I’ll start by saying I don’t believe my boobs will make policymakers treat climate action with the urgency it requires.

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But I hope that the threat of them might force climate communicators to try something drastically different, before the window closes entirely.

The climate crisis is a scientifically proven, existential threat. It is possible to mitigate and adapt to the very worst consequences, yet doing so is not a global policy priority. Instead, world leaders are fighting wars and building new gas plants to power mega data centres.

The data shows that public awareness isn’t the issue. Research by the 89 Percent Project, a year-long global journalistic initiative, found that nearly 90 per cent of people across 125 countries want stronger climate action. The problem is, data showing awareness doesn’t drive change, it’s not enough to get the people in charge to act.

Humans struggle to engage with threats like climate change. The research shows three key things: we avoid reminders of our own mortality; we struggle to grasp slow-moving threats that could catastrophically worsen; and we can't engage with risks for which we have no personal reference point. Because of this, direct warnings trigger our psychological defence mechanisms, so we shut down, and we keep scrolling.

Better facts, more urgent warnings and more precise data won’t solve that. But entertainment, delivered through trusted voices and parasocial relationships, can bypass the barriers that facts get stuck in.

Steve Bannon understands this. He is arguably the most effective political strategist and communicator of our time, having been CEO of Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and a vice president at Cambridge Analytica. We have little in common from a values perspective, and yet, Steve Bannon has been more influential than any typical left-wing campaigning guide.

Here’s what he said, in 2018, to journalist Michael Lewis. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.”

In case you misread that, he didn't say "make a rigorous evidence-based case." He said, “Flood the zone with sh*t.” That simple quote is what unlocked my understanding of why traditional progressive communications supporting climate action haven’t had the impact we need.

Climate should never have been politicised. Global survival is not left vs right. But the well-documented tactics of Big Oil, fifty years of funding doubt by seeding misinformation, lobbying governments, and paying scientists to discredit its own research, are straight from Steve Bannon’s far-right playbook. The zone has already been flooded. So the job of climate communications has been to try to clean it up.

But cleaning up is way less fun than making a mess.

So instead of cleaning up, I made Headline Newds, a climate comedy porn series, co-produced by Adam McKay's Yellow Dot Studios, starring OnlyFans creators. McKay is the director of The Big Short (with Margot Robbie’s bathtub explanation of finances) and Don’t Look Up (a film literally about how hard it is to get people to care about existential threats), so Yellow Dot Studios was the perfect partner to do this with.

The videos are designed to reach people who would normally scroll past anything with "climate" in the title. But they also reach people through parasocial relationships, using the same dynamics of trust and familiarity that drive creator platforms, so that audiences might actually connect with the facts and get past the instinctive shutdown that existential threats trigger, something climate communications hasn’t prioritised.

The videos are a tongue-in-cheek provocation, a challenge aimed squarely at the climate communications industry, which continues to pour resources into perfect messaging and impact measurement reports while the planet burns. All the while, entertainment spaces that hold the most power for narrative shift are being flooded with Big Oil-funded right-wing propaganda.

So how did that lead me to OnlyFans? The stigma that stops many women from even considering it didn't land on me the same way. I have the privilege to frame it as a creative act or a communications experiment.

But the fact that we live in a world where there is more stigma tied to selling nudes than polluting the planet is exactly the point. It’s why progressive communicators have to try something radically different. If someone like me won't use every tool available, who will?

If we’re serious about this crisis, as the data shows that most are, we must be willing to use every tool available to educate and grab attention, even the ones that make us uncomfortable.

Jessica Riches is a climate-focused filmmaker and narrative strategist, and co-creator of Headline Newds, a short-form series produced with Adam McKay’s Yellow Dot Studios exploring how storytelling shapes public engagement with the climate crisis.

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