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When Dustin Mulvaney teaches a class in environmental law at a California university, he always asks a simple question: Whos heard of the Inflation Reduction Act? Over the last three years, he says, only around 10 students out of hundreds have raised their hands. His students aren’t alone. When the IRA passed in 2022, it was the largest climate investment in American history. But while climate nerds may know the law well, most people know little about what it includes. In one survey last year, only 10% of Americans who said climate change was a very important issue to them had heard much about what the Biden administration had done to try to tackle it. Another survey found that around a quarter of voters had never heard of the IRA at all. I consider myself to be a highly engaged voter, says Britton Taylor, a brand strategist with more than two decades of experience working with big brands. I take in tons of political media. And whatever Democrats did to message this or talk about climate, even I didn’t see it. Or if they did do stuff, nothing resonated with me. The laws climate ideas are broadly popularmost people support extended tax credits for electric cars, incentives for American solar panel factories, and a slew of other programs designed to slash U.S. emissions 40% by 2030. Most Americans are also worried about climate change and how its affecting their lives, from extreme weather to home insurance rates. But the IRA was a marketing failure. Now its on the chopping block, as the Senate considers a bill that would eliminate or phase out almost all of itdespite the fact that it has benefitted red states and districts the most. The problems started with the name The bill was originally called Build Back Betternot a particularly creative name, since it had been used multiple times in the past after disasters like Hurricane Sandy. But it captured the basic idea: as the country recovered from the pandemic, the right policies could help the economy recover while also cutting pollution and improving workers rights. Then came Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator whose vote was necessary for the bill to pass. Manchin wanted a name focused on inflation. The audience we were marketing to was a single man, says Holly Burke, vice president of communications for the nonprofit Evergreen Action. The bill was renamed the Inflation Reduction Act. US President Joe Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act into law. From left, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.VA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), and Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL). [Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty Images] Critics said the name was misleading. Manchin was right that voters cared about inflation, but the bill hadnt been designed to directly address it. Models from the Congressional Budget Office and Penn Wharton projected that it would have little short-term impact on inflation. And while it would help reduce the price of energy and could help with inflation over time, the name didnt really reflect what the bill was about. It also set up the wrong conversation, some critics say. The Inflation Reduction Act was, as a name, possibly one of the silliest self-owns I can recall, says Anat Shenker-Osorio, a progressive strategist who does public opinion research and message testing. It basically forced Democratic politicians to run around for an entire cycle saying inflation, inflation, inflation. The point was inflation reduction. But people dont listen to details, and youre literally saying the word inflation over and over again, thereby reminding them of their pain point. Inflation did decrease, largely driven by other factors like Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, and the easing of pandemic-related supply chain disruption. But people couldnt see those impacts in their own lives. Americans struggle with math, and many of them dont understand inflation to be a rate of change, says Shenker-Osorio. So when theyre told inflation is reduced and prices are not reduced, they say, I dont know what youre talking about. I go to the grocery store every week. Theres no inflation reduction.’ So, theres a disconnect. Voters tend to trust Republicans more on economic issues, whether or not thats justified. So Democrats may have been better served by framing the bill around something other than the economy, Shenker-Osorio says. If, for illustration, they had named this the God Bless America bill or We Love America Act,’ suddenly were having a conversation about what does it mean to love America, to do right by America? That allows you to talk about things like ensuring we have clean, renewable energy and that the places you loved to go with your grandparents as a kid will be the places you take your grandkids in the future. What you have to do is figure out, what is my brand advantage? What is the conversation where voters trust me most, regard me most highly? It also didnt help that the acronym IRA already had multiple associations, including retirement accounts and the Irish Republican Army. When the bill first passed, I Googled something about it, and all I got was information about the Troubles in Ireland, says Burke. I was like, I could have seen that coming. (And while laws often dont have catchy names, IRA is particularly dull.) Other laws have been rebranded after passing. The Affordable Care Act, for example, became widely known as Obamacare. (The name was initially used pejoratively, though the Obama administration eventually embraced it.) But no one attempted to find a different way to talk about the IRA. The complexity didnt help The law, at 273 pages long, isnt easy to concisely describe. There are at least 21 different tax provisions for clean energy alone, for example. It also goes beyond energy and climate to include things like lowering the cost of medicine. Some of the programs also take time to roll out, making the direct benefits to voters harder to communicate. The tax credits for consumers were also omewhat hard to marketyou probably don’t think about getting a discount on an efficient water heater until your current water heater breaks. And if you do eventually buy an appliance and get a tax credit, you might not realize where it came from. It also might not be obvious that a particular factory opened in your town because of the law. You have to connect a lot of dots to get from we passed this tax incentive, that had this additional bonus credit that incentivized companies to invest in your community, and create that job, Burke says. Thats a lot of leaps to make for an average voter who does not care about tax credits. A graphic explaining the Inflation Reduction Act, released by the White House in 2023. [Image: Biden White House] Theres a lesson, she argues, for different policy design. Thats not to say that we shouldnt do abstract, wonky policies that make real impacts on peoples lives, she says. But if you want to have a politically durable victory, I think making sure that youre incorporating things that are really understandable to the general public, and theres a clear line from point A to point B: the government did this thing, and heres how it supported my community. Some programs like this were in the original bill but eliminated, she says. For example, there was a clean energy performance standard that would have required utilities across the country to get to 80% clean energy by 2030. That’s “a more clear cut and intuitive way to understand how the Biden admin was delivering on climate than something with a fuzzier impact like ‘hundreds of billions in investments into clean energy,'” she says. “Both of those policies are good, to be clear, but saying we’re getting our entire grid to 80% clean electricity is a more immediately understandable impact.” Boring stats don’t sell ideas The Biden administration and supporters often focused on abstract statistics, like the fact that the IRA could create or support more than a million jobs nationwide. Those types of messages dont really land. The more conceptual and distant it is, the worse it does, says John Marshall, a marketing executive who left the corporate world to launch Potential Energy Coalition, a nonprofit focused on climate. The more local and human it is, the better it does. Creativity was also often missing in the messaging, which was typically driven by political consultants rather than creatives. I thought about this a lot as someone who works in the more traditional advertising and branding world, as opposed to someone who’s anchored in the political space, says Taylor, the brand strategist. I feel like Democrats have fallen into a rut in terms of the way that they message . . . Like, we have to explain stuff to people. Its just boring and it does not resonate with people, especially young people. Being boring comes at a steep cost, as marketing studies have proven. When youre dull, its both ineffective and expensive, Taylor says. In the political context, being dull is extremely perilous for the Democrats, if you think about what’s at stake in terms of our democracy and our republic. You end up having to spend a lot more in media dollars in order to achieve the same amount of effectiveness than you would have with more compelling campaigns. There are exceptions. Potential Energy Coalition, for example, ran an ad for clean school buses that features a grimy bus driver handing out cigarettes to childrennot boring. But Taylor argues that the Democratic Party would do better if it worked with a wide swath of experienced marketers. “There’s been this firewall between the creative community and the political community,” he says. “I really wish that firewall would come down, because I think there’s so many people in the world of advertising that would love to help. Every brief that I get from brands now is, how do you make a dent in culture? Or how do you get talked about? It’s all about generating fame for your brand like press, earned media. That’s what we’re good at, or at least the really talented people in advertising. And I wish more of those people could get back in the political world.” Climate wasn’t the focus Most messaging about the IRA focused on economic benefits, rather than climate. The economic benefits are significant, to be clear. The tax credits for consumers, for example, help pay for appliances that can slash energy bills. “I think part of the conversation that we collectively should be having right now is, what are the best ways to reduce energy costs for American families?” says Ari Matusiak, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Rewiring America. “An obvious way to do that is by people having more efficient machines in their homes that use less energy and deliver better performance. And that’s exactly what these tax credits are helping to pay for.” Surveys showed that Americans were worried about daily costs. That’s obviously a very real concern. Still, that doesn’t mean that the dominant messaging should have necessarily been about inflation or the high cost of living, says Shenker-Osorio. “You have to decide what the conversation is going to be about,” she says. Climate change ranks lower when people are forced to compare it with the economy. Still, Americans do care about climate impacts, and they respond to strong messages about it. “We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of tests on this,” says Marshall from Potential Energy Coalition. “There is a latent, easily [activated] concern in the minds of almost all citizens that something is wrong with the planet and that we should be addressing it. That is a concern that touches people of all political persuasions. And so when you message the fact that we need to stop that from happening, it is very motivating.” The dire threat to the planet is really the main reason for people to support clean energy. “It’s a pretty major reasonit’s actually bigger than the other things,” Marshall says. “And so we are chickening out of our big ‘why.'” As Potential Energy Coalition tests different messages, the most effective are about the direct consequences of climate change on people’s lives. “The messaging needs to move from morality to materiality,” he says. “It sholdn’t be something one does because of my particular values. It should be something that one gets behind because it materially affects their lives . . . how it’s affecting your life, your kids, your farm, your insurance costs.” In the group’s testing, the least effective messages were promises of economic benefit. How much does marketing matter for policy? Even if most Americans don’t know the details of what’s in the IRA, the incentives have been popular. “We’ve seen massive uptake of the various programs,” says Matusiak. Taxpayers claimed more than $8 billion in credits on their 2023 returnsmore than twice what the government had projected. Millions of people have used a tool that Rewiring America created to help households calculate how much they could save through tax credits and rebates. Companies invested hundreds of billions in new factories to make electric cars, solar panels, and other clean energy tech (though billions in planned investments have now been cancelled since Trump changed the direction of federal policy). The majority of the investment in clean manufacturing went to red states, despite the fact that no Republican voted for the legislation. If the IRA’s initiatives had stayed in place as long as they were intended to10 yearsit wouldn’t matter so much whether most people knew that they existed. If you found out about a tax credit through a contractor, or TurboTax, and didn’t know where it originated, you’d still be able to use it. But if voters still aren’t making the connection between the programs and how they benefit their own lives, they probably won’t feel motivated to advocate for them now that they’re under threat. And name recognition isn’t enough on its owneven Medicare is at risk in the current version of the budget bill. But arguably, better marketing could have helped. The biggest hurdle in marketing something like the IRA or another climate policy isn’t the exact message, Marshall says. Even though some messages perform better than others, climate messaging in general resonates. But it’s harder to make sure that those messages are actually reaching voters. “The major challenge on climate legislation is a distribution challenge rather than a messaging challenge,” he says. “We don’t have nearly enough spokespeople, we don’t have nearly enough faces of the movement. We need a lot more people talking about it.” Political will for climate action could easily grow. “We, the citizens, haven’t changed,” he says. “The government changed . . . but the regular people haven’t changed. They’re getting the same limited amount of information. They still care a lot about this issue, and they’re phenomenally moveable on the issue.”
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It can be tough out there for leaders. Its challenging to drive results, ensure youre supporting employees well-being, and maintain your own motivation as well. So how can you be a good leader, and what are the strategies that really work? A helpful concept is spacious leadershipa management approach in which you create space for others to participate, make choices, and be their best. With spacious leadership, you also ensure space for yourself to enhance your own effectiveness and satisfaction on the job. THE NEED FOR IMPROVED LEADERSHIP In spite of leaders who work hard to do their best, a new survey by consulting firm DDI finds that only about 40% of workers believe that leaders are high quality. In comparison, leaders tend to rate themselves better than others rate them. Theres a perception gapalong with an opportunity for leaders to get better. Theres also evidence that leaders are feeling the pressure. In fact, 71% of leaders say their stress levels have increased, 54% report they are worried about burnout, and 40% have given thought to leaving a leadership role because they struggle with their own well-being, according to the DDI data. A spacious leadership approach addresses how leaders support others, and also how they manage their own workplace experience. CREATE SPACE FOR INVOLVEMENT One of the first ways to demonstrate spacious leadership is to invite people to participate, get involved, and have a voice. At the root of this kind of leadership is humility. It doesnt mean giving up your voice. Spacious leaders have a strong point of view, and theyre secure with their own expertise, but they dont assume they have all the answers or the best answers. Comfort with admitting mistakes is also related to spacious leadership. Leaders dont have to know it alland people appreciate it when their managers ask for ideas and value input in finding solutions. Spacious leaders empower people to be part of the process by communicating effectively. When leaders offer clear direction, goals, or challenges, people are able to be proactive and suggest ways to get things done. And when people have the opportunity to get involved, they are also more likely to feel a sense of ownership and dedication to their work. Demonstrate spacious leadership by inviting people in and sharing context so they can be effective participants in the process. CREATE SPACE FOR LEARNING AND GROWTH People of all generations crave development. In spacious leadership, you create space for people to expand their skills and competencies. Investing in employees growth sends a message that you value them and their contributions. You can support people by creating succession plans or recommending formal learning sessions, offering regular coaching and feedback, or introducing them to mentors outside your department. The outcomes of these approaches are striking. According to the DDI study, when leaders provided coaching and feedback to employees, those employees were nine times more likely to trust their leader. And when leaders actively supported development, employees were 11 times more likely to trust their leader. Demonstrate spacious leadership by coaching and developing people. CREATE SPACE FOR PERFORMANCE We all have an instinct to matter, and people will be happier and provide more discretionary effort when they are supported in performing at their best. When youre creating space for performance, youre giving people plenty of choice, control, and autonomy. Control and decision-making have been proven to matter for health and longevity. According to two Indiana University studies (one conducted in 2016 and the other in 2020), people who experienced high job stress and had limited control over their work process were less healthy and had higher mortality rates. On the other hand, when they were in high-stress jobs but had greater choice and more decision-making power, they were healthier and lived longer. People also perform best when they have enough time to get things done. Sometimes things are hectic, urgent, or last minute, but spacious leaders do their best to give people adequate time to deliver results. This allows people the space to reflect, plan, and invest in the quality of their outcomes. Demonstrate spacious leadership by giving people the necessary support to perform their best. CREATE SPACE FOR WELL-BEING Another way to create space for people is by attending to their well-being. Give people the opportunity to set and maintain appropriate boundaries in their work and life. In addition, tune into how people are doing and ask questions. You dont need to be a professional social worker, but when you can demonstrate empathy and point people to resources, it sends a strong message about how much you care. Create space for them to share, and then listen and offer support. Paying attention to well-being is good for peopleand it pays off for organizations. In a global study by the Workforce Institute at UKG, a workplace software provider, 80% of people said they were energized at work when they had better mental health, and 63% said they were committed to their work. Some 69% of workers reported that their leader has a bigger impact on their mental health than their therapist or their doctorand about the same impact as their partner. When organizations prioritize well-being, the DDI data finds, people are 12 times more likely to rate leadership quality as high. Demonstrate spacious leadership by ensuring people have the space to nurture their wellbeing. CREATE SPACE FOR SELF-CARE As a leader, your own strength is critical to how you can support others. Just as you create space for your teams excellence, do the same for yourself. Be consistent, present, and accessible, but also ensure you have time to get away and turn off. Also consider the self-care that works best for you. The popular narrative about self-care suggests that you should spend time alone, but you may choose to spend time with others who energize you. Many people think self-care must always involve saying no, but it can also include saying yes to activities that you feel passionate about. Most important is to make choices that are nourishing for you. Another way to ensure self-care is to create a small group of trusted colleagues. Leadership requires a balance of authenticity and transparency with appropriate professionalism. Youll want to establish trusting relationships with other leaders (or people outside your organization) with whom you can relax, share worries and concerns, or get advice. Demonstrate spacious leadership by giving yourself space to regroup, rejuvenate, andbring your best. THE LANGUAGE WE USE The way we think about things and how we talk to ourselves have a significant impact on the choices we make and how we behave. With spacious leadership, youll focus on all the ways you can create space for others and for yourself, resulting in terrific success.
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The climate crisis is worsening. Last year was the warmest on record, global sea ice levels are at a record low, and the economic toll of extreme natural disasters continues to mount. Just this week, the World Meteorological Organization said the global average temperature is likely to rise nearly 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels within the next five years, with growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet. Experts are adamant that the only way to slow the warming is to stop burning the fossil fuels that create the greenhouse effect. And yet, in 2024, emissions reached a new high. As the WMOs Secretary-General Celeste Saulo put it: We are heading in the wrong direction. And as the temperature rises, so does the chance that Earths natural systems will cross thresholds that trigger irreversible and cascading destruction. The encroaching threat of these tipping points is why the British governments Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is pouring 57 million ($76 million) into studying climate cooling approaches. Thats a fancy way of referring to climate geoengineering, or intentionally tinkering with the Earths weather systems in an attempt to cool things down. More specifically, ARIA is examining whether we might be able to reflect some sunlight away from the surface of the Earth and back into space. With this investment, the UK government becomes the top funder of solar geoengineering research in the world. But whats really raising eyebrows is the news that some of ARIA’s experiments could take place outside, in the real world, and with a governments seal of approval. Could this be a step toward legitimizing what has, up until now, been seen as a climate hack of last resort? Geoengineering has long been a somewhat taboo topic in the larger conversation about climate change. Many scientists worry it could have unintended and irreversible consequences, possibly doing more harm than good. For example, modelling from a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change suggested that so-called marine cloud brightening off the U.S. West Coast would indeed help lower temperatures locally, but could inadvertently trigger more intense heat waves in Europe. At the same time, environmentalists fear geoengineering would give a free pass to polluters to carry on with business as usual. ARIA acknowledges these anxieties, and gives concession to the net-zero purists. Decarbonization is the only sustainable way to reduce global temperatures, says ARIA program director Mark Symes. But ARIA also says that the dearth of real and relevant physical data from outdoor [geoengineering] experiments is itself dangerous given the direction were headed. What might be the risks of hurried deployment of under-researched climate engineering approaches where we have little understanding of the consequences? the group asks. In other words, if things get so bad that we have to use these tools, wed better know what were doing. As things stand, if we were to face a climate tipping point in the near future, we currently lack the basic knowledge needed to understand what our options are, Symes says. ARIA aims to fill the existing knowledge gaps and answer fundamental questions about whether solar geoengineering is practical, measurable, and controllable. ARIA aims to fill the existing knowledge gaps and answer fundamental questions about whether solar geoengineering is practical, measurable, safe, controllable, or even whether [it] should be ruled out entirely, Symes says. It will fund 21 projects over the next five years, four of which are controlled, small-scale outdoor experiments focusing on solar geoengineering methods including: spraying seawater into the air to brighten clouds over the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and in the UK; using an electric charge to brighten clouds in the UK; and using weather balloons to expose small amounts (as in milligrams) of mineral dust to the stratosphere to understand whether this method could be used to reflect sunlight (the balloon launch locations have yet to be determined but are likely to be in the U.S. or the UK). A fifth outdoor experiment will focus on trying to re-thicken Arctic sea ice in Canada (which, if successful, could also have the knock-on effect of reflecting more sunlight back into space). The soonest any of these outdoor projects would begin is early 2026. The other 16 projects will examine the ethics of geoengineering, how it might be responsibly governed, as well as computer modeling and simulating climate cooling in the lab. ARIAs broad program of research will help advance our fundamental understanding of solar geoengineering and help to ensure that policymakers have the information they need to make informed decisions about these ideas in future, said Dr. Pete Irvine, a research assistant professor at the University of Chicago who studies solar geoengineering, and the co-founder of SRM360, a nonprofit focused on fostering discussions around solar reflection methods. Previous attempts to conduct outdoor geoengineering tests have been short-lived and quickly condemned. At least eight U.S. states have passed or are considering legislation to ban the practice, and the Environmental Protection Agency is investigating a geoengineering startup called Make Sunsets, accusing it of polluting the air (nevermind the EPAs loosening of pollution restrictions for, say, coal-fired power plants). On an international scale, many nations have signed onto a de facto large-scale geoengineering moratorium. The U.S. has also been building an alert system that would be able to detect if other nations are using solar geoengineering.&bsp; None of this has stopped scientists and private companies from dabbling. If anything, the stigma around geoengineering has pushed projects to become more rogue and secretive. Just last year, a study on cloud brightening techniques in Alameda, California, was forced to shut down in part because local officials only learned about the research from an article in The New York Times. The ARIA program is hoping to avoid a similar fate by engaging with local communities at the outset of a project, and keeping lines of communication open as work progresses. ARIA sees consultation and engagement with the public as processes that will be sustained for the lifetime of projects, Symes wrote recently. A key aim is to earn and maintain trust in the research that is being undertaken. The group will conduct environmental assessments, and be transparent about any known risks, as well as test results. The program is also overseen by an independent oversight committee. ARIA says it has no intention of actually deploying or scaling any of the solutions it wants to test. That may be a comfort to some, but it could also be seen to undermine the value and legitimacy of the research. “These technologies will always remain speculative, and unproven in the real world, until they are deployed at scale, said Mike Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge. Just because they work in a model, or at a micro-scale in the lab or the sky, does not mean they will cool the climate safely, without unwanted side-effects, in the real world. There is therefore no way that this research can demonstrate that the technologies are safe, successful, or reversible. Theres no real guarantee these experiments will go ahead. According to ARIA documents, the tests will be required to start indoors, and can only move out of the lab if questions still remain unanswered and researchers are certain that any effects would last no longer than 24 hours. And ARIA might pull the plug on a project that fails to meet certain research milestones. Our current trajectory suggests that warming is happening at an alarming rate, Symes says. Our goal is to build knowledge and help shape global standards for how this science is conducted responsibly.
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