Norm Leo Interview Reveals How Climate Communication Turns Fear Into Hopeful Action

Norm Leo is a climate scientist, speaker, and consultant dedicated to making climate science feel understandable, hopeful, and motivating. With thousands of talks delivered around the world, he empowers audiences to move beyond eco-anxiety and toward the joyful adoption of climate solutions.

In this interview, Norm highlights the do’s and don’ts of climate communication, and hints at how he wrote his new book, Look at It This Way, a reversible book that helps readers explore climate impacts and solutions. As a climate communicator, Norm helps sustainability professionals talk about climate change in an engaging way.

Norm Leo, Climate Scientist | Keynote Speaker | Climate Communication Specialist

After delivering more than 2,000 presentations, what has surprised you most about how people respond to climate conversations?

First of all, I’m not an activist. I am a climate scientist who also used to be a science teacher. When I present, I don’t try to convince people. I speak about climate change as an educator, explaining recent changes in our world and how they affect us in our everyday lives.

Up until 2021, I worked at the Biosphere, an environmental museum in Montreal. I would give a 30-minute presentation on climate change almost every day. I had the chance to try different approaches. And I discovered that people react very differently to the way we talk about climate change. With one approach, they were passive. With another, it stimulated them intellectually but no desire to change any habits. With another, it triggered their emotions, mostly fear.

What helped you develop a communication style that makes complex climate science accessible without oversimplifying it?

I strongly believe everyone is an expert at something. I love to listen to what a person does in their job: nurse, telecom technician, water engineer, economist, psychologist, road worker, marketer, mechanic. Even my 8-year-old daughter, who takes dancing classes, uses words I’ve never heard before. Within everyone’s expertise, there are technical words and jargon that only the people in that field understand. Most people I know have trouble talking about their expertise to outsiders. But some people are great at simplifying their language to be understood by people outside their field. As a former science teacher, I obviously have that skill. When I talk about science to people, I keep two things in mind:

Use simple language. Relate to their everyday lives.

How did your experience at the Biosphere shape the way you engage people with environmental issues today?

In 2005, I gave a presentation on climate change that was mostly about climate science: the greenhouse effect, heat-trapping gases, and numerical models. People would nod while I gave examples, but had no questions at the end of those 30 minutes.

Then I started emphasizing the impacts of climate change in most of my presentations. That got the visitors engaged! There were many questions at the end, usually relating to their own particular region. But there was a price: It stirred people’s emotions, especially young people. I could see the anxiety grow as they pictured themselves as adults in a doom-and-gloom future. Other people, while remaining polite, would disengage. They would act as if they couldn’t handle this topic and preferred to think about other things instead.

So 10 years ago, I completely flipped the script: I started giving presentations on climate solutions. During those 30 minutes, people were happy and hopeful about the future's possibilities. But something was still off. A few people always asked: “But why should we go to all this trouble? Our systems work, why should we change them?” I was forced to admit that these presentations were somewhat naïve because people didn’t grasp the seriousness of climate change's impacts.

So 5 years ago, I finally found the right recipe: a presentation with 50% on climate impacts and 50% on solutions, and for each solution, I would talk about the benefits for their health and wealth. Wow, that made a difference! Participants were engaged, asked lots of questions, and those topics really spoke to them.

Why do you believe fear-based climate messaging often fails to create lasting action?

For the past 30 years, communication about climate change has focused mostly on impacts and hoping people will make sacrifices. This approach has failed.

I recently acted as a consultant for a museum in Quebec City, and their initial idea was to showcase extreme weather events. I had to tell them that fear-based messaging has three different effects on people: a few invent solutions, most ignore the problem, and many become anxious.

In the first group, people change their behavior because they understand the threat. A subset of those people are inventors who actually find solutions that will benefit society. For example, when we learned about the piling up of trash in the 1980s, some people invented recycling. When we learned of cigarette addiction, some inventors came up with patches. But it has been harder to address climate change because the sources of greenhouse gases are widespread. So it took three decades to come up with enough solutions. Since 2020, the economy has been advancing toward renewable energy, fossil-free transportation, regenerative agriculture, and more.

In the second group, people want to ignore the climate conversation because alarmist messaging has lasted too long. They disengage. They don’t hear the alarm bell anymore, and they focus on what is important in the moment: money, jobs, health, food, home, friends. This reaction is seen within older parts of the population, who just ignore the signs because there have been warnings for too long and they don’t feel they can do anything about it.

The third group is full of people suffering from eco-anxiety; they fear the future. Today, two out of three young people (18 to 25 years old) suffer from eco-anxiety. Their state of mind was quite apparent in my presentations. While explaining the impacts of climate change, I would see them picturing a bleak future, which is a shame. It shouldn’t be this way.

What are communicators still getting wrong when talking about climate change with the public?

Communicators generally focus too much on the problem. Sometimes, the messaging focuses on weather impacts, like floods, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or on impacts on nature, like wildfires, melting glaciers, coastal erosion, sea level rise, desertification, shrinking lakes and rivers. For the longest time, communicators would show the polar bear, even though we know that only a handful of people actually care about Arctic species. Same thing for the bleaching of coral reefs. People just don’t care because it’s so far away. It also makes it seem like the problem only concerns meteorologists and biologists, so people don’t feel affected.

Sometimes, the explanations are too complex. Like explaining the whole radiation budget in the atmosphere, the intricacies of the carbon cycle, or a breakdown of previous ice ages over the past million years, not to mention tipping points for the Gulf Stream and the Greenland Ice Sheet. The general public doesn’t need these explanations to understand the challenge of climate change.

Sometimes, the communication is focused on the big scary headlines: millions will be forced to migrate, refugee camps, wars over water resources, thousands dying from poor air quality, tens of thousands dying from heat stroke. Most people are not psychologically equipped to deal with this kind of bad news repeatedly. They either ignore the topic or suffer from eco-anxiety.

If the messaging is too big, too scary, too complex, too far… people won’t listen.

When someone feels overwhelmed by climate news, where is the best place for them to start?

For the longest while, environmental educators thought that the answer was to “get involved”, do something. And it does work for a while. When individuals don’t fly on planes, and don’t use the clothes dryer, and don’t eat beef, and avoid driving their cars, they feel they are part of the solution. But while they are doing all these sacrifices, they notice that their neighbors are not. And the anxiety grows back.

Psychologists figured out the real remedy to eco-anxiety: getting involved with others who care about society and the environment. Especially local groups that plant trees in cities, clean up shorelines, distribute organic vegetables, and teach young people how to install solar panels. These are tangible projects with measurable impacts on the person’s community. They no longer feel the weight of the world, but they see a brighter future for their city.

How can organizations make sustainability feel relevant to people who are not already engaged with climate issues?

These days, many organizations try to raise awareness about climate change: newsrooms and media companies, schools, museums, national governments, states, municipalities, small businesses, international corporations. It used to be a topic reserved for environmental groups, but now this awareness comes from health organizations, insurance companies, and tech companies as well.

In regions where the term “climate change” is accepted, organizations can easily craft messages about climate impacts and solutions.

In regions where the expression “climate change” triggers bad reactions (like “it’s a hoax!”) it’s better to avoid it. For example, the messaging could be about “adapting to shifting weather patterns”.

Everywhere I’ve gone to give talks, people tell me they have notices there is less snow in winter, that there isn’t enough ice on the lake for snowmobiling or ice fishing, that it’s too hot in summer for hiking up a mountain, that there is more turbulence during flights, that some fish in lakes are dying and floating to the surface because the water is too hot. People notice the signs that something is changing.

Your work often reframes climate solutions as benefits rather than sacrifices; why is that shift so important?

Whether I’m speaking with a cranky uncle or a college student about climate solutions, deep down they are asking themselves: “What’s in it for me?”

But in both cases, we need to promote solutions that will help us address climate change by highlighting their benefits to our health, wealth, food, water, and homes. That’s the secret to getting people to act.

For example: After a talk I gave, a woman raised her hand and said very candidly: “You don’t want us to eat beef! My family owned a ranch, and we are certainly not going to change the way we eat just to reduce bad molecules in the air.” I answered: “I understand. I don’t expect people will stop eating meat, so your ranch will be fine. But look at it this way: rather than telling you to eat less red meat, I will suggest eating more plant-based foods. There are so many excellent recipes to choose from. In Copenhagen, most restaurants now showcase the vegetarian meals first in the menu, which also cost less. From a health perspective, people who eat red meat only occasionally have much lower risks of heart disease, diabetes, and colon cancer. And we all want a healthier life.” She smiled and said: “Thank you. Now I understand why my daughter loves cooking tofu.”

If readers could change one thing about the way they think about climate change, what would you hope it is?

Nowadays, from climate skeptics to climate-concerned, most people get a negative gut reaction when they hear “climate change”. The expression is charged, heavy, depressing.

After reading my book, I wish people would consider “climate change” an opportunity to adopt climate solutions that benefit society and them personally. If a politician mentions climate action, people understand it will be positive for their health and the economy. And if a cranky uncle is being loud at Thanksgiving about the “climate hoax”, he just needs to hear some of the benefits of climate action from my book, and he can take a moment to “Look at it this way.”

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