📜 What you can learn from the climate movement

You can read Tom Brookes’ original comments here - I have lightly edited the below.

We will not win because we are right but because we are organised.

It makes sense that most of us think that if we can just communicate our point in a way that someone else understands, then they will accept the fact that we’re right. In reality, however, that does not work (and, indeed, never has). Changing perceptions is more important than winning an argument. A united perception can skip over who is right and who is wrong in pursuit of a mutual objective.

Good policy doesn’t adopt itself, it’s about politics.

The climate fight is inherently political. There is no actual debate over the science, the causes or the solutions to the climate crisis, only manufactured debate. This means that the blockers to policy are not a lack of understanding but of power.

Don’t mistake access for influence.

When communicators and policymakers work together, they can have conflicting priorities. For example, a policy-led strategy may want to limit communicators’ critique of a policy approach, or communicators may want to push a different, enabling narrative. To be effective, the inside game has to go hand in hand with the outside game.