Communicating Earth podcast
Episode 23: Executive Director and Cofounder at Talking Climate Collaborative
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
Communication is the solution, not the add on
Bernadette is a meteorologist who forecast the weather on television in the US before joining Climate Central, where she worked alongside Ed Maibach. This year, she founded the Talking Climate Collaborative with Katharine Hayhoe.
In 2011, just 54% of TV meteorologists in the United States were convinced the climate was changing. That was lower than public opinion at the time. By 2017, the figure had reached 95%. Bernadette Woods Placky helped make that shift happen, and in this episode she explains how.
Tom Clark speaks with her about the practical mechanics of changing a whole profession's mind, and about why communication is still treated as something bolted onto climate work rather than as the work itself.
In this episode:
Education, content and network building: the framework that reached broadcast meteorologists
Why news management turned out to be the barrier
Four rules for anyone who wants to talk about climate and gets stuck: know the audience, meet people where they are, simplify, make it personal
Why the biggest piece of climate misinformation in the world is the belief that people do not care.
What comes through is how ordinary the method was. Bernadette's argument is that the approach is repeatable anywhere people already trust each other, and that the point of building a hub for climate communication now is to stop everyone learning the same lessons separately.
Recommended culture: The Lorax, and the word unless.
Follow Bernadette at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/be...
Additional Notes:
Talking Climate Collaborative https://talkingclimate.com/
Landscape assessment https://talkingclimate.com/landscape-assessment/
Climate Matters at Climate Central https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters
Yale Climate Opinion Maps https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/
The 89 Percent Project, Covering Climate Now https://coveringclimatenow.org/projects/the-89-percent-project/
This Is Planet Ed, Laura Schifter https://www.thisisplaneted.org/
Ed Maibach on Communicating Earth, episode 3 https://climateacceptancestudios.com/podcast_ep003
Released: 16/9/2026
Run Time: 59 minutes
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
