Ryan Weber: Welcome to 10-Minute Tech Comm. This is Ryan Weber at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Please welcome today’s guest.
Josh Dorfman: Hi, I’m Josh Dorfman. I am host of Supercool, a media company tracking the rise of the low-carbon economy, and currently CMO of Plantd, a company making carbon-negative building materials out of fast-growing perennial grass.
Ryan: Josh brings an optimistic, solutions-oriented approach to climate change and climate change communication. If you’re like me and find climate change more of a source of intractable, existential dread, you might find this approach unusual, even jarring, because it focuses on specific, market-driven, small steps that we can take to move towards a carbon-neutral economy. Josh talks about his perspective as a podcaster, as an activist, and as a CEO in communicating with people about climate change solutions and getting people excited about futures that will improve our well-being. I hope you enjoy the interview.
BEGIN INTERVIEW
Ryan: Welcome to the podcast, Josh. Really glad to have you on the show. I’m really interested. You have done a lot of different things related to climate communication, to climate innovation. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you do, especially as it comes to communicating about climate change?
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve spent most of my career thinking about this exact question, how do you communicate climate in a way that actually gets people to get excited and want to engage? My lens is really through looking at media, looking at business. That’s my focus.
The work I do today is to, one, as CMO of this company, Plantd, really think about how are we showing up in market in the biggest way where, of course, we have this huge climate mission. We grow this fast-growing perennial grass. It pulls carbon from the atmosphere, and then we turn it into cutting-edge building materials and work with the largest builder in America, D.R. Horton. That’s all awesome. But, while climate motivates us, it doesn’t necessarily motivate the market or motivate the end customer. That’s always this gap. How do you communicate in a way where you’re meeting your stakeholder? For us, that’s a customer, but who you’re trying to influence on terms that are going to have resonance for them. It doesn’t always have to be that they have to care about the climate as much as I do if my solution still fits what they’re looking for, then from a practical perspective, I feel like I am making progress because my climate solution is getting deployed in the world.
That’s been the through-line theme for me in everything I do, is to think through, okay, I have this mission. I’m working on this product, project, media company, whatever. It’s almost always sustainability or climate. To be effective, how do I need to message to make it land?
Ryan: So you are less concerned about the abstract message of climate change and more concerned about how do we make these solutions interesting to people?
Josh: That’s exactly right. If you look at research, studies, white papers that have come out of academia, come from the United Nations Communication Department, there is an understanding that the best way to engage people around climate is to focus on solutions, solutions that could actually solve it. Very few people even take their own advice, even the UN, understandably, because we think, “Oh, crisis!” and we go into fear mode. Because I believe that so wholeheartedly, it’s like I’m just trying to follow the best advice I can to reach audiences that are often tired, afraid, apathetic, tuned out, all of the above.
Very few people are like, “Oh, tell me what you got, Josh. What’s the latest?” That’s why I take this approach.
Ryan: I have two questions that stem from that. The first one is just excitement that someone is reading research about climate change communication. I see a lot of it. Can you talk a little more about how that research has influenced your approach? Because like you say, a lot of people publish this stuff, they may not even follow their own advice. As someone who is a scholar, I like the idea that research is going out there and being applied.
Josh: Well, I would say most honestly, in my view, that research reinforced something that I came to see for myself based on my own experience. My own experience was, very briefly, in the 1990s, I lived in China for a couple of years, not thinking about the environment, but seeing how fast the country was developing and realizing that here was this developing nation with a billion people riding bicycles, yet you could see all this auto infrastructure coming in. You could see that it was going to transition to an auto economy, just like America. I thought, my gosh, a billion cars, what does that mean for the future? That was my opening and awakening about climate and sustainability, et cetera.
I came back to the States, late 1990s, early 2000s, went into kind of an activist mode. It was like, “Holy moly, I’m learning about climate change for the first time. This is so scary. What are we going to do?” What I realized for myself was that energy that I had, I label it activist energy, it doesn’t have to be that, but being so in people’s faces, like, “Hey, turn off the lights, hey, this, that.” It was like my franticness that was really just turning people off. Ultimately, I realized there just has to be a better way for me to be comfortable with myself and to really think about how do I affect change?
That was an internal learning that then, over time, as I kept researching this field, because it became my career, I could see where it was being reinforced in the academic world. I would say that solidified how I try to show up in the world and affect change.
Ryan: I’m really interested in what you’re saying about solutions because climate change does seem incredibly daunting. I think there are a lot of people who are like, “Well, we’re cooked. There’s nothing we can do.” It seems like your approach is more that you have some optimism that you’re not as interested in doomsday approaches. How does that pan out? How does that come to play in the way that you actually communicate about what we can do?
Josh: Well, to me, I think, in my head, it’s all very clear. It’s all very obvious. If you’re in a city and you’re the mayor or you’re on the planning commission or whatever, and you’re like, hmm, “I really want to raise the quality of life for our citizens. What would you do?” Would you build more roads for cars? No. You’d probably make cities more walkable. You’d probably put in more bike trails. You’d probably put in better public transit.
You might even do things like work with a company like NVAC out of Sweden that actually has these jets and tubes that removes trash underground so there’s no garbage trucks spewing fumes around the street. All of that stuff improves quality of life and cuts carbon. It’s this causal thing between how do we raise our quality of life and standard of living and how do we solve climate change? In my mind, they’re one in the same, because I see all the evidence of how this is actually manifesting in the real world. If you want to cut down on childhood asthma, put more trees in cities. If you want to get rid of or lower childhood leukemia rates, put more trees in cities. That research comes right out of the US Forest Service. To me, the link is so abundantly clear.
Now, I focus on the business side. I see companies all day long that are putting solutions in market today that will use AI to dramatically cut the heating and cooling costs for huge buildings and at the same time, make those buildings much more comfortable for people who are occupying those spaces. Lower carbon, lower bills, more comfort.
I could give you today 100 examples of that. To me, it’s not even about do you want to solve climate change. The question is what future do we want? Do we want the best, brightest future that we want to live in that’s prosperous and abundant and healthy and raises our quality of life? That’s a future that solves climate. That’s how I see it.
Ryan: You don’t really see attention because there are a lot of people who see attention between the market and the environment, for instance, or other problems that we have and the environment. Do we have to choose, say, is our company going to be profitable or are we going to be climate conscious? You’re saying that’s a false choice.
Josh: What I’m saying is that there is the opportunity for it to be a false choice. Obviously, look at where we are today. Clearly, you could point to all the evidence of that’s clearly a false choice. Within that, I see this trend of hundreds, if not thousands of companies who do have business models today where increasing sustainability or cutting carbon emissions, whatever you want to call it, is intrinsically tied to their revenue. In other words, the more they put their product in market, the more it’s actually lowering the carbon footprint for their customers.
One example is a company called Trove. We think a lot about the circular economy and we should reuse. Of course we should. Trove is the technology that goes on Patagonia.com’s website where you can shop for a reused fleece or used fleece right next to the new one. There’s a company in the background that makes that possible. All of that is really good for Patagonia, because they actually sell a product at a really nice product margin. They get new customers at lower costs. It’s all awesome for the business and it’s all awesome for the planet because we’re increasing the circular economy. There are so many companies like that that are at a new level of scale, really rolled out into the economy.
It doesn’t have to be a trade-off. They can be intrinsically linked. I see more evidence that that is happening.
Ryan: What motivates customers in your experience with these companies? It may be climate, but what kinds of messaging tends to resonate with customers that make them really want to engage with these companies?
Josh: The messaging always is, for companies that are succeeding, is “How can I, regardless of my climate or sustainability mission, make your business better?” Like I said, I give you lots of examples, but a really well-known company that’s been in this space for over two decades is a company called TerraCycle. TerraCycle has built a reputation of being able to recycle the things that are impossible to recycle. Nobody can. Cigarette butts, diapers, whatever. The way that they’ve been able to do this, I was recently interviewing their CEO, Tom Szaky. He said to me, he’s like, “Josh, look, we have a whole thing now with hair salons, where we go into hair salons and they’re like, all those clippings on the ground, all those stuff that you can’t do, put it in this bin, and we’ll take it back, and we’ll figure out how to do it.”
The hair salon’s like, “Why? No, that’s effort.” He’s like, well, I tell you what. Put the bin in, and we have data that shows that just having this bin and the marketing and communicating that you do this will improve your bottom line. You will get more business. You will pay us to do this for you, but you’ll pay us less than what you’re going to earn from the brand reputation enhancement of how you’re perceived in the market because customers love this. Even with negative economics, even when it actually makes no sense to recycle that stuff, this company has built a business model to actually figure it out.
It’s always about how can I align with that end customer, whatever kind of customer that is, so they see it in their kind of more immediate self-interest? And once that’s in place, every company loves to talk about what they’re doing for the environment. They just need to see it work for their business first, and then they are thrilled to talk about all the environmental side.
Ryan: So we know this, but people are self-interested, and I think most people care about the environment and would love to help the environment in the abstract. But what you’re saying is we’ve got to make the solutions tangibly beneficial for the people that are implementing them.
Josh: Well, I would say this. That is 100% true. And one of the things that’s also not readily understood is just how big this already is. So just for example, for the past two years, the global investment in clean energy, so we’re talking about solar, wind, batteries now, electric cars, has surpassed $2 trillion globally each year. It’s now double what’s being invested in fossil fuels. And that’s because when you look at solar, and especially now when you can compare solar with batteries, you actually get to costs that in many parts of the world are the cheapest form of new energy and also the fastest to deploy. It takes a long time to build a natural gas power plant.
And so what you’re seeing is the world is attuned to this. And the trend is really, really massive. In America, we don’t see it so clearly, like we said, because it’s not our narrative. We’re not talking about solutions like we started this conversation. And a lot of this stuff happens far away from where we’re actually hanging out. This is infrastructure. A lot of this is invisible. I mean, yes, you can see an electric car, but if there’s one in 10 is electric and you may be in a place in the country where it might be lower, you don’t realize just how quickly this is moving around the globe.
And it will come here too, because the good news is when you’re modernizing, almost all modernization today equals electrification, meaning we’re going to plug things in like electric cars, or we’re going to move from even natural gas stoves to induction range stoves, which is what top chefs are doing today. And there’s companies figuring out how to do that really easily for consumers. And so electrification means you’re going to plug things in. And then that means, okay, what we have to do is just replace fossil fuels with solar and wind and clean energy and connect all that stuff to the grid, like all we have to do. It’s a simple model.
Ryan: Right, it’s as easy as that!
Josh: It’s the most impossible thing in the world to do. I mean, it’s the hardest challenge, but modernization equals electrification. And when you electrify, it becomes a lot easier to solve climate. And that’s just where we’re going. No one’s going to be like, “Hey, what I really want, you know, is a natural gas, like water heater.” That’s just like old technology and all the electrified stuff that gets you into the modern, clean future. That’s what’s coming. And that’s what’s reaching price parity.
Ryan: And some of it is, you know, as Americans, we’re not seeing this. It seems like that’s part of the persuasion problem for Americans. We’re just not seeing these solutions being deployed like they are in other places. And so it seems impossible, or it seems like, well, this is the way it’s got to be with fossil fuels.
Josh: Well, I would say it’s twofold. You know, we certainly, our media, as we know, what sells? Bad news sells, right? So good news is a tougher sell. So we don’t really see it in the media. The social media landscape, certainly same thing, likes to, you know, what goes viral? Things that are generally negative, I think, for the most part.
But on top of that, you know, even within the kind of niche media that covers climate. So let’s call climate media. There actually is a thing there, right? The outlets that are focused on this, you know, what do they cover? Well, they tend to cover the new concept car, electric concept car from Maserati that’s never going to come to market, but everybody likes to click on it, right? So it’s like, it’s not real. Or they’re going to cover, whoa, this company, you know, Michael Dell’s son just raised a billion dollars for his battery company. Great. Are the batteries in the market? Can anyone go buy them? Well, that’s not, it’s like, no, but like, let’s cover this funding for something that may or may not actually be real.
Or like, let’s have a policy debate. Or let’s talk about this, like, super cool thing you can do with algae, maybe one day, but no one’s ever done it before and no one can buy it or get it, right?
Like, that’s what the climate media does. We don’t talk about what’s in market, what’s operational, what’s deployed. And so people just don’t know, because the climate media is doing a disservice to people, just as the mainstream media is doing a different kind of disservice to media. Certainly super cool. Like, that’s what my company is trying to, you know, do. We actually just launched this newsletter called Deployed, which actually is what I just described to you, what happened this week to move the low carbon economy forward. But that aligns with what we talked about too, Ryan, about the UN communication department saying focus on solutions. So I don’t know how that all gets resolved. I just know that that is the right thing to do.
Ryan: As a communicator, you know, one of the big things with climate change communication is various kinds of resistance and pushback. How do you deal with that? What kinds of pushback and resistance do you experience? And how do you deal with it?
Josh: Man, I have gotten so much pushback and resistance. Probably the most obvious thing that’s coming out of this conversation is a conversation where if the economics are favorable, right, that’s always the easiest way to do it. But I really think relating on a human one-to-one level, just also helps whatever message you’re trying to get across, come across.
And I’ll give you two examples. Years ago, I had this TV show called the lazy environmentalist. So this was me trying to help lazy Americans go green. It was Sirius XM radio show, Sundance reality TV show. And I was on the Fox News channel with a guy, Dr. Manny, he had a, I don’t know, he was a had a health show or something, right. And I’m in New York, I hadn’t done a lot of national television. I’m nervous. I’m in this chair waiting for Dr. Manny to show up. And I was working with Brita, the water pitcher company. And they’re saying, hey, use a Brita and get rid of your disposable water bottles. And we had these other kinds of recommendations. Dr. Manny comes in, sits in his chair. And the person behind the camera said something like, “Okay, minute to air or 45 seconds to air.”
And I’m just so nervous, right? And Dr. Manny looks at me and he’s like, “Hey, just so you know, I don’t believe in climate change,” right? And the clock is ticking. And now like I can feel like my forehead getting sweaty, right? I’m like, “Oh my god, oh my god.” But we’re in New York, we’re in New York and I’m looking at this guy and somehow, I don’t know how I thought of it, but I was like, “Okay, do you believe in the Yankees?” And he was like, he put his head down, you know, and then he lifted it up and he was like, “I do.” And I was like, “Okay then, me too.” And like, it softened him, you know, and we were able to have a productive conversation. Did I convince him? Probably not. But did my message get across to a viewership that was watching? It was probably, you know, better than it would have been otherwise.
And so I’m always looking to find that human connection that says, look, right, just like anything else, like any, right, it’s politics, whatever, we may disagree. But, you know, we have more in common than you may realize. And here’s what I’m here to tell you.
Ryan: Yeah, there is and you may not get into this as much. But there is a lot of debate about what do you do with the Dr. Manny’s of the world that don’t believe in climate change? You know, do you try to convince them? Do you kind of sideline them? Do we spend a lot of time trying to convince people? Or do we go with the people who are already on board? Or do we sidestep it? And just like, well, here are cost effective solutions that help the environment no matter how you feel about climate change?
Josh: You know, I really get where that question is coming from. And I kind of feel like, at this point, for me, if someone’s entrenched in saying “I don’t believe in climate change,” I just really don’t think it’s worth it to engage them. And I think because it’s not rational, you’re not going to win. It’s wrapped up at this point in like, core identity. My, my idols, my whatever, my pagan gods, whoever tells me that like, I like this is how we believe this is what I believe, right? I just don’t engage in that.
I still generally think that regardless, eventually, now, the question may be, is it all going to happen fast enough, but eventually, everyone’s going to be in some electric mode of transportation, because it’s just better. It’s more fun. It’s more efficient. It’s cheaper. You don’t have to go to a gas station. I mean, just like that will happen, right? Eventually, everything in people’s homes will be electrified and more energy efficient, like all that’s going to happen because it’s just modernization. It’s just like what we’re going to do. So I just feel that it’s probably more productive to really rally those who are open to see how much is going on, to get them more energized.
You know, one thing Ryan that I thought about years ago, different subject matter, but I really thought it was interesting. And I won’t remember the professor’s name. I think it may have been a woman at Harvard. I just can’t remember. But she was researching movements around the world and more political movements around the world. And she was looking at what had happened in South America and Argentina and other countries. And when did a political movement get to a certain critical mass where it affected dramatic change with the government? Maybe that was overthrow or maybe that was just something dramatic in the government capitulated. And I think her research showed that when you get something like four to five percent of the population in the streets, then that’s like the tipping point. Because at that point, everybody knows someone who’s out there, someone’s aunt, someone’s uncle, someone’s cousin, brother, someone’s in that street. And that’s what the data shows is what you need. So you don’t need everybody, but you really need those who could be energized to be far more energized than they are today.
Ryan: Well, that’s a big vibe I get from you and from this conversation is that you are excited about this. You don’t seem like someone who’s losing sleep over climate change necessarily. I mean, maybe you are, but I see a lot of people who are like, “we’re we’re screwed. There’s nothing we can do. I have this existential angst about climate change.” And you seem enthusiastic about the future of our world. Is that fair to say?
Josh: I am, because I think it’s one of the things I said to you. I just see that the advanced civilization that I would like to see us move into, a more flourishing civilization. That is a civilization where we have solved climate change as a co-benefit of building that future, not as the core thrust of what we’re actually trying to do.
And I’ve seen that reflected back to me, not just by the entrepreneurs and this, you might say, “Well, Josh, you’re just in this kind of founder startup, corporate bubble.” But like I talked to mayors on my podcast, mayors all over the world from Bristol in the UK to Barranquilla in Colombia. And they all say this. They all see the same thing. They all see the same thing.
So that’s what gives me a lot of hope. I don’t just feel that I’m solving climate. I feel like I’m building a future or helping to create a future for my kids on every level. And for me, that is just far more exciting and more imaginative and abundant than where we are today. So why not work toward building that?
Ryan: Well, thank you, Josh. Any parting words for our listeners in terms of successful ways to communicate or even successful ways to get on board with building this future that includes overcoming climate change, but is not exclusively about overcoming climate change?
Josh: Well, the solutions are out there, I would say. And so I think it depends where you are in your life, career stage, et cetera. I really do look at this today, the work I do through an economic lens. And what I see is, truly no matter your age, your skill set, what you’ve gone to school to study for, what I call the low carbon economy is getting so big and touching so much, that this fundamental thing we do for eight-ish hours per day, which is so much about how we live our lives, can be aligned with your values. Your career can be aligned with your values.
And one of the things that’s really excited me is that when I look at the most instrumental, significant companies today that are building this new future, what’s so fascinating to me is that so often they’re run by leaders, CEOs, founders who started their companies when they were over 50 years old. It’s not just like, hey, two kids in a garage are going to solve climate. It’s obviously so much more complex than that. You’re talking about big systems. You often need a lot of experience, a lot of failures under your belt to see what actually needs to be done. And I just find that so inspiring that there is just a place for everyone in what we’re working on right now.
Ryan: I guess I should ask, I mean, I think some of my listeners, this is in the back of their mind, you mentioned AI briefly. Are you worried about, because you mentioned some capacity for AI to help with carbon neutrality. Are you concerned about the environmental impacts of AI at all?
Josh: I mean, a little bit, which I know sounds odd, but just given how much it’s a talking point today, AI factories, AI data centers are using so much energy. At the same time, I see, if I’m interviewing a CEO of a company that has some climate innovation, almost invariably we end up having some conversation about AI because it’s so foundationally integrated into people’s company state. Even Plantd, the company where I’m chief marketing officer, we make building materials that replace trees. We do it out of grass. So there’s no AI in that building material, but there is AI, or there will be AI in our tissue culture lab, which enables our team to splice this little grass 10X faster than they could otherwise. Someone might say, well, that means you’re only going to keep your team at 20 instead of hiring 200. And it’s like, well, you could look at it that way, or you could look at it and say, well, this enables actually us to build a new supply chain in America where labor costs are really high, but there’s going to be all these additional benefits and we’re keeping our core team. But invariably, if we’re going to build a domestic supply chain for a new climate crop, we too are using AI.
And so I’m not really that worried about it. I mean, I don’t mean to be cavalier. It’s just, I talk about it all the time, just this week. I mean, it’s our podcast this week on Supercool. This is company called Loose End, which actually builds AI for AI data centers to make them run far more efficient because there’s 300 billion sensors in there. And as this guy said to me, he’s like, “It’s like the butterfly effect. I mean, something happens on the roof and a valve down three stories below is going to be impacted and you can’t get to ultimate efficiency in how you operate that, utilize all the power in that facility without really good AI at this point.”
So I’m eyes wide open. I understand the issue, but I guess I’m more optimistic than pessimistic.
Ryan: Well, I appreciate all the optimism. This was a really fun conversation. Where can people find your work? You’ve got a podcast. Where can people find what you’re doing?
Josh: The best place to see what we’re doing with Supercool, where we’re talking about lots of these companies and solutions is our website, GetSuper.Cool. Try to make it relatively straightforward. And then Plantd, for anyone who wants to see what we’re doing on this crazy company on the pulling carbon from the atmosphere and turning into useful, durable products, that’s P-L-A-N-T-D. It’s like a hipster spelling, Plantd. So it’s plantdmaterials.com. And if anyone wants to connect with me directly on social, I tend to be on LinkedIn more than anywhere else. And that’d be awesome.
Ryan: All right. Well, thank you, Josh. I really appreciate it. I had a great time.
Josh: Likewise. Thanks, Ryan.