The cover feature in the The New York Times Magazine’s recent “Green Issue,” “Why Isn’t the Brain Green?” delivers rich food for thought for communicators. The article delves into what decision science research tells us about how people respond to environmental issues. Basically, our tendency to undervalue future benefits, assess risk based on emotion, and deal with a “finite pool of worry” spells trouble for efforts to deal with climate change.

It’s a long article not amenable to summarization, and it’s worth reading in full for the insights it provides on how we might communicate more effectively about climate change solutions.  For example, this nugget: a fee for carbon pollution described as an “offset” gets much more support than one described as a “tax.” Turns out it’s not necessarily the principle of paying for pollution that people object to; it’s the negative loaded term “tax” that inspires rejection.

That’s no surprise, you might think, but in environmentalists’ discussions of the pros and cons of a carbon tax, “people won’t accept a tax” is always a main con. Calling it something else to make it more palatable doesn’t seem to have emerged as a solution. People may fear that it won’t work because the public will see it as a dodge, but that may be true only when you’re using alternative wording that’s already been tagged as misleading and has its own negative connotations–”fee” instead of “tax,” for example.

Such solutions lead author Jon Gertner to an interesting ethical question: is this unfair manipulation? Gertner writes:

[Elke] Weber and David Krantz, two of the co-directors of CRED [Center for Research on Environmental Decisions], have given the matter a good deal of thought, too. ‘People need some guidance over what the right thing to do is,’ Krantz told me. But he said that he was doubtful that you could actually deceive people with decision science into acting in ways that they don’t believe are right. ‘Remember when New York tried to enforce its jaywalking laws?’ he asked. ‘You can’t enforce stuff that people don’t believe should be done.’

I’m with Krantz: what’s the harm in helping people get to an end they want (and I think most people, even if they don’t see it as a priority, would like to halt climate change) by working with their brains instead of against them? Read the article and see what you think.

For companies introducing advanced technologies, one key to credible communications is honesty about the challenges you face—market barriers, infrastructure gaps, and the like. People often think they can head off market skepticism by putting on a brave (problem-free) face, but that can backfire.

• People who understand the challenges may assume that you don’t—or that you don’t have a plan for overcoming them.

• People who don’t understand the problem may develop false expectations, and feel misled when they learn the full story.

• Your silence leaves skeptics free to exaggerate the problem.

Real courage calls for facing up to challenges. Do that publicly, and you’re more likely to be perceived as trustworthy and farsighted. The best approach: bring up known issues yourself, so that you can describe your plan for overcoming them, or show how the positives outweigh the negatives, or talk about why the negatives don’t apply in your case.

An astute letter to the editor led me to go back and read a Feb. 9 San Francisco Chronicle article featuring this choice quote from a UC Berkeley spokesman: “We sacrificed clarity and detail for the sake of brevity.”

When I stopped laughing, it occurred to me that the problem is far more widespread than the university’s statements about a controversial personnel matter. Companies making green and sustainability claims—and even advocacy organizations pushing policies—are often guilty of the same communications crime. And consumers and watchdogs are increasingly seeing through it: four out of five scoring criteria for the Greenwashing Index relate to lack of clarity or detail with intent to mislead.

Where there is intent to mislead, the malefactors deserve our derision. The sad thing is, often there is no such intent—just a poor understanding of what makes communications credible. Organizations may mistakenly assume that everyone knows the background, so they can use shorthand. They may be so sold on the excellence of their product or program that they fail to realize that others need proof points. They may lack clarity themselves on the foundation for their claims. They may believe the false notion that slogans are sufficient to persuade. But whatever the real reason behind their communications vagueness, they’ll be perceived as misleaders.

The upshot: never sacrifice clarity or essential details for anything.