Climate politics, communication, and innovation, are mysteries to many in the policy world. The mystery centers on a persistent contradiction: Without urgent, transformational climate action, across the world, human suffering will likely expand to unprecedented levels, and yet, most people seem to feel this is someone else’s problem. 

Apocalyptic language does not motivate spontaneous, economy-wide cooperation. Institutions that do not act, or seem not to know how to act, to address this crisis, lose credibility, even when they are relaying facts, with evidence. Polluters prosper, to the extent that even brazen campaigns of corporate fraud seem to go unpunished and without correction. 

All of this gives people the sense that climate shocks will play out like a state-run, big-money lottery: Someone, somewhere, will have a life-altering experience, but it is not likely to befall them. Their lifelong experience of never having faced catastrophe tells them this is the reasonable way to think, and political infighting and inaction fail to persuade them they are wrong. 

There is no silver bullet, no single solution that can resolve all of the countless problems that flow from large-scale climate disruption. There is, however, a magic formula, which if all of the ingredients are added at the right time, in the right way, can stop global heating from getting worse, help communities build resilience, and secure the future of food systems, so economic development becomes sustainable and resilient prosperity becomes the norm.

The magic formula starts with recognizing that the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 are a common-sense roadmap to functioning societies that intelligently meet the needs of human and planetary health. Any community, region, or nation, that makes real and deliberate progress on most or all of the SDGs will have better quality of life, more efficient investment flows, enhanced access to capital, and more sustainable wellbeing and security. 

It is unreasonable to expect any society that ignores these everyday human priorities to be secure, stable, and prosperous. Increasingly, our turbulent new century reveals that moving backwards on these goals creates instability, unrest, and conflict, while moving forward on them reduces crime, corruption, and threats to human safety and to the security of nation states. 

Powerlessness—including political marginalization and economic disempowerment—is a driver of injustice and of conflict. People who have no hope of progress are often subjected to degrading conditions, forced to flee their homes, to abandon the places where they have family, friends, roots, and memories, making them and their families vulnerable to exploitation and likely to suffer further hardships and injustices. 

All functioning societies depend on favorable climate conditions. Our species has depended, for the entire history of organized societies, on major climate patterns that make our planet habitable and provide for ongoing, reliable agriculture and commerce. Climate disruption is creating wave after wave of shocks and displacements, with ripple effects that undermine everyday opportunity and wellbeing. 

The second part of the magic formula is focused investment and action, at the human scale, to reward communities and businesses that advance the SDGs. Advancing one is good; advancing two, or three, or eight, is much better. Intead of using rhetoric and ideology to convince the public, leaders should take the actions that deliver results in people’s lives, so that whole economies begin to operate on a foundation of climate intelligence. 

This may seem obvious, but political and economic experience in our time suggests even committed leaders struggle to maintain a politics of climate action and sustainable development. The reason, evidence suggests, is that major institutions are organized to externalize harm and cost—onto Nature and onto the most vulnerable. This takes us back to that cycle outlined above, in which failed progress breaks trust and reduces credibility. 

Many of the societal and geopolitical crises of our time relate to the failure to prioritize the human benefits of the SDGs. Too often, governments are compelled to support dominant industries for fear of losing economic momentum; in most cases, those decisions postpone or discard vital opportunities for building new, sustainable and foundational value for future security and wellbeing. 

Municipalities can organize their budgets around the Sustainable Development Goals, intentionally investing to reduce poverty and hunger, improve health and education, promote equality, opportunity, decent work, reduced pollution, clean water, and high-quality public services and infrastructure. By doing this, the program of climate resilient development ceases to be an argument and becomes a framework for everyday business and innovation. 

It is harder to convince people to give up something good than it is to convince them that society must work to address a complex problem. Take the politics out of sustainability and climate action by investing intentionally to improve lives and create new opportunities for well-paid work that further improves lives. 

The third part of the magic formula is to track progress in an integrated and open way. Let everyone develop a better understanding of how life is improving, and let those achieving that progress gain advantage by showing with evidence why their goods and services are preferable. Sustainability metrics are not a hindrance to business; they are a necessary tool for any serious commercial enterprise in our time of climate disruption. 

Two more pieces make the magic formula work: 

Fourth: fit the pieces together and work to fill gaps in sustainable and climate-resilient value chains. Modern industry has been organized around externalization of harm; this means climate-smart innovators often start with a structural disadvantage—most of all that there are not enough of them to form reliable, cost-effective value chains that minimize harm and maximize co-benefits.

Finally: treat the human experience of better practices as the fuel for further progress. Highlight benefits to human health and wellbeing—both because people need and welcome this and because human health impacts are among the most debilitating and fastest growing areas of cost to public budgets. 

Better human experience is a driver of economic efficiency. We need new ways of measuring economic efficiency, because the balance of hidden costs and co-benefits has not been properly tracked before. Let people communicate to policy-makers what they need, what they are seeing in their environment, how specific new business models can be improved and made more stable and reliable. 

So, the magic formula boils down to: 

1. Plan around and pursue the Sustainable Development Goals. 
2. Focus investment and action to achieve real improvements at the human scale. 
3. Track progress, including through the use of new multidimensional metrics, and report openly. 
4. Fill gaps in sustainable value chains. 
5. Treat human experience as a key reservoir of insight; invite and facilitate dialogue. 

To support progress in all of these areas, prioritize community-building landscapes and infrastructure that reinforces the good and disincentivizes the bad. Pope Leo XIV calls for a recommitment to the “magnificent humanity” that artificial intelligence cannot replace, including grace, imagination, relationships, and experience. 

We must start solving problems in an integrated and iterative way, with open dialogue across society, and between societies. Decision-makers must involve as many stakeholders as possible in decisions where it might be tempting to “let leaders lead”. It’s all hands on deck; we need sustainable innovation to be led from everywhere, to speed discovery, adoption, and economies of scale.