Episode 128: How to Win the Climate Communications War with Josh Garrett

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head on. I'm Molly Wood.

This week, when I talk about the reason that I do this podcast and started this company, I often tell people that part of my origin story was this crisis of faith in storytelling. But then I was working in venture capital, l and I met all these startups who were doing incredible things. And I realized that none of them would succeed without storytelling. They wouldn't get funders, they wouldn't get customers, they wouldn't get media attention. And my faith was restored, which is why it is weird that it's taken me so long to do more specific stories about storytelling.

So today's guest is doing that work from the PR side, and now seemed like a great time to talk about how to talk about climate when it seems like no one is very willing to talk about climate. Let's get into it.

Josh Garrett: My name is Josh Garrett. I am the CEO and founder of Redwood Climate Communications, and we're a specialty strategic communications and PR firm working with climate tech companies and climate-focused nonprofits. Uh, I've been communicating about climate change for my job, uh, for about, uh, 14 years now. Um, and, uh, studied it in grad school and decided like, this is gonna be my path forward because I wanna work on a thing I care about.

Molly Wood: I wanna go back to something you just said though. You could study this in grad school. That feels like a win.

Josh Garrett: Not the communications part.

Molly Wood: Okay. [Laughs]

Josh Garrett: Yeah. Well, I think so the, I came outta grad school in 2012, uh, and I would've loved to have a communications-focused climate degree that I could have pursued.

But, um, the one that I got was in, uh, it's a Masters in public administration that focused on environmental science and policy, which was a very rough approximation, but my logic at the time was, learn the basics about the science and the policy. Then I can speak about both with a little more authority and, and a little more nuanced knowledge, and hopefully that'll translate into good results for my clients or, or whoever I'm working for at the time.

Molly Wood: Got it. But so you were that intentional. You really were just like, this is a huge problem and it needs, like, talk about the origin story that made you kind of make that plan.

Josh Garrett: Sure. Yeah. It was, uh, the, maybe the, the short version is I moved to New York City in 2008. Not a great time to get a job. Got the first comms job I could.

Uh, it was at a heating oil buyers collective, um, which I had, I didn't even understand any of those words next to each other at the time. I grew up in California where there isn't any heating oil. But, um, through that work I learned about this amazing thing called biodiesel. Which is essentially diesel fuel made out of used cooking oil and learn that you can take biodiesel and put it in a heating oil tank in someone's house, and it works just as well as petroleum-based, uh, heating oil.

And it produces something like 80% fewer, uh, polluting and, and climate-changing emissions. So the fact that that existed and everyone wasn't using it was sort of like mind blowing to me. And then of course I went down the rabbit hole of other clean energy technologies that even back then in 2008, 2009, 10, uh, we're pretty much ready to go.

Uh, and my logic there was like, well, there's these great technologies. Uh, I'm not a scientist, um, but the technologies are already ready. So what I can do is help get more investment. More, uh, policy support and more public support, uh, for these great technologies and help deploy them more quickly. And I can do that by staying in my current profession, but taking an intentional turn into the climate and environmental sort of, uh, categories.

Molly Wood: Right. And then it, and it sounds, so you sort of, it sounds like, went to some nonprofits, went into pr, worked with then some climate tech companies. What, how, tell me a little about the evolution of kind of the storytelling that you saw that works. Like that's a, that gives you a nice broad range to start from as you get close to launching your own firm.

Josh Garrett: Totally. Yeah. And the, and the, my first job was at the Nature Conservancy, which is a great starting point because obviously extremely well known, well established and influential, um, nonprofit, one of the Big Greens, as they call them.

Um, and yeah, it was just, I, I worked with scientists daily. Um, I got to learn a lot about the research that they were doing and, and the nature concerns he was putting out. I got to go out to the field to do things like see how, um, oil and gas fields were working well in terms of minimizing pollution or maybe not working so well, and how we could, you know, what we could do about that. Um, so it was a really good, broad sort of education about, um, what's out there, uh, and then focused on energy, which was, you know, sort of what led me to the field in the first place.

So it was a very natural transition. Um. And yeah, it was just so great to see so many people working in so many different facets of the environmental field from scientists as I mentioned, but also fundraisers and policy people and lobbyists. And, uh, I, it was lucky enough to be able to work with all of them on very specific and sometimes broader initiatives.

Um, but what I found was some of the limitation there was, you're speaking to, if you're at a Nature Conservancy or an environmental nonprofit, your audience is generally people who already care about…

Molly Wood: Yep.

Josh Garrett: The environment. Um, and what I really wanted to do was, uh, really two things. One was like, get people who didn't already care to care a little bit more and maybe change the way they voted or, uh, what issues they talked about with their friends and family, or their choices they made at the grocery store or Target or whatever.

Um, and so there was a limited opportunity to do that. MSo transitioning from there to another, uh, smaller nonprofit for, for, uh, about, uh, two years called, uh, Equitable Origin, um, where I did pretty similar work actually as the Nature Conservancy. And then, uh, getting into PR was a very direct opportunity to promote those technologies.

And that was where I really, uh, got an amazing cross-section view of climate tech and what it could be. Uh, even back then when I started, my first PR job was I think 2016. Climate tech wasn't really a term. Uh, it was still called clean tech and very energy focused. And then, uh, through my first few years of working in the field, it was awesome to see, oh, it can be many other things. Water technology and waste management, technology and, uh, efficiency technology, not just for energy, but other sort of industrial operations.

Uh, and it was just so inspiring, uh, to meet founders and to learn about these technologies that I never in a million years would've conceived of myself. But, um, they're out there and they're raising money and they're, uh, making, you know, uh, bigger and bigger impacts as they grow as companies. So being able to learn about them, represent them to external audiences, and in some cases, do what I set out to do, which is get people who didn't already care about climate., often investors, sometimes consumers, sometimes regulators or government people, to really care and see the benefits of, uh, of what those technologies could bring to their sort of, uh, sphere of influence. You know, the people they cared about, the, the region they cared about, the industry they cared about.

And it wasn't always for climate reasons. It could be for some other reason like, oh, this making my steel factory more efficient, benefits the company in a financial way, obviously, but maybe it also reduces the amount of resources we use, reduces the pollution that we generate.

Um, and so telling those stories about, Hey, this is a climate solution, but it's also an evolution of a technology that is like overdue for an update. Really love doing that. And that's where I sort of hit my stride, and I've been doing that for the last, uh, about 10 years.

Molly Wood: Yeah. I, I definitely want to, um, talk more about that sort of the, the nonprofit messaging versus the kind of capitalism messaging, but…

Josh Garrett: Yeah.

Molly Wood: But first, then in 2021, you started your own communications firm. What did you feel was missing? You know, what were you, what, what are, what are you continuing to hope, want to accomplish with, with Redwood?

Josh Garrett: Yeah. What, what I, I wanted to continue the work I was doing. Everything I just talked about. Working with founders, uh, whether earlier, you know, middle or late stage companies.

But I wanted to also sort of break out of the typical PR mode, uh, uh, model rather, which is not always conducive to I think the needs of, especially earlier stage companies. Um, model for PR is, you know, you get together and you make a big plan and a bunch of people work on a bunch of different things. You can do marketing while you do media outreach, uh, while you do strategic planning, uh, while you plan an event.

And, you know, all of those things have their place. And what I saw in the traditional PR model was trying to do those things, all of them all the time, because the more work you did, the more you got paid, and that's what makes you successful.

So I wanted to start a model where it was more about identifying the specific needs of each client and starting there. Whether it was just, Hey, let's make a plan for, what are we gonna say for the next six months? What are our key messages that our audiences need to hear from us? Uh, and then add on things on top of that, uh, chiefly media relations, that's still very much in demand. Uh, when I founded Redwood four years ago, it was, and it's still, you know, usually the first thing a new client asks us to do. And, and, uh, I think it's really important. And, um, as a journalist, I'm sure you know, you understand that as well. And, um…

Molly Wood: Well, define, define media relations for the companies who might not be there yet.

Josh Garrett: Yes, good point. Um, it's basically finding specialists who have experience and hopefully knowledge about your technology, uh, and which reporters are interested in, in those things in your category. Uh, what are they looking at? What trends are they tracking that you actually fit into? Uh, and those specialists can help package up your story, the points you wanna make for that reporter in such a way that they see it as something that is a value add to what they're already doing.

Um, and I think a lot of, so the bad rap that PR and media relations get, which is I think unfortunately very fairly earned, is people blasting out 500 emails that are exactly the same to 500 reporters hoping that two of them will respond.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Josh Garrett: Um, and any, you know, successful PR practitioner will tell you like, that's not how it works. Or at least it shouldn't be how it works, because you have to really… reporters, I'm sure you yourself get maybe a hundred, 200 pitch emails a day. There's no way you're gonna read 'em all. And our, uh…

Molly Wood: I still get pitches, like as a side note, I still get pitches for shows I no longer host or am related to. Is how amazing that that process can be,

Josh Garrett: Right. And that is what we call a cautionary tale. And the last thing you wanna do as a PR person representing your client is annoy or distract a reporter from what they're really trying to do. So our first job is understanding our clients, and our second job is understanding what reporters want.

Then combining them in such a way where everybody benefits and the reporter gets to tell a interesting, maybe more nuanced story than they would've otherwise. And our client gets to see their name, uh, in news or, or hear it on a podcast. And, uh, uh, you know, when it works out, everybody wins and everybody's happy.

Molly Wood: Do you, would you say that at Redwood you have a thesis of your own? Like, do you feel that you have a sort of umbrella narrative that your clients get to benefit from, you know, when they walk in the door?

Josh Garrett: Yeah. Yeah. It starts with, uh, myself and my team being number one, very knowledgeable on, you know, climate, technology and related topics. And number two, really passionate about what we do.

I think there's, there's so many conversations with founders or, or nonprofit, um, leaders, you know, involve us kind of nerding out about what our favorite climate technologies are. Oh wow. That one legislative move was so great and, you know, that's, we're looking forward to that…

Molly Wood: I heart policy. [Laughs]

Josh Garrett: Right. Yeah, exactly. Um, and when you are able to connect on that level, then uh, you know, it just makes it a lot easier to work together. I think it earns us a lot of trust because frankly, there's a lot of, especially larger PR agencies that, they have a clean tech or a climate tech, um, division. It's staffed by people who got hired by the agency and were assigned to that division. And so maybe they learn about it and hopefully they get excited about it and maybe they someday will nerd out. But…

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Josh Garrett: The way Redwood, you know, our sort of thesis is like we want to affect positive change in the realm of climate. That's our end goal. And if we share that end goal with our clients, then it's so much easier to work together.

And then of course, the baseline of knowledge I mentioned allows us to sort of hit the ground running and just like, you know, head off to the races, we're speaking the same language, and we can get right to bringing the value that we bring to those, um, relationships, which is what I mentioned earlier, you know, understanding how media works, understanding how to build a story, and understanding how to tell that story across the right platforms at the right times to reach the audiences that we identify along with our clients.

Molly Wood: Yep. Let's, um, switch gears to sort of the story piece of it, which, you know…

Josh Garrett: Yeah. The fun part.

Molly Wood: Has sort of always been complicated, is like more complicated. Now let's start at 10,000 feet. How do you view the landscape that we're in now? Where we were in, you know, a climate tech bubble? Arguably, there was like an investment boom. It was the cool thing to be doing. Everybody was there, there was policy support. Now it's not that.

Josh Garrett: Yeah.

Molly Wood: Like how, how do you view, I've been calling this sort of like how to talk about the climate crisis in a time of climate crisis. Um, but, and which is, by the way, the little, like little keynote talk. But…

Josh Garrett: Love it.

Molly Wood: How do you see it? Like where, where are we and what's changing? What is your war room like? Pardon that phrase in this exact moment, um, looking like though.

Josh Garrett: Yeah, I think right now, uh, where we start is every, every communication initiative that anybody takes on whatever their goal is, you have to consider the context.

What, what is the hot topic right now? What's at the top of the news cycle? So without a doubt, the words climate, sustainability, um, are, you know, much less popular, much more, less often used, uh, much less reported on by media outlets across the board.

Um, so what does that mean for climate? Does that mean that, you know, you should never talk about it? Does it mean that you should, if you're a climate tech company or a climate advocate, just hide in a closet for the next three years until the administration changes and the narrative hopefully changes? No.

Molly Wood: Maybe? No. Just kidding.

Josh Garrett: To all of you in the closet you can come out now. Um, the climate, the communications closet, of course.

Um. I say you can come out now because it's like, essentially silence is not a good strategy.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Josh Garrett: Um, uh, don't stop talking about climate, but if your audiences are, are sort of susceptible to those government and like macro narrative forces, just change the way you talk about it. It's pretty simple.

And I think there's tons of great research, uh, from, uh, sources like the Yale Center for Climate Communications, uh, Potential Energy Coalition is another organization that has done lots of polls and looked at very specific language. Um, but one of the things that sticks with me is, i's so much, it's across the board, no matter who you're talking to. If you say pollution instead of greenhouse gases, people say, oh yeah, that's bad. We should stop that. And that's what greenhouse gases are. They're pollution that goes in the atmosphere and causes this sort of chain reaction that leads to all kinds of, um, negative impacts that are felt by literally every person on the planet.

So just small changes like that, uh, I think is where you should start. Um, or, or perhaps even before that, if your audiences aren't susceptible to that, if they think it's terrible that, you know, climate and sustainability are, are, uh, on the outs right now in terms of like public discourse in America, then great. Speak to that.

Molly Wood: Right.

Josh Garrett: Talk about it, talk about how it's a bad thing. Talk about how it's hindering progress that, um, leads to, you know, economic and public health, worse outcomes in those categories for millions or billions of people.

Um, but if you, if your audiences are sensitive to that, and you need to be careful. So for example, if you're a, uh, you're a, you know, early stage climate to company and you have. Lots of federal grants that you need to keep, like you need that money coming through the door to keep your R&D going, then yeah, you gotta take the word climate out of every single public, um, you know, document and statement that you make, tragic as it is, but it's shown to be, you know, a very binary, um, sort of result with this particular federal administration.

If you say these words, you lose money. If you don't say those words, you might be able to hang onto it. So what do you do in that case? You talk about all the other awesome benefits and the sort of, uh, the inside baseball surfboard is co-benefits.

But, um, what I love about climate tech is that it's just better tech. It's just the next evolution of the thing that we're all familiar with. But just like any category of technology, it just like, gets better and, and, um, you know, more affordable, more efficient over time through iteration and innovation. Uh, and that's, you know, that's maybe even doubly true for climate tech.

So, um, the example I always use is just electric vehicles. I have yet to meet a person who was driven an electric vehicle that doesn't say, whoa. That was really cool.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Josh Garrett: Because if you drive a car and it's quieter and the acceleration is amazing, that's my favorite part personally.

Molly Wood: Me too.

Josh Garrett: You're gonna say… Yeah, And you're gonna say like, well…

Molly Wood: Me and Josh drive fast y’all.

Josh Garrett: Yes, that is right. Um. That's just an easy way to, to convey, hey, this is a better technology. So you can talk about all of those benefits. Lower total cost of ownership. In some cases higher resale value. No need to change the oil. How awesome is that? You don't have to get tuneups or oil changes. You really just have to change your wiper fluid and your tires on an EV. Um, so you know, fewer moving parts, you, you know, there's fewer things to break down.

So all of those benefits, um, should go at the top of your list in terms of messages you convey to your audience, if they are indeed, you know, wanting to, or needing to not hear about the climate benefits right now. Um. And that's very easily done. And that's what, you know, some of the work that we do with our clients is exactly that. Figuring out how to reconfigure messages, what language to use and what language not to use in order to escape, um, you know, scrutiny from organizations, governmental or otherwise that have deemed anything climate to be bad and, you know, worthy of defunding or worse.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Josh Garrett: Um, and it's very doable.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back, Josh and I will talk about how climate messaging is at a bit of a disadvantage, and that disadvantage is the nearly unlimited money that the fossil fuel industry has poured into deliberately confusing the issue for decades.

Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We're talking with Josh Garrett of Redwood Earth Communications.

Molly Wood: One of the things that, that you and I talked about that I found really compelling was that you talked about the, the kind of messaging firepower gap. So that when we, when we think about telling climate stories and telling sustainability stories, it's still is, it's a little bit buckshot compared to the absolute fire hose of cash and propaganda that has come for decades from the fossil fuel industry. Um, say more about that and how, you know, what would, in an ideal world, what would it look like to truly counter that?

Josh Garrett: Yeah. There is a, uh, a communications veteran. His name is David Fenton. He started a social, sort of socially motivated comms agency decades ago, and veteran of the sixties activist movements. He said there's a information with regard to climate change and, and fossil fuels, um, there's an information, information war going on and we don't even have an army on the field. And I think that's like a good way of thinking of it.

And, you know, sticking with that metaphor, you mentioned fire firepower. Um, to me, what the, uh, fossil fuel industries have going for them is basically unlimited money, so, across individual companies across national oil companies that have, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars just sitting around waiting to be used across industry groups. The American Petroleum Institute is, has been just directing money to places that, uh, they have deemed essential to convincing people that fossil fuels are great and should never leave for decades.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Josh Garrett: And then the second reason they're so effective is coordination. Like you can ask the CEOs of five different, you know, uh, super major oil companies, oh, what are the trends you're seeing? Why is it so important to, to keep fossil fuels as our, you know, number one energy source? They'll give you the same answer.

You asked five solar, you know, residential, commercial, solar, uh, CEOs that, they'll give you five different answers. And I don't, it's hard to, there's no one to blame. You know, there's, there's just like so much, um, uh, momentum and so many resources that I've been accumulating in the fos, I mean, oil was first discovered in 1870, and so it took a few decades after that to turn into a big business. But that's a long time to get your messaging right and coordinate and figure out ways to, uh, represent your shared interest as companies in a, in a single industry. Um. And they did it very well, and they've used every single advantage they have in terms of, um, having, you know, the ear and the relationships with regulators, with government people having all that money, um, and really spending a lot of it very wisely on marketing.

I think a really good example is, uh, the phrase, oh, now we're cooking with gas. Right? That means, ah, we're, we're doing it now. Like, this is great. We're making good progress, everyone. That was literally invented by, um, fossil gas marketing people in the 19 or maybe 1940s, I believe. They paid popular variety show hosts to throw it into conversation to say like, oh, tell us a story, Mr. Movie Star, celebrity. And he would tell a story and he would say, and then we got what we wanted and we were successful. And the host says, wow, now you're cooking with guests. And that was completely calculated, driven by money, amplified by money, and now it's just a thing that everybody says and…

Molly Wood: Oh, you guys have fly, just flew in my mouth because it was hanging open, 'cause I did not know that. Wow.

Josh Garrett: So, yeah, and just, there's a lot of great research on this. Um…

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Josh Garrett: Uh, Emily Adkins, uh, Heated Newsletter in particular, I think has great stories that are a little more contemporary, but often goes back into the past to draw those connections. So, point being. They've been at this forever…

Molly Wood: Right.

Josh Garrett: They are not stopping, they're not slowing down. They have changed tactics. It used to be climate change isn't real. Now it's climate change is real, but it's natural. In between, it was, well, we should do something about climate change, but let's not do it too quickly lest we disrupt the status quo or sacrifice, uh, you know, economic success.

So every time they've done that, people like us maybe notice it. Most people don't notice it at all. And it gets retold on the media. Um, and other allies in different industries will say it, you know, it's just like, it's really a masterclass in propaganda, and dissemination.

But I mean, in terms of giving credit where it's due coordination, investment, and message consistency. Saying the same thing over and over and over. That's what works more so now in this age of five second attention spans than ever. Uh, and they're still doing it.

And what I would love to see is some, you know, some counter punches, maybe like building up, combining different industry groups in clean energy or advocacy groups or nonprofits. Start coordinating and saying, Hey, for the next three months we're gonna talk about how clean energy is cheap energy. And cheap energy is clean energy. While everyone's worried about the cost of electricity, we have this solution that's staring us right in the face. Lots of ways to get it out there faster and push down those prices. Um, and, uh, whatever you hear otherwise is really disingenuous. Uh, not to mention we have a government that has intentionally dismantled our ability to take advantage of these great resources that will lower our prices or at least hold them down over time.

So, uh, I would love to see that.

Molly Wood: That's way, that's way too long though, right? I assume you would just say, clean energy is cheap energy.

Josh Garrett: Yes. Credit to, uh…

Molly Wood: Because one thing they are good at is being pithy.

Josh Garrett: Absolutely. And yeah, credit to, uh, Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, he, he throws that one around a lot and that's great.

Molly Wood: It is.

Josh Garrett: That's a great one. And it's true. And, and I think the other problem is there's, uh, among others is, uh, the environmental movement, the climate advocacy movement, we have this problem of wanting to explain everything, turn the pithy thing into, you know, a 16 sentence qualified statement.

Molly Wood: Yep.

Josh Garrett: Is solar always cheaper than natural gas in every place, in every manner of the day? No, it's not. But in the aggregate, it's cheaper to build and generate electricity from solar, then natural gas. That's just true. We don't need to qualify it every time. And if somebody wants to debate about the details, let's do it. But yeah, keep it pithy, memorable, and repeat it a lot.

Molly Wood: Yeah. The, the, uh, I, for everybody who has not read it, Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and, who's her co-founder or co-author, Erik Conway, um, is just the incredible telling of how, how these campaigns were specifically built and done. It is not like, in no way is this a, a theory or an unfounded accusation about this sort of long-term campaign, because no information is by accident.

And I feel like that is part of what sort of, it's almost something that as comms professionals, it is necessary to say like, this did not, we did not get here by accident.

Josh Garrett: Yeah, yeah. And that's why I love the cooking with gas example, because it's just like, it's easy to say, wow, where did that come from? I don't know. It's a funny phrase.

And it's like, no, it was very intentionally crafted and placed and uh, yeah. Now we, nobody really knows that.

Molly Wood: Let's do a little lightning round of like, okay, it like… Clean energy is cheap energy. What are some other, what are some other things like that, that you have found that really work that, you know, like if we were gonna say for three months we're gonna do this and for three months we're gonna do this.

Like, what, what else is out there that you found really resonates? That's simple, that's, you know, understandable.

Josh Garrett: I think, um, fossil fuel is, uh, a pollutant. It's toxic. It has byproduct that is, makes people sick. Uh, I think a good example from that is, um, sort of, it had, it did a weird turn through the media cycle maybe three years ago. Um, that gas, it was discovered, gas stoves, they produced tons of air pollution that just circulate in your house. And that's bad. And, uh, I think just making clear that when you burn a fossil fuel, it makes byproducts that make you sick. So really anything to do with public health, I think is, is gonna be a winner.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Josh Garrett: Um. And so, you know that, I mean, also this is probably less effective, but for the right audience, you could say, uh, fossil fuels are also inherently less efficient. Um, just because if you think about a solar panel, sun hits panel, panel makes electricity. Uh, versus oil comes outta the ground, goes on a pipeline, pipeline, goes to refinery. Refinery, uses energy to turn it into 16 different things. Gasoline comes out the other side goes on a truck, goes to your gas station, goes into your car, light it on fire, half of the energy is wasted, be as heat, and then you use the rest to drive your car.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Josh Garrett: Um, that one's a little nerdier, but um, but yeah, I think the public health impacts are the first one.

And then especially now, just going back to affordability. Um, there's so much cheap energy and cheap solutions out there that are gonna be better than the dirtier ones. Let's do that side by side comparison.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Josh Garrett: Um, and then maybe last one I'll say is, um, again, sticking with energy, it's about taking control.

So if you can make your own electricity from your roof and you don't have to worry about paying your, you know, utility and am I being screwed on this bill? What are these 15 extra lines on my bill with numbers next to them that I don't know, I don't know what any of that means.

If you're able to just take it from your roof and sell it back to them, or in some cases put it in a battery and use it later. Um, that's, you know, what we might call the energy freedom argument. Um, I think that has a lot of legs too, and expands beyond energy.

Molly Wood: When you think about those outcomes, when you think about an action on the other side of the story, like what would you like people listening to this show or the consumers of your client's messages to do with that?

Josh Garrett: Great question. I think the first one is very simple and that is just talk about climate change. Just talk about it.

Uh, there's a lot of research that shows that Americans, but really people across the world are, are worried about climate change because they know it's happening. They know it's, it's can be very scary in the form of extreme weather. They know it has already or will again, or probably both affect them, but they don't know how or when. Um, so that anxiety is there, but people tend to be very hesitant, hesitant to talk about that and draw those connections. So I think vocalizing some of those thoughts and fears I think is by itself like a great, you know, first step.

Um, and I think the other thing is honestly, um, especially now, make climate an issue that you vote on. And it doesn't have to be, let's reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to exactly 400 parts per million. It can just be like, I don't really want a natural gas plant in my neighborhood, so I'm gonna vote against that. I'm gonna like learn a little bit about it and vote against it.

Um, or probably in this moment even more importantly, I'm gonna go to my local town hall, uh, my town zoning meeting and say, I hear there's a proposal for, um, putting solar panels on our local landfill. I like that. I wanna see that. Be a YIMBY, that's something that I think is, uh, in very short supply right now.

And as much as the federal government wants to kill all clean energy, um, it's still happening at the state level. But what's the biggest impediment there in many cases is people just saying, I don't want, I don't want a solar panel 'cause it's industrial development or I don't want a wind turbine in my nice view.

Um, and sometimes it's very genuine. More often I would argue it's informed by intentional misinformation planted by that apparatus of, uh, fossil fuel interests we spoke about earlier. Um, but if, if there's five people that say that, I don't want this solar plant because it's going to reduce my property values, which is by the way, untrue based on the data. But a very common argument against.

If five people go to a zoning meeting and say that, and zero people go to that same zoning meeting and say, actually no, I want it. I want clean energy. I want lower air pollution in my community. I want lower electricity prices in the long run. Well then obviously the zoning board's gonna, you know, really listen to those five people that, that go against it.

So, um, shout out to, um, Greenlight America. They're a nonprofit that identify the YIMBYs and, and other allies in local communities that can, and help them coordinate, help them get messages, help them know when the meetings are, that's a huge, uh, a huge impediment of like, just, these are very boring meetings that have incredibly profound consequences for communities and a lot of people don't even know when they are and, and when they do, maybe they can't make it.

But, uh, anyway, just being vocal in pro, in promoting the solutions, uh, and being vocal, uh, and voting also for elected officials that are going to align with those decisions that, that you care about.

Molly Wood: I wanna ask about, uh, you know, fear versus hope.

Like we know from social media that negativity does create engagement. But also, that good messaging doesn't necessarily have to be, that people get paralyzed by fear in the climate conversation. You know? And, and…

Josh Garrett: Yeah.

Molly Wood: But at the same time, like we've seen tons of, sort of good news networks come and go, honestly.

Josh Garrett: Mm-hmm.

Molly Wood: And so I wonder, and you know, I'm a solutions based person. I'm trying to promote solutions from a place of proof and innovation and ingenuity. Like how do we balance that? How do we think about messaging for the positive? As opposed to the kind of cheap, easy engagement that would be like, you're all gonna die.

Josh Garrett: Right, yeah. Um, that makes me think of. Yes. Um, yeah, and that makes me think of the other very important job I hold in that is, uh, a parent and my two kids, they're, uh, one in middle school, one in elementary. They're aware of what I do, and I would say they're probably a little more educated on climate change than the average kids their age.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Josh Garrett: Um, but I'm all, so when I speak to them about it, I, I try to be very direct and factual, but I always, always add on, there are millions, maybe billions of people, working to solve these problems. And I, and I do. And I truly believe that the human power of ingenuity can absolutely overcome curb and eventually reverse climate change.

And that's what gives me hope. And that's one of the reasons I do what I do, is because I get to meet those people every day. Um, and it's not just scientists, it's accountants, it's electricians, it's HVAC technicians, it's um, economists, um, you know, all the way up and down side to side of the sort of, um, spectrums of, of professions and specialties.

And a lot of people are working toward that. And maybe some of them are purely motivated by, you know, wanting to make a climate impact. Some of them maybe aren't at all, but, um, there's so many people that are just working on that stuff every day that progress is inevitable. Victory is inevitable. What I'm trying to do, and I think what a lot of us are in, in the work you do is, is largely dedicated to, let's, let's move it along. Let's make sure it happens a little bit faster. Because the faster it happens, the better off everybody is.

Um, and I think, you know, the doom and gloom stuff to me is more, is better placed not as a future threat, but as a current reality. So we're past the point where, like they were scientists were saying in the 1970s, well, there could be very profound impacts and changes in weather patterns that could be damaging to life and property, um, if we keep letting greenhouse gases heat up the earth. That has happened. We've seen those impacts.

I was living in New York City, uh, when Superstorm Sandy hit, and that was really just an eye-opening experience. Even someone for someone like me who was already very much plugged into the science and the data and the threats. So I think, um, speaking to very high visibility events, uh, especially if people have been directly affected by them. The Palisades Fire in California last year. Um, just saying like, that's what it looks like and that's what we're in for. And we can turn it back in the other direction where those disasters start getting smaller instead of bigger and less frequent, instead of more frequent.

Um, so the stakes are high, but the power is ours and every little bit of incremental progress we make makes a better, um, a better outcome in, in the near and distant future.

Molly Wood: Josh Garrett is CEO and co-founder of Redwood Climate Communications. Thank you so much for the time. What a great place to end.

Josh Garrett: Thank you, Molly. This is really fun. Thank you for inviting me.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening and for continuing to talk about climate, wherever and whenever you can.

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