Why climate messaging fails (and what neurodivergent brains teach us about fixing it)

This article is the first part of a three-piece series

The problem: Very smart people talking past each other

After three decades in business and four years hosting a sustainability podcast, I've noticed a recurring pattern. 

The sustainability movement is full of very smart people talking AT one another. Very few are actually talking TO each other.

This disconnect is widening the chasm we desperately need to bridge.

Everyone's using the same old playbook from before 1980, designed to sell products to customers. 

That doesn't work when you're trying to change the world.

New ideas must be tried.

So, I did something different, quite by accident. I spent five years learning to talk TO someone whose brain works entirely differently from mine.

And it took me five years to figure out what should have been obvious from day one.

Meet Kim: What five years of mistakes taught me

My friend Kim is a cybersecurity expert who helps startups become irresistible to venture capital. She's brilliant, trustworthy, and excellent at what she does.

We've been talking twice a week for five years. 

We share the same values around ethics and integrity. This is the primary reason we have stuck together through a failed business venture and two brutal years of driving each other absolutely bonkers.

When I met Kim, I was attracted to her brilliant mind. 

She saw things I didn't, and she challenged many of the ways I looked at the world. And to me, she was drop-dead fearless. 

About two years in, I mentioned in frustration that I must have lost my ability to convey complicated ideas simply, because she was the first person in decades who didn't understand what I was saying. 

Oh, she said, I have ADHD and dyslexia. Not being on the same path is very normal for me.

Having new factual information always makes us pay attention, doesn't it? 

Especially when that information has relevance to ourselves. I dug in to understand what ADHD was all about and to try to be a better friend. 

Here's what I'm not proud of. It took me another three years to finally ask the question that should have been obvious: "How does your brain actually work, and what does that mean for how we communicate?"

All that time, I kept trying to make Kim think like me.

I'd get frustrated when she'd lose track of time. 

I accepted that our conversations would never follow a regular pattern and would always veer off at the craziest points. 

But I'd secretly wonder why she needed so much structure for things that seemed simple to me. And she took forever to respond to my long, unstructured emails.

Meanwhile, she was always wondering why I kept sending her information without clear frameworks, why I buried important points three paragraphs deep, and why I assumed she'd "figure out" what I meant.

We were talking AT each other. And I didn't even realize it.

Here's why this matters for climate communications

If it took me five years of twice-weekly conversations with someone I trust entirely to figure out we were communicating ineffectively, how long is it taking the climate movement?

The pattern I'd missed with Kim is everywhere in climate communications:

• We craft messages that make perfect sense to us, but not to others
• We get frustrated when they don't land
• We assume the problem is the audience

What if the problem is us? 

What if we're talking AT people instead of TO them?

What I gained by finally paying attention

Once I stopped trying to fix Kim and started trying to understand her, here's what I got:

Unwavering honesty. 

I have never been lied to, and I will never be. When Kim tells me something, I can trust it completely.

Immediate pushback. 

Any idea that doesn't make sense or requires more detail is challenged immediately. Not with hostility. With genuine questions that make the idea better.

Access to a fountain of knowledge. 

Her brain connects patterns across wildly different domains in ways mine doesn't. I have come to rely heavily on that talent. 

But I almost missed all of this because I was too busy being frustrated that she didn't process information the way I did.

The climate movement is making the same mistake. 

We're so busy being frustrated that people "don't get it" that we're missing what they could teach us about communication itself.

Inside a neurodivergent brain

When I finally asked Kim to explain how her brain actually works, she gave me visuals I'll never forget.

"We process things differently and usually more efficiently," Kim explained. "Most of us tend to think in pictures. If you can draw me a picture or a map or a diagram of what you're talking about, it'll all kind of fit in."

However, when neurotypical people talk, we typically do not organize information visually. 

We present details in whatever order makes sense to us. This means Kim's brain is frantically trying to build a framework while simultaneously processing new information.

"Your brain has a short-term memory, and it wants to know what to do with it," she said. "Where does it go? It has to go somewhere. It will keep swirling around until it can put it somewhere."

She described her memory system like a mobile hanging over a baby's crib. 

Every piece of information needs a place to hang. Without that framework, information... swirls.

Her short-term memory? "Almost non-existent." Everything must be filed into long-term memory quickly, which means it needs structure immediately.

Time? "Time is here and then time is gone. And I've gone through 500 squirrels in my brain, and I don't know where the time went."

The squirrels keep running rampant

Kim talks about "squirrels running rampant" in her head. 

Multiple thought tracks are running simultaneously. When someone presents information in a linear, unstructured way, only one track is occupied. 

The rest? They're running scenarios, making connections, getting bored.

"If what someone's saying is not interesting, they wouldn't even know that I'm running squirrels in the back of my head," she said.

This isn't a deficit. It's a different operating system.

And here's what struck me: 

If our climate messaging doesn't resonate with these brains, we're automatically missing 15-25% of our audience. 

But it's actually worse than that. Because the communication structures that fail neurodivergent brains also fail everyone else. We just don't notice as quickly.

Why designing for neurodivergent brains helps everyone

The study skills Kim teaches aren't special accommodations for neurodivergent students. They're proven learning techniques from any university's study skills handbook.

The difference?    

For neurotypical people, these techniques are helpful. For neurodivergent people, they're essential.

Here's one example you can try:

Grab a textbook on any topic and read the title. Then skim the table of contents. Now flip through the first page of each chapter. Go to the end of each chapter. And come back to the beginning. 

You've just built a mobile (framework) which will move over the baby's crib (your short-term memory), for all the information to hang on (making it super easy to remember to stay focused).

"Everybody learns better when you make learning interactive," Kim continued. "When you add in pictures, graphs, or roadmaps. It's more fun to have engaged learning. If you're engaging all the students by incorporating games, fun, stories, or opportunities for involvement and interaction, you're going to keep my attention, and I'll learn. But so is everybody else."

This is what stopped me cold. 

Better communication for neurodivergent brains isn't special accommodation. It's just better communication.

When you design for the margins, you actually design for everyone.

What this means for climate messaging

Think about the last climate report you read. The last presentation you sat through. The last article that tried to convince you to take action.

Did it give you a framework first? 

Did it show you where all the pieces would hang before flooding you with data? 

Did it use visuals to anchor complex ideas? 

Did it make you want to engage, or did it make you endure?

For three decades, I sat in boardrooms where smart people made terrible decisions under pressure. 

I've watched long-term investments get cut for quarterly targets. I know how business communications typically work: they are heavy on data and light on structure, always assuming everyone processes information in the same way.

It's essentially the same thing I've been seeing in climate communications. A mirror of the business communications I know so well. 

Dense. Linear. Built for people who already think like the creators.

We're using that pre-1980 playbook. 

Talking AT people. Assuming that if we just give them enough data, they'll change.

The uncomfortable truth

Here's what I believe. We can't afford to do this anymore. 

Using old ideas to solve the problems those ideas caused never works.

Climate change is accelerating. We need everyone engaged. Not just those whose brains happen to match our communication style. 

We need rapid behaviour change across diverse populations. We need messages that stick, not ones that get politely processed and forgotten.

What if the reason climate messaging keeps failing isn't about the data? 

What if it's about the delivery system? 

What if we're still using tactics designed to sell products when we need tactics designed to change worlds?

What changes when we design for the margins

Kim gave me concrete examples of what works for her brain:

• Clear structure with headings
• Generous white space
• Lead with emotion, not statistics
• Make it interactive
• Multiple formats
• Time for brainstorming

I looked at that list and thought: neurotypical people want exactly that too.

Neurodivergent brains hit communication barriers faster and harder. 

They're the canary in the coal mine, showing us where we're talking AT people instead of TO them.

What I'm proposing

What if we stopped treating neurodivergent-friendly communication as accommodation and started treating it as the new playbook?

What if we assumed our audience includes people with ADHD, dyslexia, and countless other ways of processing information? Because, let's be honest here. It definitely does!

What if we built frameworks first, added visuals generously, led with emotion, invited interaction, and made space for multiple scenarios?

Believe me, I can imagine the objection already forming: 

"We don't have time for all that. We need efficient communication."

But here's what I learned from Kim: This IS efficient communication. It just looks different from what we're used to. It requires talking TO people instead of AT them.

When you design for the margins — the 15% to 25% of people whose brains, bodies, or circumstances don't match the narrow band we've optimized for, you don't lose the other 75% to 85%. 

You actually serve EVERYONE better.

Where we go from here

The systems we're living with are broken. That brokenness has left us in a world that no longer serves the majority of us.

We're staring at the unintended consequences of actions we collectively took over the last century. Had we known the destructiveness of those actions, we'd ask for a do-over.

Truthfully, the only thing we can do now is do better. And that do better must be in the highest good for all.

In my next post, I'll walk you through the specific structural changes Kim recommended.  The ones you can implement immediately without a budget or an overhaul. The new playbook for talking TO people instead of AT them.

Because if climate messaging is going to cut through the noise, if it's going to drive the behaviour change we desperately need, we can't keep using tactics designed for a world that no longer exists.

We need to talk TO people. All people. In ways that actually work for how their brains function.

It took me five years to figure this out with one person I talk to twice a week. The climate movement doesn't have five years to waste.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

Sustainability needs facts, not just promises. illuminem’s Data Hub™ gives you transparent emissions data, corporate climate targets, and performance benchmarks for thousands of companies worldwide.