✅ Why public relations practice must stare down the climate emergency

Public relations must abandon the fantasy of control and learn to communicate with honesty, humility and depth as climate collapse accelerates.

The science is clear. Tipping points are being breached, ecosystems are collapsing and yet the global north continues to cling to the twin myths of control and growth.

But what’s public relations doing about it? According to an essay by Johanna Fawkes in Public Relations Inquiry, not nearly enough. She argues that it is, in fact, part of the problem.

This isn’t a plea for better ESG messaging or more carbon-neutral campaigns. It’s a deeper philosophical and practical challenge. How does public relations respond to the potential breakdown of society due to climate change?

The role of public relations in the climate crisis

Fawkes sets out a critique of public relations as a cultural force that has helped normalise denial, delay and distraction. Public relations practice has promoted greenwashing and amplified the performative veneer of corporate sustainability. It has contributed to a culture obsessed with optimism and spin.

Public relations practice, she argues, promotes “communication as performance” rather than genuine engagement, leaving us ill-equipped to deal with what’s coming.

The Deep Adaptation Agenda, developed by sustainability scholar Jem Bendell provides a counternarrative. It doesn’t deal in corporate resilience as bounceback or empty climate optimism. It starts from the premise that collapse is likely and asks how we adapt ethically and emotionally in response.

Bendell is an emeritus professor of sustainability leadership at the University of Cumbria

The four questions every communicator must confront

The heart of the Deep Adaptation Agenda lies in four questions - each one is a challenge to public relations practice:

1. Resilience - What do we value and how do we preserve it?
   Not bounceback clichés, but honest preparation for food shortages, infrastructure breakdown and social upheaval. Public relations practice has a role here, not in spin, but in helping people and organisations prepare meaningfully.

2. Relinquishment - What must we let go of?
   This might mean dropping clients or industries that actively harm the planet. It could mean letting go of the myth that growth equals success. Or, as Fawkes suggests, quitting the very jobs that enable ecological harm.

3. Restoration – What can we bring back?
   Values like stewardship, care and humility. Communications practices rooted in listening and reciprocity, not just messaging. Think indigenous knowledge systems, relational ethics and spiritual ecology.

4. Reconciliation – With whom must we make peace?
   This question moves into profound territory - with each other, with nature and with the consequences of our own complicity. Public relations needs to stop trying to control the narrative and start facilitating collective healing.

What does this mean for practice?

Fawkes’ essay is a challenging read. She doesn’t offer easy answers, neat solutions or a toolkit. And that’s the point.

Deep Adaptation is about meaning, not messaging. It calls on practitioners to look inwards, acknowledge grief, uncertainty and fear and communicate not just for reputation but for survival.

This work already has precedents such as agencies refusing fossil fuel work, campaigners turning down high-paying but unethical clients and educators pushing for decolonised, ethics-led curricula. Deep Adaptation offers a unifying, human-centred framework that joins these dots.

It also insists that we cannot hide behind technocratic language or hopeful scenarios. As Fawkes writes, “It is a responsible act to communicate this analysis now and invite people to support each other in exploring the implications.”

Fawkes has made a strong and assertive argument. The response is up to all of us in practice.

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Reference

Fawkes, J. (2025). A deep adaptation agenda for public relations: Facing climate collapse. Public Relations Inquiry, 14(2), 127–150. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2046147X251325574