Two parallel worlds defined New York Climate Week – intertwined, yet framing starkly different realities. At the UN, President Trump dismissed climate change as a hoax, characteristically dominating headlines and showing how politics and polarisation is stalling progress. Beyond the UN floor, the mood was more hopeful – defiant even – with many pointing to how economics is now driving the transition.
Some panellists went as far as to declare the climate transition “inevitable.” That confidence seems optimistic in today’s political context, especially since past progress has been driven largely by decarbonising energy grids – stimulated by public subsidies and requiring little compromise from individuals.
What stood out in New York, though, was how often the issue of communication came up.
Once associated with greenwashing, effective climate communication is now seen as a core driver of how the transition must be pursued. Panel after panel saw climate leaders admit that, for too long, the movement has spoken in code.
They’re right: people don’t dream in carbon budgets. They care about healthier lives, warmer homes, cleaner air, better jobs. This thinking shaped the narrative we developed earlier this year for London Climate Action Week. More engaging messaging is crucial but on its own not enough.
The UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, was clear on this point in New York, saying that, “The UK Government knows it has to be persuaders for ambition. We see this as being in our national interest.”
The challenge is what persuasion looks like in practice. It cannot stop at slogans – it requires new forms of public dialogue.
The stakes could not be higher. This week, Kemi Badenoch announced that the Conservatives would roll back the UK’s ground-breaking climate legislation, which was introduced under Prime Minister Theresa May. A Conservative Party retreating from its own achievement shows how quickly consensus is breaking down in our politics. The UK is beginning to follow the US into climate division.
This political fracture sits uneasily alongside overwhelming public support for climate action and the market-based optimism on display at New York Climate Week, where businesses made it clear they are continuing to invest in the transition because it builds resilience and creates long-term value. Recent analysis by Harvard Business Review shows that on the whole corporates are not scaling back despite the political noise (and the headlines that suggest otherwise).
But the next frontier of climate action will be harder still. Heat pumps, home retrofits, rethinking how we travel, reform of the food system, scaling nature-based solutions – these cannot be delivered by markets alone. They demand government intervention and broad social consent. Without legitimacy, they will not stick.
What is missing is a broad and deep societal conversation to match the size of the challenge. A UK 2021 “net zero dialogue” involved just 93 people – far too narrow to build legitimacy. Planning consultations for a single new building attract more public engagement.
We need something bigger: a National Climate Conversation.
A National Climate Conversation would provide the frame for how government steps up as a persuader of ambition. Not lecturing from the centre but enabling a dialogue that reaches into every community. Ireland has started down this path, having launched its own fulsome national climate dialogue. With four years to the next General Election and net zero already being weaponised, Britain should do the same.
Supported by government but convened locally by regional leaders and mayors, with business, civil society and citizens at the table, it should not be a lecture about sacrifice but an honest and inspiring dialogue about the choices the country faces, the investments required, and the opportunities to capitalise on the UK’s world-leading climate capabilities.
That was the missing theme in New York. Not just the need for better communication, but how countries actually create – and maintain – the dialogue needed to take citizens with them, building trust, dispelling myths and connecting people to a vision of a cleaner, stronger economy that improves lives for this generation, and the next.
Read more Insights & News