Climate policy wonk and nationally-acclaimed blogger Joseph Romm’s latest book is about rhetoric. It’s a handbook for environmentalists, climate scientists, politicos, and anybody else trying to do good in the world. Romm wants us to get better at speaking, listening and changing minds. He wants us to grab attention with the most “eye-popping headlines, catchy catch-phrases, and sweetest tweets.”
Why listen to Romm on rhetoric? He didn’t win his blogger celebrity by sticking to the communications norms of his fellow physicists—or fellow policy wonks for that matter! (With all due respect to both groups.)
He knows how to get traffic and communicate complicated concepts in compelling ways and he attributes his success to his thoughtful use of rhetoric’s figures of speech, from repetition and rhyme to metaphor and even sarcasm.
Of course, rhetoric gets a bad rap these days as spin, big words, or hot air. But, as Romm points out, rhetoric is simply language intelligence—the art of putting language to work to get attention and appeal to both the heart and mind with words. And anybody who regularly uses words to convey meaning can get better at it when we embrace “the secrets of…the twenty-five century-old art of persuasion, whose masters include Jesus, Shakespeare, the…Bible, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Bill Clinton, and…song writers form Bob Dylan to Lady Gaga.”
I recommend the book. Meanwhile, here’s a snapshot of some of the key lessons.