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"The ultimate solutions to climate change are workable, cost-effective technologies which permit society to improve living standards while limiting and adapting to changes in the climate. Yet scientific, engineering, and organizational solutions are not enough. Societies must be motivated and empowered to adopt the needed changes. For that, the public must be able to interpret and respond to often bewildering scientific, technological, and economic information. Social psychologists are aware, through their painstaking scientific research, of the difficulties that individuals and groups have in processing and responding effectively to the information surrounding long-term and complex societal challenges. This guide powerfully details many of the biases and barriers to scientific communication and information processing. It offers a tool—in combination with rigorous science, innovative engineering, and effective policy design—to help our societies take the pivotal actions needed to respond with urgency and accuracy to one of the greatest challenges ever faced by humanity: global-scale, human-induced environmental threats, of which the most complex and far-reaching is climate change."

Climate change is not a new issue, but the need for meaningful and sustainable solutions is more urgent than ever. Climate communicators and mainstream leaders are still grappling with how to help Americans find meaningful, actionable paths forward and overcome the social, political, psychological, and emotional barriers that have hindered progress on climate solutions. To connect with audiences and unlock success in climate change communication, communicators need to shift their approach. Communicators need to go beyond simply providing people with the facts about climate change. They need to connect with people's values and worldviews and put solutions at the forefront to make climate change personally relevant to Americans and those they love. With this guide, we have brought together both researchers and practitioners to consolidate the best insights and evidence about how to communicate effectively about climate change. We have combined research from the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at The Earth Institute, Columbia University; ecoAmerica; and other institutions with insights that ecoAmerica has gleaned from communicating about climate change and other environmental issues with mainstream Americans and their leaders. This guide presents information in a digestible, actionable form to enable communicators to "up their game" when engaging Americans on climate solutions of all types and scales.

The American Preparedness Project was launched by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) in 2002, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in order to survey public perceptions and opinions on disaster preparedness and to acknowledge that a comprehensive understanding of the concerns of individuals and families is critical to emergency planning efforts on all levels. Characterizing such trends is critical because in order to develop effective disaster plans, as well as a sustainable long term disaster preparedness strategy, people need to be confident in (a) the reliability of information from official sources, (b) the capacity of government to perform effectively in a crisis and (c) the capability of response systems, particularly health systems and first responders.The major findings of the 2015 American Preparedness Project are presented in the Key Findings section of this report. The American Preparedness Project survey has been administered eight times since the launch of the project in 2002. Although the content of the questionnaire has changed over time to reflect the changing disaster landscape, a select set of questions has been asked in every iteration of the survey in order to capture changes over time.These questions are presented in the National Trends Since 9/11 section of this report and capture national confidence in household and community preparedness, response systems, and leadership. Following the overview of national trends over time, the report highlights findings from the current survey (see Key Findings in 2015) across the domains of General Preparedness, Natural Disasters and Climate Change,Terrorism, and Children in Disasters. The report concludes with Recommendations for improving national, community and household-level preparedness.