18/09/2018

The Big Problem With Climate Storytelling--And How To Fix It

Forbes - Solitaire Townsend*

Harrison Ford against climate change GCAS2018

“Let’s kick this monster’s ass!” roared Harrison Ford at the Global Climate Action Summit yesterday.
Now, as a girl, Indiana Jones and Han Solo got me hooked on storytelling, character and yes, fighting monsters. So, the idea of climate change as a monster story hooked my imagination.
But there’s a problem.
Because if you review most climate messages in the media, then this story actually has two acts: man makes monster, then monster destroys man.
It’s a grand morality tale which neatly fits a primordial structure in our subconscious. This plot sings to something deep within us, a tale we’ve told since we sat around fires weaving myths in the dark. From the Minotaur and the crazed Golems of ancient legend to the morality plays of medieval England and the modern incarnations of rampaging Godzilla born from a nuclear test, or the AI dystopias of the Terminator or the Matrix. We learned this narrative arc in childhood, even if we only discovered the science of carbon dioxide as an adult.
Climate change isn’t presented to the public as plucky rebels against the empire. Instead climate is told as a Frankenstein story: that with our avarice and vanity, we have created the horror that will ultimately defeat us.
The narrative necessity of this climate story is hard to escape. Throughout this summer of ‘hothouse earth,’ and the decades leading up to it, this human hubris story has been the basic blueprint of climate change messaging.
For decades I’ve advised campaigners, policymakers and businesses to oppose this narrative, and tell the story of climate solutions instead. Last year, I asked the global research firm Ipsos to check which message--destruction or solution--was winning. They surveyed adults aged between 16-64 across 26 countries asking if they believed ‘we can deal with climate change’?
The results were encouraging, with the majority of us (56%) reasonably optimistic about solutions, agreeing that we might be able to solve climate change. And I expected the result showing 20% of people are now pessimists, who think we have the ability and technology to deal with the climate threat, but not the willpower to do so. Also, it’s worth mentioning that climate deniers make up only 4% of the global population (although they are remarkably over-represented in online comments sections).
But one finding was profoundly shocking. The survey revealed that 14% of people across the world are now what I call ‘climate fatalists’; who believe that humans are doomed. And as we dug into the data, we found that a staggering number of them are young. Worldwide, 22% of those aged 16-35 believe that it is now too late to stop climate change. In some countries, the number of young fatalists is even higher: with 39% of under-35s in India, 30% in Brazil, 27% in Spain and Sweden, and nearly 30% of young people in the USA believing there is no escape from this monster.
Climate Optimist Chart climateoptimist.org

Why does that matter? Considering the severity of the science, wouldn’t these young fatalists be better dubbed as ‘climate realists,’ preparing for a dystopian future they can’t avoid?
None of us can predict the future, but we can see the mess of the present. Psychologists call fatalism a ‘defeatist performance belief’ and claim it’s disastrous for mental health. Fatalistic attitudes dissuade people from trying to improve their lives, allow anti-social behaviour and even undermine physical health. It seems this climate fatalism may indeed be fatal to wellbeing, ambition and action in the young. And it could also be fatal for climate solutions, because assuming nothing is worth it, means you need do nothing. Fatalism is the enemy of action. And the climate-Frankenstein story is creeping into people’s psyche, sucking the will to act from them.
Today’s tragedy of climate change, with the moral that man is the real monster, is so narratively satisfying it’s become dangerously believable. For many environmentalists, giving up this story would be a wrench. Even those who understand the dangerous psychology of fatalism struggle with their own addiction to the ‘it’s all our own fault, and we deserve what's coming' narrative.
I sometimes feel that we are collectively doing everything we can to make the ending as poignantly noir as possible. It's as if we actually want the horrifying denouement: the narrative necessity driving us to fulfil the tragic role.
And we can’t replace this climate disaster story with a policy, a clear argument or a set of facts. We have science, politics, profit and cultural norms all in tension between the causes and solutions to climate change. A merging and rippling of factual factors like the rough surface of an unquiet sea. But below all of that, there is the deep tide of story. The story must have an ending, it must pass through its scenes, and our collective unconscious won't allow for anything else.
Only a story can beat a story.
So, what has the narrative power to replace the current plot? Climate change can’t be a comedy, a love story or a rags-to-riches tale. And the monster of our making is all too real.
But every 8-year-old knows how to kill a monster. Harry Potter knows it, Dorothy in Oz knows it, Beowulf knows it, James Bond and Sam of the Shire know it. It’s the story that killed Dracula and blew up the Death Star. At its most simple – it’s the hero’s journey.
In every group of script-writers or novelists, Joseph Campbell’s 1949 tome The Hero With A Thousand Faces is treated as a totemic icon. After a life dedicated to researching mythology, Campbell set out the ‘meta-myth’ of mankind. Simply put, this is a journey where courage, friendship and guile are pitched against overwhelming odds. This ‘overcoming the monster’ story often works best when a new generation, the youth, rally against the threat created (or allowed) by the old. You have told, read and watched this story all your life. The small against the big. The downtrodden against the overlord. Plucky humanity against the growing darkness.
If climate change were an asteroid, alien invasion or Hans Gruber type baddie we’d know exactly what to throw at it (Bruce Willis in all cases). The narrative wheels would start turning as we slotted ourselves neatly into a heroic plot track.
This is the new climate story we desperately need. Of overcoming the odds rather than being overwhelmed by them.
The story starts when we find the courage to believe in something worth fighting for: holding onto hope even in the face of unimaginable odds. To say ‘I have a dream’ or ‘it always feels impossible until it’s done’. Then we harness the power of friendship and alliances. We love a plot twist where enemies become allies. And for climate change, we’re going to need unexpected allies indeed.
And the magic elixir of the heroic story has always been guile. Tricking the monster, inventing a solution, spotting a fatal flaw and exploiting it. From Indiana Jones feigning zombiedom in the Temple of Doom, John McClane taping a gun to his back, or Eowyn revealing her gender on the battlefields of Gondor. Heroes invent and misdirect their way around unsurmountable odds. This is the most crucial part of our new climate story – and we’ve already found that magical way to trick ourselves out of the jaws of doom. Electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines are just the start of the innovation explosion coming from carbon constraint. Renewable energy is the ultimate cheat of the climate monsters’ plans (not least because our inventiveness is a more believable ploy than our self-sacrifice.)
We must teach our children this new ‘heroes’ journey’ story of climate change. And it’s not a small story, nor a short one. This is an epic. We face a gargantuan, enormous and near impossible task. We need our Henry V before the battle of Agincourt declaiming, “We few, we happy few”, Frodo holding the ring and nervously offering, “I will take it, though I do not know the way” and Ripley rising in her rig and shouting, “Get away from her, you bitch!”.
We need swashbuckling daring, bravery and courage, guile and desperate invention, unlikely friendships and alliances forged in fire.
I invite you to become the hero of this climate journey, rather than a doomed bit-part player. Instead of grief, we need your grit and bravado.
So that solving climate change becomes the greatest story of the 21st century.

*Solitaire Townsend is co-founder of the global change agency, Futerra, and author of The Happy Hero - How To Change Your Life By Changing The World.

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