After 35 years of climate activism, David Fenton challenges climate change activists to quit using abstractions such as “existential threat” and “net zero energy” to describe the dangers posed by our warming planet and what we must do to help Earth keep its cool.

In a guest column for FrameLab, a newsletter about how our brains filter language to form opinions, Fenton suggests that communicators tend to behave as if supplying facts is enough to change people’s minds. But that approach isn’t working. He cites surveys suggesting that two out of three people “rarely or never” hear about climate change or discuss it with friends and family.

“People don’t necessarily learn from facts alone,” he writes, advising communicators to make their case more persuasive by supplementing the facts with “visual metaphors, where people can ‘see’ the problem and the solution.”

He puts forth “pollution blanket” as a visible, intuitive, easily understandable image – blankets trap heat and pollution is disliked. People can imagine going to bed under an extra cover and waking up in a sweat. When the Earth sweats, he writes, “it melts the glaciers and makes heatwaves, fires, and storms stronger.”

The metaphor also makes the solution clear: “reduce, phase out, and take down pollution so the blanket will thin, and we can get back to a comfortable temperature.”

Using that metaphor to break through public indifference will depend on three things: repetition, repetition, and repetition.

“Let’s say, ‘the pollution blanket’ every time we talk about climate,” he writes. “In every interview, every presentation, every conversation. The pollution blanket. The pollution blanket. Only when we are sick of saying it will it work to help save planet Earth.”

Fenton, author of The Activist’s Media Handbook, is currently offering a free PDF download of the chapter titled “Climate Change: A Communication Failure.”