It's not because it is hot today....

The world is bracing for a hotter and hotter "new normal". After record-beating temperatures pretty much all over the world, this July is not going to stop surprising us.

Cerberus - an aptly named anticyclone which draws inspiration from a monster in Dante's Inferno - is bringing temperatures close to 50°C this week to Italy. The details are available if you're curious.

These days it's almost impossible to carry out any open-door activities and working outdoor during peak sun hours a risky undertaking. And while some activities can be postponed, think about the people who produce and distribute electricity for example. Committed to ensuring power is up and running, their dedication and selflessness is comparable to health care personnel, law enforcement, firefighter and a few other professionals who cannot afford to stay indoors or avoid this reality.

But if we all feel like we're living in a more dangerous world, and if many have already listened to science to understand how we ended up messing the climate as we did, how productive is it to communicate about climate change during this kind of moments?

I believe delivering strong reality-check messages in the midst of #extreme events is not always productive. Because:

?? #Aware publics see a reinforcement of their beliefs and a reiteration of the urgency to act on #climatechange.?

?? #Distracted publics likely think that “someone is taking advantage of the situation to stress and emphasize whatever they want to say”

?? #Naysayers or denialists will be waiting for the next cold wave to say that after?a hot week comes a cold week so it’s all a charade and #manipulation.?

So how can we break this ? What needs to change in our theory of change?

The theory of change upon which large parts of modern #public #communication are inspired strongly relies on the idea that once you’ve got the masses attention, everyone with the right tools can fight for audience’s interest and guide individual’s potential desire to know more into a pathway of algorithm-led self-fulfilling information gathering. Which then leads to forming siloed opinions and beliefs , leading to a general conviction that the “others” are at best “stupid” or in the worse case scenario a “threat” to self-existence . Scale this at the society level and check for yourself if there is any similarity with how events are unfolding around you...

If we want to curve this, we must to go back to building bridges, promoting mutual understanding, building communication from empathy. We need to understand more from the others, fall in love with diversity, embrace opportunities for conversation without aiming to persuade. Too big a challenge ?