Four ideas that changed my mind on climate change.
Unexpected lessons, the return of long-form, sticking to your niche, and much more!
Dear friend & subscriber,
Welcome back to Our New Climate, a weekly newsletter that digs deeper into fresh ways of thinking and talking about climate change.
Here’s what I listened to while writing this week 💙
Four (unexpected) lessons that transformed my perspective on climate change.
Completing my masters in Climate Change was the best investment I ever gave myself. Looking back, the most impactful lessons were also the most unexpected…
Here’s what I learned:
N°1. Climate change is not about the environment.
There’s so much more to it than rising temperatures and melting ice.
My research allowed me to go beyond the usual tropes and think deeply about the root causes, and interconnections between climate and various systems — capitalism, labour, food, colonisation, urban development — you name it.
I realised that climate change is not really about the environment.
It's all about the systems we’ve created that turn the priceless into profit, and their inevitable consequences — which we are only catching up to now.
N°2. Mind the (communication) gap.
Policy makers, scientists and people like you and I both think and talk in radically different ways.
Bridging these gaps is more important than we think.
In the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), researchers study how best to connect science and policy to facilitate change.
Much of this connection happens through 'boundary objects', concepts used to facilitate communication between distinct communities.
For example, ‘ESG’ connects the world of environmentalism and finance, while ‘resilience’ can connect even more communities. However, overusing these concepts has its risks, and can often lead to misunderstandings and misalignments.
N°3. The value of ‘diversifying’ our ways of knowing.
I never thought I’d enjoy a book about computer models, but reading Prof. Edwards’ A Vast Machine was literally a life-changing moment for me.
Ever wondered where climate models come from?
Learning about the history of climate modelling and its connections with the US military complex has been a real eye-opener.
It made me realise that the primary ‘language’ we rely on — GHGs, global mean temperature, climate model simulations etc. — are not the only way to make sense of climate change. It is also not as neutral and objective as we think.
I was exposed to new epistemologies and world views — many of which are rooted in indigenous cultures from which there is so much to learn.
N°4. Climate change has a long history.
In the grand scheme of things, our climate has always been changing. Human communities have adapted to radical shifts in climate for aeons.
This challenges common messages that focus on ‘restoring our climate to its original state’, and begs the uncomfortable question: what should we do when there is no ‘normal’?
These questions have profoundly shaped my understanding of climate change and its complexities — which I definitely did not expect from the outset.
Any surprising lessons you’ve picked up in your journey? Feel free to share in the comments!
Content strategy: the rise of long-form, value trumps everything, long live niches!
Having dipped into the world of Substack for a few months now, I’ve realised something surprising about how people like to consume content.
Let’s talk about it.
The return of long-form.
Before we start — what exactly qualifies as long-form? According to HubSpot, anything that is more than 1000 words.
Think of blog posts, tutorials, eBooks, articles, investigative journalism and so on.
In my time exploring Substack, I’ve discovered countless newsletters dedicated to incredibly niche topics, publishing loooong essays that achieve virality.
Long-form and viral are not often found in the same sentence, yet here we are.
From a content strategy perspective, it makes a whole lot of sense to lean into long-form, comprehensive, in-depth explorations of topics that matter to you, or your business.
Why?
SEO optimization: a long piece of text is more likely to cover a range of keywords. Simple.
Dwell time: the longer (and higher quality) your content, the longer people dwell on it, which sends signals to search engines and increases the likelihood of your piece ranking higher.
Emotional connection: long-form content requires hours of work. Your audience can tell when sweat and tears have been poured into the making of something. Long-form is key to increasing emotional connection, engagement, leading to loyalty.
Backlinks: long-form is also more likely to attract backlinks, which are links on other websites that point to your content. In the eyes of search engines, the more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your ranking.
Stop encouraging shrinking attention spans!
‘Meet people where they are’. Sure, if your audience lives on Tiktok and Instagram Reels, it makes sense to meet them where they are.
But, I don’t believe in reproducing the type of content that is creating shallow engagement. That is a losing game.
I’d rather have a much smaller audience and share quality content presented in a way that inspires calm thinking, versus clickbait-core, useless content that might lure more eyeballs in the short-term.
Value over everything.
I think of my favourite online creators and note that all have experienced phenomenal growth by focusing on providing immense (and often, free) value to their audiences.
This trend is especially interesting to me: creators are using short-form content to drive interest and lead their audience to a long-form asset, e.g. an eBook, a detailed guide, a 2hr Loom video, etc.
Top creators focus on providing the best value possible, and many actually have nothing to sell. At least not upfront. Ironically, this makes people want to give them more of their attention, and even throw money at them.
Good to know!
Niche content vs. content for everyone.
When starting this newsletter, I’ve spent countless hours debating whether or not I should tailor my content specifically to communicators working on climate issues.
‘Is this audience large enough?’ What if no one reads it…’
‘Maybe I should widen my scope and write stuff that more people are likely to be interested in.’
I’m not gonna lie, I still don’t really have an answer for this, mostly because I don’t have enough data points – yet.
But speaking of data, I’ve set a few hours aside this week to sift through a few reports on social media trends.
Did you know that Youtube provides really cool reports on trends?
Well, neither did I. But one insight caught my eye: niche content is on the rise.
Lots of creators (me included) worry that our content might be too narrow.
Meanwhile, some of Youtube’s top channels includes one called 11foot8plus8. An account that shares nothing but footage of trucks struggling to pass under a bridge in Durham, North Carolina, to 317k COMMITTED followers.
It doesn’t matter how narrow your niche is. In fact, the narrower, the more engaged your audience is likely to be, the tighter the camaraderie and sense of shared interest.
Implications for climate communicators:
1. Jumping on the bandwagon of short-form social media content is great, if you belong to the 0.01% who can do it well. If not, I would recommend investing time and money into building a library of value-packed content.
2. Stop focusing on creating content that is explicitly promoting yourself / your organisation. People want value. High-value content will always arouse interest. Let people come to you naturally.
3. Partner with authentic creators with a strong influence in their niche.
Contenu très intéressant Chloé