On Aug 9, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of leading scientists and academics, published its "6th Assessment Report". While boasting over 14,000 individual studies, the spotlight was on its headline statement's very first sentence: "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land."
This report's key findings include how the recent decade was warmer than any period within the past 125,000 years, or how it is now possible to scientifically calculate the role of climate change in extreme weather events.
While this IPCC report is another symbolic moment where evidence of climate change's fatal repercussions are waving for everyone's attention, there is a glaring inability to reach beyond those already interested or certain demographic groups: the young, the college-educated, and urbanites.
The more years I spend working on climate change, the more I know that the challenge is not the policies, solutions or even implementation -- it is about communication. The current strategies are simply not effective: they are unable to strike a sweet spot between lengthy technical sermons, which are at worst more perplexing than rocket science and at best mundane; and the alarmist "end of the world" uproar where inaction equals one's greatest sin, which is an irritation to most people.
To address this, we must first understand why it has proven difficult to communicate to the public so far. Firstly, illustrating what climate change is, what its effects are, and its relations to one's everyday lives is the challenge.
One must meander through how CO2 emissions cause the greenhouse effect -- itself a difficult concept, which then prompts temperature rises that may result in extreme weather events in the distant future. Its effects are neither short term, direct, nor local -- the sources of pollution and where natural disasters occur are not necessarily in the same place.
This is unlike PM2.5 which is easy to clarify -- how its high-level intake can affect lung function or lead to heart disease. Its effects are clearly short-term, direct and local -- such as how Bangkok's famous smog is caused by the city's very own diesel transport.
The omission of time-sensitivity -- how climate change is tomorrow's problem -- is worsened by the myopic feature of human nature. Many even assume a silver bullet to defeat climate change will magically appear in the future, justifying their ignorance today.
Secondly, explaining why it is necessary to slash carbon emissions is a daunting task. While the perks of the switch to a "clean economy" are complicated, multi-dimensional and long-winded to illustrate, painting its negative repercussions is the complete opposite.
For example, one can say that carbon reductions will increase the production costs of goods, making them more expensive -- a problem that disproportionately affects lower-income groups. An immediate spike in the cost of living to protect against something in the distant future occurring somewhere far away is not an attractive message.
Currently, the justifications from both the technical and alarmist camps are not fruitful. The former's urgent call to limit the temperature rise to the Paris-agreed 1.5C makes no sense to the ordinary public, while the latter's playbook linking climate action to being morally superior functions more as stimulus for environmentalists than a compelling justification for the masses.
Moving forward, we need to transform the way we communicate about climate change. The narrative must be different.
First, we need to shape climate action not as merit-making, nor being a Good Samaritan, but as a realistic money-making opportunity -- a so-called "green rush". And the focus should be for SMES and individuals -- not for big businesses which already have a perfect economic rationale to go "green" such as how the plunge in solar panel costs has led to solar power achieving "grid parity" or being cost competitive with fossil fuels without the need for subsidies. Further, they benefit from existing government measures or the inevitable shift of the financial sectors towards sustainable investment.
Nevertheless, for SMEs and individuals, there are also many ideas. One example is the net-metering scheme that allows residential solar owners to sell excess power back to the grid; unlocking them as "prosumers" who can turn unused power into a source of passive income. This enables people to calculate a payback period for their investment, forecasting when they will be purely running on profit -- a vital encouragement for household solar installations.
Another is the tree mortgage scheme for which one can secure an interest-free loan simply by planting a tree and using the sapling as a mortgage. Already implemented in India, the loan can be renewed annually for ten years, and one only needs to repay the loan if the tree is cut down.
This change to an opportunity-led narrative, accommodated by the right policies, may be the difference between fighting climate change by environmental activists or by the masses.
Secondly, we must make it about survival. Currently, "climate mitigation" -- such as the switch to renewable energy or EVs -- dominates climate dialogue. This signifies that the plan to resist the short-term agony of natural disasters is by conducting long-term policies of shifting towards a carbon zero world.
The attempt to communicate that climate change is an urgent matter needs to be backed up by the presentation of a short-term solution. The focus must change to "climate adaptation".
This is about how to prepare, protect and survive this great, unprecedented threat. These may be "grey", the grand engineering projects such as seawalls and use of polders; "green", the use of nature-based solutions such as mangroves to protect coastal erosion; or "smart", the collection and use of data for disaster management and relief.
One can argue that agricultural workers in the drought-ridden Northeast region would be more appreciative of government investment in water management projects, such as village-level underground water storage or water diversion programmes, than the decision to earmark tax revenues to subsidise solar panel installation on factory roofs.
Climate adaptation solutions are real and approachable to the public: people know their functions, their roles, and their importance. They protect the population from natural disasters, regardless of their opinions and perceptions of climate change. And because many of these projects require large investments, it is essential that they are on top of the communication agenda to ensure public understanding and participation.
It is essential to make clear that these narrative changes are for short-term purposes only, with the purpose to ensure sufficient action in a time when this issue is admittedly low on the priority list for most people.
The long-term approach, though, is different. It is imperative to embed climate education into school syllabuses to familiarise youth -- to have them grow up thinking, talking, worrying about climate change. Should we succeed in integrating this into our education system, there will be fewer communication problems and more time to press ahead in making real changes.
Pornphrom Vikitsreth is a lecturer at Thammasat University (International Studies Asean-China course) and a consultant at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).