Climate coverage is 38% below its 2021 peak. US broadcast networks aired just 505 minutes of climate coverage across all of 2025. Meanwhile, PragerU spent $29.4M on advertising last year alone. Climate-sceptic content on X grew 82% between 2021 and 2024.

This is not a comms problem. It is a systems problem - and philanthropy needs to reckon with it.

At the Philea Forum in Copenhagen, I heard the same contradiction in almost every session: "Artists aren't agents of change" / "Cultural strategy is more important than ever." Both things can feel true. Neither position on its own is useful.

I've written a long-form piece working through what a serious philanthropic response to this actually looks like - drawing on Donella Meadows, More in Common's audience segmentation research, two decades of Doc Society's practice, and the storytelling from the past 18 months that shows what's possible when investment is bold and diverse.

The short version: culture is the highest-leverage intervention point in the system. The disinformation industry already knows this. The question is whether philanthropy will act like it does too. 

The piece covers:

• Why there is no silver bullet - and why that's not a reason for paralysis
• What portfolio logic for climate storytelling actually looks like
• The distribution infrastructure opportunity hiding in plain sight
• Why funders' discomfort with cultural investment is rational — and why it matters anyway