What pop culture can tell us about climate adaptation

Alone’s respect for limits, Bake Off’s focus on seasonality, Bluey’s love of nature and TikTok’s capsule wardrobes show how popular culture can spread positive messages of climate action.

A celebrity spaceflight launched in 2025 briefly achieved what climate policy rarely does: a shared public reckoning with excess, inequality and planetary limits.

As “collective rage” over Katy Perry’s brief foray into space “broke the internet,” Catherine Kerr, Manager of Adaptation Knowledge with the NSW Government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, had a clear thought: “Maybe there is hope for humanity after all.”

People were expressing the senselessness of colonising Mars when our own planet is in peril, Cath said to a packed crowd at AdaptNSW Forum 2025. The moment was a signal in a much larger system, she suggested.

“I think we’re watching climate grief and climate anxiety leak out through pop culture.” Cath pointed to survivalist show Alone, apocalyptic films House of Dynamite and Leave the World Behind, and nostalgia for 1990s analogue hobbies like camping, knitting and bread-making. “The idea of societal collapse is creeping into the conversation,” she said.

Why climate fades from the frame

Cath moderated a thought-provoking session with two specialist communicators: Fireside Agency’s Managing Director Ben Hart and Focus Group’s Strategy Director Ellie Moss. The topic? What does popular culture already tell us about public sentiment and how might those cues be translated into genuine climate action?

If climate change is the defining issue of our time, Cath asked, why isn’t it “omnipresent” in popular culture? 

For Ben, structural and cultural issues are at play. 

One factor is the gradual “hollowing out” of mainstream media and “de-resourcing of specialist climate reporting”. The result is what Ben described as “event-based decontextualisation”. Extreme weather events are covered as isolated incidents, stripped of the broader climatic patterns that connect them. 

“No one at the local RSL is talking about the SDGs [UN Sustainable Development Goals]. How do we mainstream this? How do we meet people where they are?”

Ben Hart, Managing Director, Fireside Agency

Compounding this is a growing hesitancy within newsrooms themselves. Faced with persistent backlash and politicised responses, some journalists are “self-censoring” by describing a climate-related flood or heatwave as a weather event, rather than risk “heaps of angry emails from people”.

A collision of concerns

Working with the NSW Government on a longitudinal study on attitudes to climate change that began in 2020, Ellie described a series of “massive shifts… and not all of them positive”. 

The third wave of research in 2025 revealed cost of living, housing affordability and health had overtaken climate as people’s dominant concerns. 

In 2022, 40% of respondents said climate change was “extremely important” to them personally. In 2025, that figure had fallen to 32%. 

Many respondents are moving into more ambivalent territory, but Ellie cautioned against reading this as climate apathy. Instead, she pointed to the limits of cognitive and emotional capacity under pressure. “The headline takeaway,” she said, “is that a lot of people just can’t think about climate change right now in the same way they could back in 2022.” 

What is striking, Ellie noted, was that broader concern about sustainability remained steady at around 40%. This suggests it is the language and framing of climate change, rather than the underlying values, that has lost mindshare.

Ellie also referred to other research suggesting a substantial level of private concern about ecosystem collapse – concern that remains unspoken in public, even as it reshapes how people see their future.

Where climate cuts through

If climate change is facing what Ben described as a “cultural visibility problem”, what might help close that gap?

Marketing and advertising, the panel acknowledged, have played a role in driving unsustainable consumption. But they are also disciplines built around capturing consumer attention.

The same principles of advertising can be applied to climate action, Ellie said, such as speaking to common human motivators, finding emotional connection, and choosing the right message for the right channel.

“We're missing a connection between… the power of brand and marketing over social norms. Social norms are ultimately what drive a huge amount of behaviour change.”

Ellie Moss, Strategy Director, Focus Group

Ben argued that effectiveness depends on the messenger as much as it does on the message. In a digital media environment shaped by personalities, “people tend to trust people”, not organisations. 

Language matters too. While scientific accuracy is essential, it is not always sufficient. Some terms – including phrases like “climate emergency” – can switch audiences off before a conversation begins, Ellie said. People with conservative values are more likely to respond to terms that capture values like clean air, protecting family and community, job creation, and energy or food security. 

Ben pointed to the power of humour to cut through a crowded information landscape. Deploying humour makes a message more memorable, and more likely to be shared.

The work of activist group Led By Donkeys is instructive. Satirical installations – including one imagining world leaders and billionaires queuing for a rocket to Mars instead of Katy Perry and her female space invaders – use humour to question power, planetary responsibilities and misplaced priorities.

“If we can understand pop culture and how people are actually thinking and feeling, then we might be able to better understand how we can communicate with people.”

Catherine Kerr, Manager of Adaptation Knowledge, NSW Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Closing the session, Cath Kerr returned to the larger cultural signal. Popular culture shows that climate anxiety is present, even if it isn’t always expressed in policy language. “People are concerned about these issues,” she said. “There’s a huge opportunity there. The question is: do we take it?”