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In the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, Justin Bibb was living in a tight, one-bedroom apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. He couldnt open his windows because his home was an old office building converted to residential unitsnot exactly conducive to physical and mental well-being in the middle of a global crisis. So he sought refuge elsewhere: a large green space, down near the lakefront, where he could stroll. Unfortunately, Bibb said, thats not the case for many of our residents in the city of Cleveland. A native of Cleveland, Bibb was elected the 58th mayor of the city in 2021. Immediately after taking office, he took inspiration from the 15-minute city concept of urban design, an idea that envisions people reaching their daily necessitieswork, grocery stores, pharmacieswithin 15 minutes by walking, biking, or taking public transit. That reduces dependence on cars, and also slashes carbon emissions and air pollution. In Cleveland, Bibbs goal is to put all residents within a 10-minute walk of a green space by the year 2045, by converting abandoned lots to parks and other efforts. Cleveland is far from alone in its quest to adapt to a warming climate. As American cities have grown in size and population and gotten hotter, theynot the federal governmenthave become crucibles for climate action: Cities are electrifying their public transportation, forcing builders to make structures more energy efficient, and encouraging rooftop solar. Together with ambitious state governments, hundreds of cities large and small are pursuing climate action plansdocuments that lay out how they will reduce emissions and adapt to extreme weatherwith or without support from the feds. Clevelands plan, for instance, calls for all its commercial and residential buildings to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. For local leaders, climate action has grown all the more urgent since the Trump administration has been boosting fossil fuels and threatening to sue states to roll back environmental regulations. Last month, Republicans in the House passed a budget bill that would end nearly all the clean energy tax credits from the Biden administrations signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. Because Donald Trump is in the White House again, its going to be up to mayors and governors to really enact and sustain the momentum around addressing climate change at the local level, said Bibb, who formerly chaired Climate Mayors, a bipartisan group of nearly 350 mayors. City leaders can move much faster than federal agencies, and are more in-tune with what their people actually want, experts said. Theyre on the ground and theyre hearing from their residents every day, so they have a really good sense of what the priorities are, said Kate Johnson, regional director for North America at C40 Cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors fighting climate change. You see climate action really grounded in the types of things that are going to help people. Shifting from a reliance on fossil fuels to clean energy isnt just about reducing a citys carbon emissions, but about creating jobs and saving moneya tangible argument that mayors can make to their people. Bibb said a pilot program in Cleveland that helped low- to moderate-income households get access to free solar panels ended up reducing their utility bills by 60%. The biggest concern for Americans right now isnt climate change, Bibb added. Its the cost of living, and so we have to marry these two things together, he said. I think mayors are in a very unique position to do that. To further reduce costs and emissions, cities like Seattle and Washington, D.C. are scrambling to better insulate structures, especially affordable housing, by installing double-paned windows and better insulation. In Boston last year, the city government started an Equitable Emissions Investment Fund, which awards money for projects that make buildings more efficient or add solar panels to their roofs. We are in a climate where energy efficiency remains the number one thing that we can do, said Oliver Sellers-Garcia, commissioner of the environment and Green New Deal director in the Boston government. And there are so many other comfort and health benefits from being in an efficient, all-electric environment. To that end, cities are deploying loads of heat pumps, hyper-efficient appliances that warm and cool a space. New York City, for instance, is spending $70 million to install 30,000 of the appliances in its public housing. The ultimate goal is to have as many heat pumps as possible running in energy-efficient homesalong with replacing gas stoves with induction rangesand drawing electricity from renewables. Metropolises like Los Angeles and Pittsburgh are creating new green spaces, which reduce urban temperatures and soak up rainwater to prevent flooding. A park is a prime example of multisolving: one intervention that fixes a bunch of problems at once. Another is deploying electric vehicle chargers in underserved neighborhoods, as Cleveland is doing, and making their use free for residents. This encourages the adoption of those vehicles, which reduces carbon emissions and air pollution. That, in turn, improves public health in those neighborhoods, which tend to have a higher burden of pollution than richer areas. Elizabeth Sawin, director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, said that these efforts will be more important than ever as the Trump administration cuts funding for health programs. If health care for poor children is going to be depletedwith, say, Medicaid under threatcities cant totally fix that, Sawin said. But if they can get cleaner air in cities, they can at least have fewer kids who are struggling from asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses. All this workbuilding parks, installing solar panels, weatherizing buildingscreates jobs, both within a city and in surrounding rural areas. Construction workers commute in, while urban farms tap rural growers for their expertise. And as a city gets more of its power from renewables, it can benefit counties far away: The largest solar facility east of the Mississippi River just came online in downstate Illinois, providing so much electricity to Chicago that the citys 400 municipal buildings now run entirely on renewable power. The economic benefits and the jobs arent just necessarily accruing to the citieswhich might be seen as big blue cities, Johnson said. Theyre buying their electric school buses from factories in West Virginia, and theyre building solar and wind projects in rural areas. So cities arent just preparing themselves for a warmer future, but helping accelerate a transition to renewables and spreading economic benefits across the American landscape. We as elected officials have to do a better job of articulating how this important part of public policy is connected to the everyday lived experience, Bibb said. Unfortunately, my party has done a bad job of that. But I think as mayors, we are well positioned to make that case at the local level. Matt Simon, Grist This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
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E-Commerce
For many, the most challenging part of job hunting in 2025 isn’t the competition; it’s the silence. People are applying to more jobs than ever but hearing back less. When a response doesn’t come, it’s easy to feel defeated. You may even begin to suspect that the job was never real in the first placeand in some cases thats true. In new LinkedIn research, nearly half of job seekers said that not hearing back when they apply to a job is a top pain point in their search, and most said the application process feels unclear. More than half of applicants reported hearing back from less than 5% of jobs they applied to, and 69% said the process lacks transparency. It’s not surprising, then, that the majority of job seekers are feeling stuck. When responses are rare, candidates increasingly question whether the jobs theyre applying to are even real. That’s where the term ghost jobs comes in. This expression has been growing in prominence in recent years, and we are seeing an increase in mentions of ghosting across LinkedIn as well. Ghost jobs are job listings that some companies post with no intention of hiring. More than a third of job seekers say ghost jobs are a major pain point. While ghost jobs are essentially fake job listings, weve seen job seekers assume the number of ghost jobs is growing because theyre not hearing back from the companies they are applying to. In reality, its not that straightforward, and part of what’s driving this perception is silence. When job seekers apply and never hear back, it’s easy to assume theyve submitted to a ghost job. In todays competitive market, its harder than ever for job seekers to tell what’s real, what’s active, and where time is best spent. But there are ways to decipher whether a job is real and improve your chances of landing the right role. Apply with more confidence First, make sure youre doing your due diligence when it comes to vetting a job listing. Beware of any job posting that appears too good to be true, text messages offering job interviews, or listings that require payment up front. These are clues that the job may not be what it seems. At LinkedIn, weve recently added new hiring insights offering new details on job listings, such as a companys typical response time and whether a job post is verified, so you can apply knowing information about the company or job poster has been confirmed. Build a trusted network One effective way to avoid silence in the job search is by leveraging referrals and recommendations from your network. When someone in your network refers you for a position, it can elevate your application. In a LinkedIn consumer survey from March, 93% of hiring managers said referrals are important because they come with a trusted recommendation. If you have a first- or second-degree connection at a company youre interested in, dont be afraid to reach out and ask if they can refer you for an open position. Share what youre looking for You can also try posting proactively about what sort of opportunities youre open to. Close to a third of professionals shared that posting to their network about what theyre looking for in a new role was helpful in making new connections or receiving introductions. Ghost jobs make the process harder, but there are ways to protect your time and focus on what’s real. Keep going. The right role is out there. And we are rooting for you.
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E-Commerce
When Dustin Mulvaney teaches a class in environmental law at a California university, he always asks a simple question: Whos heard of the Inflation Reduction Act? Over the last three years, he says, only around 10 students out of hundreds have raised their hands. His students aren’t alone. When the IRA passed in 2022, it was the largest climate investment in American history. But while climate nerds may know the law well, most people know little about what it includes. In one survey last year, only 10% of Americans who said climate change was a very important issue to them had heard much about what the Biden administration had done to try to tackle it. Another survey found that around a quarter of voters had never heard of the IRA at all. I consider myself to be a highly engaged voter, says Britton Taylor, a brand strategist with more than two decades of experience working with big brands. I take in tons of political media. And whatever Democrats did to message this or talk about climate, even I didn’t see it. Or if they did do stuff, nothing resonated with me. The laws climate ideas are broadly popularmost people support extended tax credits for electric cars, incentives for American solar panel factories, and a slew of other programs designed to slash U.S. emissions 40% by 2030. Most Americans are also worried about climate change and how its affecting their lives, from extreme weather to home insurance rates. But the IRA was a marketing failure. Now its on the chopping block, as the Senate considers a bill that would eliminate or phase out almost all of itdespite the fact that it has benefitted red states and districts the most. The problems started with the name The bill was originally called Build Back Betternot a particularly creative name, since it had been used multiple times in the past after disasters like Hurricane Sandy. But it captured the basic idea: as the country recovered from the pandemic, the right policies could help the economy recover while also cutting pollution and improving workers rights. Then came Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator whose vote was necessary for the bill to pass. Manchin wanted a name focused on inflation. The audience we were marketing to was a single man, says Holly Burke, vice president of communications for the nonprofit Evergreen Action. The bill was renamed the Inflation Reduction Act. US President Joe Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act into law. From left, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.VA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), and Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL). [Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty Images] Critics said the name was misleading. Manchin was right that voters cared about inflation, but the bill hadnt been designed to directly address it. Models from the Congressional Budget Office and Penn Wharton projected that it would have little short-term impact on inflation. And while it would help reduce the price of energy and could help with inflation over time, the name didnt really reflect what the bill was about. It also set up the wrong conversation, some critics say. The Inflation Reduction Act was, as a name, possibly one of the silliest self-owns I can recall, says Anat Shenker-Osorio, a progressive strategist who does public opinion research and message testing. It basically forced Democratic politicians to run around for an entire cycle saying inflation, inflation, inflation. The point was inflation reduction. But people dont listen to details, and youre literally saying the word inflation over and over again, thereby reminding them of their pain point. Inflation did decrease, largely driven by other factors like Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, and the easing of pandemic-related supply chain disruption. But people couldnt see those impacts in their own lives. Americans struggle with math, and many of them dont understand inflation to be a rate of change, says Shenker-Osorio. So when theyre told inflation is reduced and prices are not reduced, they say, I dont know what youre talking about. I go to the grocery store every week. Theres no inflation reduction.’ So, theres a disconnect. Voters tend to trust Republicans more on economic issues, whether or not thats justified. So Democrats may have been better served by framing the bill around something other than the economy, Shenker-Osorio says. If, for illustration, they had named this the God Bless America bill or We Love America Act,’ suddenly were having a conversation about what does it mean to love America, to do right by America? That allows you to talk about things like ensuring we have clean, renewable energy and that the places you loved to go with your grandparents as a kid will be the places you take your grandkids in the future. What you have to do is figure out, what is my brand advantage? What is the conversation where voters trust me most, regard me most highly? It also didnt help that the acronym IRA already had multiple associations, including retirement accounts and the Irish Republican Army. When the bill first passed, I Googled something about it, and all I got was information about the Troubles in Ireland, says Burke. I was like, I could have seen that coming. (And while laws often dont have catchy names, IRA is particularly dull.) Other laws have been rebranded after passing. The Affordable Care Act, for example, became widely known as Obamacare. (The name was initially used pejoratively, though the Obama administration eventually embraced it.) But no one attempted to find a different way to talk about the IRA. The complexity didnt help The law, at 273 pages long, isnt easy to concisely describe. There are at least 21 different tax provisions for clean energy alone, for example. It also goes beyond energy and climate to include things like lowering the cost of medicine. Some of the programs also take time to roll out, making the direct benefits to voters harder to communicate. The tax credits for consumers were also omewhat hard to marketyou probably don’t think about getting a discount on an efficient water heater until your current water heater breaks. And if you do eventually buy an appliance and get a tax credit, you might not realize where it came from. It also might not be obvious that a particular factory opened in your town because of the law. You have to connect a lot of dots to get from we passed this tax incentive, that had this additional bonus credit that incentivized companies to invest in your community, and create that job, Burke says. Thats a lot of leaps to make for an average voter who does not care about tax credits. A graphic explaining the Inflation Reduction Act, released by the White House in 2023. [Image: Biden White House] Theres a lesson, she argues, for different policy design. Thats not to say that we shouldnt do abstract, wonky policies that make real impacts on peoples lives, she says. But if you want to have a politically durable victory, I think making sure that youre incorporating things that are really understandable to the general public, and theres a clear line from point A to point B: the government did this thing, and heres how it supported my community. Some programs like this were in the original bill but eliminated, she says. For example, there was a clean energy performance standard that would have required utilities across the country to get to 80% clean energy by 2030. That’s “a more clear cut and intuitive way to understand how the Biden admin was delivering on climate than something with a fuzzier impact like ‘hundreds of billions in investments into clean energy,'” she says. “Both of those policies are good, to be clear, but saying we’re getting our entire grid to 80% clean electricity is a more immediately understandable impact.” Boring stats don’t sell ideas The Biden administration and supporters often focused on abstract statistics, like the fact that the IRA could create or support more than a million jobs nationwide. Those types of messages dont really land. The more conceptual and distant it is, the worse it does, says John Marshall, a marketing executive who left the corporate world to launch Potential Energy Coalition, a nonprofit focused on climate. The more local and human it is, the better it does. Creativity was also often missing in the messaging, which was typically driven by political consultants rather than creatives. I thought about this a lot as someone who works in the more traditional advertising and branding world, as opposed to someone who’s anchored in the political space, says Taylor, the brand strategist. I feel like Democrats have fallen into a rut in terms of the way that they message . . . Like, we have to explain stuff to people. Its just boring and it does not resonate with people, especially young people. Being boring comes at a steep cost, as marketing studies have proven. When youre dull, its both ineffective and expensive, Taylor says. In the political context, being dull is extremely perilous for the Democrats, if you think about what’s at stake in terms of our democracy and our republic. You end up having to spend a lot more in media dollars in order to achieve the same amount of effectiveness than you would have with more compelling campaigns. There are exceptions. Potential Energy Coalition, for example, ran an ad for clean school buses that features a grimy bus driver handing out cigarettes to childrennot boring. But Taylor argues that the Democratic Party would do better if it worked with a wide swath of experienced marketers. “There’s been this firewall between the creative community and the political community,” he says. “I really wish that firewall would come down, because I think there’s so many people in the world of advertising that would love to help. Every brief that I get from brands now is, how do you make a dent in culture? Or how do you get talked about? It’s all about generating fame for your brand like press, earned media. That’s what we’re good at, or at least the really talented people in advertising. And I wish more of those people could get back in the political world.” Climate wasn’t the focus Most messaging about the IRA focused on economic benefits, rather than climate. The economic benefits are significant, to be clear. The tax credits for consumers, for example, help pay for appliances that can slash energy bills. “I think part of the conversation that we collectively should be having right now is, what are the best ways to reduce energy costs for American families?” says Ari Matusiak, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Rewiring America. “An obvious way to do that is by people having more efficient machines in their homes that use less energy and deliver better performance. And that’s exactly what these tax credits are helping to pay for.” Surveys showed that Americans were worried about daily costs. That’s obviously a very real concern. Still, that doesn’t mean that the dominant messaging should have necessarily been about inflation or the high cost of living, says Shenker-Osorio. “You have to decide what the conversation is going to be about,” she says. Climate change ranks lower when people are forced to compare it with the economy. Still, Americans do care about climate impacts, and they respond to strong messages about it. “We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of tests on this,” says Marshall from Potential Energy Coalition. “There is a latent, easily [activated] concern in the minds of almost all citizens that something is wrong with the planet and that we should be addressing it. That is a concern that touches people of all political persuasions. And so when you message the fact that we need to stop that from happening, it is very motivating.” The dire threat to the planet is really the main reason for people to support clean energy. “It’s a pretty major reasonit’s actually bigger than the other things,” Marshall says. “And so we are chickening out of our big ‘why.'” As Potential Energy Coalition tests different messages, the most effective are about the direct consequences of climate change on people’s lives. “The messaging needs to move from morality to materiality,” he says. “It sholdn’t be something one does because of my particular values. It should be something that one gets behind because it materially affects their lives . . . how it’s affecting your life, your kids, your farm, your insurance costs.” In the group’s testing, the least effective messages were promises of economic benefit. How much does marketing matter for policy? Even if most Americans don’t know the details of what’s in the IRA, the incentives have been popular. “We’ve seen massive uptake of the various programs,” says Matusiak. Taxpayers claimed more than $8 billion in credits on their 2023 returnsmore than twice what the government had projected. Millions of people have used a tool that Rewiring America created to help households calculate how much they could save through tax credits and rebates. Companies invested hundreds of billions in new factories to make electric cars, solar panels, and other clean energy tech (though billions in planned investments have now been cancelled since Trump changed the direction of federal policy). The majority of the investment in clean manufacturing went to red states, despite the fact that no Republican voted for the legislation. If the IRA’s initiatives had stayed in place as long as they were intended to10 yearsit wouldn’t matter so much whether most people knew that they existed. If you found out about a tax credit through a contractor, or TurboTax, and didn’t know where it originated, you’d still be able to use it. But if voters still aren’t making the connection between the programs and how they benefit their own lives, they probably won’t feel motivated to advocate for them now that they’re under threat. And name recognition isn’t enough on its owneven Medicare is at risk in the current version of the budget bill. But arguably, better marketing could have helped. The biggest hurdle in marketing something like the IRA or another climate policy isn’t the exact message, Marshall says. Even though some messages perform better than others, climate messaging in general resonates. But it’s harder to make sure that those messages are actually reaching voters. “The major challenge on climate legislation is a distribution challenge rather than a messaging challenge,” he says. “We don’t have nearly enough spokespeople, we don’t have nearly enough faces of the movement. We need a lot more people talking about it.” Political will for climate action could easily grow. “We, the citizens, haven’t changed,” he says. “The government changed . . . but the regular people haven’t changed. They’re getting the same limited amount of information. They still care a lot about this issue, and they’re phenomenally moveable on the issue.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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