To: The Climate Project Editors

From: Grant Duffey

Subject: Notes On Improving Mass Appeal

Dear Editors,

First, I would like to thank you all for your hard work and dedication to the Climate Project’s
cause. It is an absolutely crucial matter, and your work is helping to save the future. However,
we think we need to begin on a new direction for our reports to appeal to the general public.
While we think the quality of what has been done so far has been very high, some aspects of how
it is presented need to be changed. Overall, we think we need to focus our audience on people
who may not know or understand much about how climate change works and, more importantly,
how it affects people. In order to highlight this more, I would like to offer a few suggestions as to
what about the reports we can change.

First, it would be helpful to put more examples of how places people know will be affected by
the changing climate. While giving the general numbers is absolutely crucial, and should still be
done, we need to put these into a context that is closer to home. For example, since our audience
is primarily going to be people from the United States, we should focus on how the issues caused
by climate change will directly affect places people know. It is even more influential if it is
something that is currently happening, since many effects of climate change are in the future and
therefore a less immediate threat in the minds of many people. For example, the fires that have
been happening in California this past year. As a final note, we want to put more emphasis on
putting more personal pictures in our reports. Showing the faces of the families and communities
that are most greatly affected from climate change will help people understand and be more
empathetic towards their plight that will only worsen as time goes on.

While I am flexible with how we want to go about this, I suggest that we have a formal meeting
on this subject as soon as possible. Please let me know about your availability in the next coming
weeks, ideally before we publish our next edition Please , and let me know if you have any
questions about these ideas you want answered before we meet. You are all incredibly talented,
so I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Thank you,
Grant Duffey
(123) 456-7890
gduffey@clemson.edu
123 Main Street 12345
To: The Climate Project

From: Grant Duffey

Date: 9 November 2021

Subject: Creating Reports That Generate More Empathy

The Climate Project’s reports have done a great job at creating readily accessible scientific
information. However, as we go into the future, we must go in a new direction such that our
reports appeal to the general public. While the quality of what has been done so far has been very
high, some aspects of how it is presented need to be changed in order to achieve this goal.
Overall, we think we need to focus our audience on people who may not know or understand
much about how climate change works and, more importantly, how it affects people. In order to
put a spotlight on this effort, this memo contains strategies for catering our reports to the general
public.

Summary

In order to broaden the audience of our reports, we must use additional methods that allow a
more general audience to personally relate to the information given in our reports. We will
accomplish this by putting more examples of how places people know will be affected by the
changing climate. While giving the general numbers is absolutely crucial, and should still be
done, we need to put these into a context that is closer to home. It is even more influential if it is
something that is currently happening, since many effects of climate change are in the future and
therefore a less immediate threat in the minds of many people. For example, the fires that have
been happening in California this past year. Finally, we want to put more emphasis on putting
more personal pictures in our reports. Showing the faces of the families and communities that are
most greatly affected from climate change will help people understand and be more empathetic
towards their plight that will only worsen as time goes on.
How to Improve Use of Images in Reports

Normally when using images in our reports, we use images that reflect scientific data. While this
is great and should absolutely remain, we want to add to these images with more personal
images. For example, we want to show the actual people who are going to be affected by the
oncoming disasters climate change will cause. When we talk about the rising sea level, we
should show what the communities that will be most affected and the people who live in them
look like. We can also cater certain reports to our primary audience, English speakers. Most of
the English speakers who read our reports live in America as well, so showing cities in high
population states like California, Florida, and New York that are beginning to be affected and
will continue to worsen will be more effective. Of course, we should not entirely exclude
communities from around the world as well. Showing people in southeast asia that will be
greatly affected by sea level rise as well is a step in the right direction for spreading awareness of
how the world at large is affected.

Recommendations

In order to achieve this goal, our first step is to hire some additional photographers. Ideally, these
photographers would specialize in taking photos of people. Then, we would send these people
out to these remote locations where people are suffering and will continue to suffer as climate
change worsens. On top of that, we should also perform some polls to our audience here in
America and get some idea of how much knowledge they have in general of people in areas like
southeast asia. This way we can better direct how we inform people into the future.

Conclusion

With these changes, we think we will be able to inspire greater empathy towards the
cause we are fighting for, which is to mitigate the effects of climate change and promote creating
infrastructure to deal with the issues that can no longer be stopped. While we should be proud of
our reports so far, it has been clear that we must achieve as wide an audience as possible to reach
this goal. Our next step here is to get some new photographers who specialize in taking photos of
people, and sending them out to these suffering locations to get a better grasp of how we should
be representing these people. Having more personal pictures will help toward this end, and
showing how data will affect more local areas to our primary audience is a fantastic first step.

References

Lindsey, Rebecca. Climate Change: Global Sea Level, NOAA, 14 Aug. 2020,

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-chang

e-global-sea-level.

McCarthy, Joe. “Why Climate Change and Poverty Are Inextricably Linked.”

Global Citizen, 19 Feb. 2020,

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/climate-change-is-connected-to-poverty/.

National Geographic Society. “Climate Change.” National Geographic Society, 27 Mar. 2019,

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/climate-change/.

“Report: Flooded Future: Global Vulnerability to Sea Level Rise Worse Than

Previously Understood.” Climate Central, 29 Oct. 2019,

 https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-flooded-future-global-vulnerability-to-sea-
level-rise-worse-than-previously-understood.

“Sea Level Rise, Climate Change and Health.” Climate Health Connect, 2016,

https://climatehealthconnect.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/SeaLevelRise.pdf.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Climate Change and Disaster Displacement.”

UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency,

https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/climate-change-and-disasters.html.