11 September, 2026

A lot of us are probably all too familiar with the experience of mentioning climate change and accidentally opening a conversational trapdoor. One minute you’re talking about floods, heatwaves or renewable energy, and the next someone is saying “but what about China?”, “the climate has always changed”, or “yes, but what about…” followed by an issue that climate change would actually make worse. Twenty minutes later, everyone is frustrated and nobody has changed their mind. 

This week, we’ve come across an interactive tool from Talking Climate Collaborative that might help avoid exactly this situation. Rather than helping you find more facts or statistics, it helps you think about the conversation itself. You choose the topic you want to discuss and who you’re speaking with, and it generates tailored prompts and talking points for that audience. Whether you’re talking to colleagues, neighbours, parents, young people or even sceptical friends, it helps you find a starting point that feels relevant to them. 

We often treat climate communication as an information problem, thinking: if only people understood the science better… if only they knew the statistics… if only they read the right article. But people rarely change their minds because they’re presented with one more fact. More often, change happens through conversations with people they trust and discussions that connect an issue to their own values and experiences. 

That’s exactly the gap this tool is trying to address. It recognises that knowing what to say is only part of the challenge. Knowing how to make a conversation feel relevant, relatable and non-confrontational is often just as important. 

More broadly, it shines a light on something that’s easy to overlook: behind every policy and corporate commitment are millions of conversations that helped make them possible in the first place. Sometimes, the most important step is simply getting people talking. 

By Emma Alajarin