for practitioners: lead with credibility, not catastrophe, showing data and naming sources; name the affected and the accountable, since vulnerability and human origin set the number-one driver for half of all topics; and claim the open lanes, because fairness is the least-contested emotional territory in climate communication.

Allison Worldwide, led by Managing Director of Purpose Whitney Dailey, activated the research to identify which climate communications levers are broken. The answer is not to abandon emotion, the firm argues, but to deploy the right ones. As brands face shrinking visibility for sustainability messaging and falling climate coverage, the emotional currencies that change minds may no longer be fear — they may be trustworthiness, accountability, fairness and solutions.