in washington, d.c., where policy battles are fought through language, words themselves have become the front line.

president donald trump, since taking office in january 2025, has ordered the department of energy and the environmental protection agency to scale back language that mentions or alludes to climate change.

the majority, or 64%, of americans say climate change is affecting their local communities, according to the pew research center. additionally the yale program on climate change communication’s survey shows despite roughly two-thirds of americans believing in climate change, their concerns depend on economic conditions. other surveys, like another at the pew research center, show voters rank inflation and cost of living above climate change as their top priorities.

david di martino, a seasoned communications professional with over 20 years of experience and founding partner at seven letter, said this change has led to a strategic narrowing of climate messaging for communications professionals and a fundamental shift in how communicators engage the public by meeting them where they are through affordability messaging.

“making your argument about trump, you can’t win,” di martino said.

the interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

maggie rhoads: how have changes from the trump era shaped the political and cultural environment around climate and sustainability?

david di martino: there is literally not one element of public policy related to climate change or sustainability that the trump administration hasn’t either repealed, rolled back, undermined, or eliminated, except for one: expanding access to charging stations in rural areas. i saw a story about that yesterday. if you work in this space, there’s been no greater period of disruption or recession than the last 12 months of the second trump administration.

mr: according to an internal memo obtained by npr, the trump administration has asked employees at the department of energy to avoid using words including climate change, green, sustainable, and other terms. so what does the trump administration’s erasure of this language mean?

dd: this is a policy they actually had in the first trump administration. so you could look back at those four years, and their attempt to eliminate climate change and in the language of climate change from the lexicon was a complete and total failure, just like every other policy that they have. what they’re doing now is they’re being more organized about it. however, no matter what they do to eliminate references to climate change from government websites or references to sustainability from government websites, it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening. climate change is still happening.

mr: how has this change affected the strategic communications industry specifically?

dd: so, in the context of communications, the strategy has really been to narrow your mass communications. now, what we do is eliminate entire swaths of the audience that are just not conceivable or approachable. so you’re looking at like 25–30% of the self-identified maga audience who just are not receptive to these kinds of policies and action. so we’re refocusing our messaging on the movable middle and activists on the left to generate activity and force policymakers outside the administration to take action.

mr: can you give an example of how that strategy shows up in your work?

dd: we’re running a campaign to defend clean energy from the trump administration’s attacks. so while they’re out there eliminating offshore wind and stopping solar projects and eliminating environmental justice grants, we’re counter-messaging in the context of talking about the benefits of clean energy, the job creation, the pollution reductions, the local impacts, and we’re seeing some progress.

mr: do you hear anything from inside agencies like the epa about how employees are reacting to these changes?

dd: my firm works with several organizations that are in direct contact with epa scientists and epa administrator staff. what we hear on the inside, and this was more true in the first trump administration, where people on the inside who stuck around were able to slow some of the rollbacks and share information to help us counter the actions the administration this time around, they’ve done a much better job with doge and everything else, of like eliminating people from the agencies, but we still hear from folks who are the rank and file employees at the epa in particular think what they’re doing. in the context of climate and environmental rollbacks, it is completely chaotic and completely counter to the agency’s mission. so that information still does come out.

mr: what specifically do you mean by that? can you rephrase that in a different way?

dd: the effort is to eliminate the words climate change from the epa’s website. we hear about people pushing back on that. we hear about people trying to preserve the environmental justice grants program in some way. we hear about the rule-making process internally.

mr: what lessons should communicators take away from this political moment?

dd: so what we’ve learned as communicators, especially in the last year, is that when you make your argument about trump, you can’t win. people have tuned out the corruption. people have tuned out his approach. people have tuned out how horrible a person he is, just as a human. so we’re doing a lot less of attacking trump directly. we’re more focused on demonstrating the benefits to people for the things that we want to advocate for. so localizing communications, talking about benefits, talking to people where they are, making sure they understand how an obscure power plant regulation actually impacts their lives every day.

mr: is there anything else you think is important to understand about climate and sustainability communications right now?

dd: the most successful advocacy campaigns were the ones that made direct connections with people. i’m fortunate to have the resources with some of our clients to conduct public opinion research and message testing to find paths forward and communicate with particular audiences. i think a lot of communicators make the mistake of trying to find one magic talking point to work with everybody, which doesn’t work anymore. you need to find people.