Most of our audience members know climate change is real, and they likely know to recycle, repurpose, or consume responsibly. In other words, merely pushing individuals to live responsible lifestyles is insufficient and, frankly, ineffective at this point. Statistically speaking, we should go beyond our current message; people need to hear this: “It’s not only you. It’s mostly them.” Statistics can help us drive home messages that bring us closer to our audiences and actual progress.
The world is setting climate-change-related records left and right in recent years. Global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in 2024, making it the warmest year in the 175 years of recorded data. Concentrations of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O)) reached their highest levels in at least 800,000 years, causing more extreme weather and rising sea levels. Ocean temperatures have broken records for at least the past eight years, with 2024 being the hottest on record, and the rate of ocean warming over the last two decades has more than doubled that of the period between 1960 and 2005.
Needless to say, the current situation is nothing less than critical, and we must act now. Many science communicators want to understand how to convey this urgency to their followers. We want to use our skills to highlight climate-related problems and persuade people to take immediate action.
I’ve attended events with scientists and science communicators trying to strategize tactics to inform about climate change. One event last week, Art x Science conversations II: Telling Better Climate Change Stories, featured panel participants sharing their personal climate stories, followed by an open discussion on how to communicate climate-related messages effectively. We discussed several ideas, including those that depict the problematic global outcomes and how we, as communicators or consumers, share responsibility through our individual actions.
But something is missing in these stories and pleas to our audiences: Statistics. And I don’t mean statistics about the climate—we do a decent job highlighting those. The statistics I refer to will help us find the right message for the audience for which we create content and help us engage them.
Statistically speaking, we’re probably preaching the same individual-initiatives ethos to the choir. Our pleas will convince our audience to consume responsibly, recycle more, and adopt a flexitarian diet. But apart from that, the world remains in a business-as-usual mode. Examining numbers alone suggests that we miss communicating the big picture and, as a result, fail to inform and engage our audiences completely.
I remain an eternal optimist, as always. We can help the climate movement significantly and address its urgent problems if we pay attention to our audience-specific messages and calls to action.
Our audience in statistics
Most people who consume scientific information belong to the scientific community. Only 16% of the U.S. public said they followed scientific and technological news “very closely,” while a similar share (17%) identified as active science news consumers, looking for and getting science news weekly. More than half of these (54%) follow science news through general news outlets.
These statistics matter to science communicators conveying climate-related content, as they reveal the audience’s mindset. Chances are, our audiences already share our views about the risks of carbon or nitrogen emissions and the resulting climate change. Our audiences likely belong to the well-informed scientific community.
They don’t need more reminders on why to recycle, consume responsibly, or turn the lights off when leaving a room, statistically speaking. I mean, it’s good to remind them, but shouldn’t we also set those efforts into proportion and reveal the more realistic, impactful climate thief, stealing a stable climate from future generations?
Let’s look at the biggest ‘climate thieves’
Let’s name the ‘climate thieves’: the industrial giants and the 1% whose emissions dwarf all individual efforts.
Statistics on climate change and global emissions can help determine how to deliver impactful climate-change messages—those that make the most significant difference. We’ll start with the Carbon Majors and see how they connect to our respective audiences.
We can start by acknowledging that only 100 fossil fuel companies, known as the ‘Carbon Majors,’ have contributed to 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. The contributions of these companies, including Exxon, British Petroleum (BP), and Shell, encompass the oil, gas, and coal they produce and sell to individuals and, primarily, other industries. This includes both their upstream operations (extraction and production) and downstream emissions when their products are burned by others, collectively known as ‘Scope 3’ emissions.
To fully grasp the complexity of how these Carbon Majors contribute to the climate crisis, we should follow the carbon trail into the global economy. Although the Carbon Majors extract, use, and sell oil, gas, and coal, the fuel is transformed into emissions primarily by eight main supply chains, including fashion, agriculture, and construction. These eight supply chains account for half of the global emissions, with 75% of their pollution (Scope 3) tied to fossil fuels bought from the Carbon Majors.
The numbers put the climate-change issue into perspective. They tell us a story about how the current behemoths in our economy account for most of the global emissions, dwarfing all other factors. If these powerhouse industries continue to overproduce products without considering our future, our individual efforts, whether through textile bags, metal thermoses, or electric vehicles, will remain futile, although we must maintain this awareness.
But most science communicators writing about the climate write to people, and people also emit. Telling them to bike instead of driving to work makes sense, right? Yes, but those who can make the most impact through individual actions probably don’t read your articles.
The people who cause climate change
Statistics can continue to help us frame additional, impactful messages to engage our science-loving readers. Simply calling for individual initiatives, for example, through responsible consumption, will have minuscule environmental effects—unless we communicate with the richest 1% of the world.
The wealthiest 1% can significantly impact our climate by changing individual life choices. These 77 million people pollute as much as the poorest 5 billion people on Earth—two-thirds of the global population—according to a recent Oxfam report. The 1-percenters’ carbon emissions account for 16% of global emissions, surpassing the total emissions from cars and transportation globally. This minority’s lifestyle choices and investments, including the fossil fuel industry, directly and significantly impact global warming.
“The super-rich are plundering and polluting the planet to the point of destruction and it is those who can least afford it who are paying the highest price,” commented Chiara Liguori, Oxfam’s senior climate justice policy advisor. “It would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99 per cent to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year.”
Science communicators in the so-called Global North rarely reach the privileged 1% with their content, but we do reach the richest 50%, such as students, office clerks, and small business owners. We also spill our impact into the richest 10%, such as senior academic professionals, managers, and general practitioners.
We should evaluate the impact of asking our audience to, for example, remove meat and dairy from their meals to decrease food-related emissions by 60% or bike to work. Large parts of our audience, which belongs to the richest 50%, may experience real difficulties implementing such changes due to life’s challenges.
These limitations shouldn’t stop us from informing our followers about these individual initiatives. Still, overemphasizing individual initiatives distorts the audience’s real, personal agency. Statistical arguments about ditching meat and dairy or biking to work assume equal individual responsibility. The truth is that a wealthy American changing to a more climate-responsible lifestyle impacts the climate exponentially more than does the same initiatives by an average European worker. This contrast becomes even starker if we compare the individual impact of the richest 1% with that of the average population of the global south.
We should also acknowledge that we write to parts of the richest 10%, which accounts for about half of the global emissions. The richest 10% have some agency and can make some difference through individual initiatives, such as flying less or not buying SUVs. But we should also remember that the emissions by the richest 10% include the richest 1%, the principal climate thief. Another critical difference within those 10% is that the richest 1% have true leverage through their lifestyles, investments, and influential power.
| Category | Likelihood | Who they are |
| Richest 1% | ✳️ Rare | Only a small fraction. They’re often too busy or read niche outlets. |
| Richest 10% | ✅ Common | This group includes educated professionals with disposable income and curiosity. |
| Richest 50% | ✅ Very common | Most of your audience likely falls here, especially professionals, students, and academics. |
An extended approach to climate change communication
These statistics can help us frame climate-related messages purposefully and estimate the most impactful calls to action. We just need to know our audience.
The unlikely communicator who reaches the richest 1% can continue to push for individual initiatives exclusively, such as going vegan or ditching the private jet. This content creator could optimally highlight their urgent need to divest from companies that kill the environment, such as the Carbon Majors. I envision a gloom and doom call to action, such as “Divest or face the consequences.”
Those whose audience belongs to the richest 10% can shift to a balanced framing, informing the followers about the importance of individual and collective actions. We can remind them not to let their green and sustainable lifestyles distract them and, instead, use their privileges and/or higher education to fight for systemic, sustainable societal changes. They can make a difference in society by joining movements, organizing seminars, or forcing universities to divest from fossil fuel industries.
Communication with target groups within the poorest 90% will require less call for individual responsibility. The poorest people are the most vulnerable to climate impacts while being the least responsible for causing them, as their carbon footprints are significantly smaller than those of wealthier populations. Pressed to answer how to approach this group, I’d argue for focusing on collective resilience, including holding high emitters accountable, rather than individual sacrifice.
This doesn’t undermine our audience’s individual efforts, especially if they belong to the richest category. We can consider the recommendations here as an extension and a more realistic approach to highlight the actual distribution of impact.
Most of us preach to the choir: scientists and science enthusiasts who already understand that the climate is suffering, and so is our future. Most are sympathetic but powerless to move the needle through consumption choices alone. We can shift focus to collective power, such as organizing, changing policies, and challenging growth-obsessed economics, so that audiences can demand actual systemic shifts. This means naming alternatives like degrowth, a deliberate downscaling of production that prioritizes human and ecological well-being over corporate profit. Barely anyone dares to write about it.
2 responses
As a content creator, how would you approach reaching the 1% audience mentioned in your article? It seems they engage with niche outlets that aren’t necessarily focused on climate action. Given that direct messaging would likely come off as too forward, what strategies or platforms do you see as effective for delivering this kind of message you propose to them?
Good question. Addressing that part of the population would be challenging. If we want to truly address the elephant in the room, I’d claim the chances are minimal they’d sacrifice their investments and lifestyles–regardless of the level of climate communication. Our most likely audiences are the remaining 99%; our current readers. If we want to create a real impact, we’d benefit from formulating realistic narratives, based on these and other statistics.