Climate storytelling must inspire action

Following a few years of headlines on climate change, the ozone layer, and nations pledging millions of dollars to offset the ensuing challenges, concern about environmental changes seems to have dialled down worldwide.
It is no longer trending news, and even stories of successful transitions to green energy are not being highlighted enough.
Perhaps it is exhaustion with keeping up with one story for a long while. It could also be that individuals see the futility of making good personal choices.
But nature does not follow our news cycle. Data on climate change continues to be alarming: Global temperatures continue to break records, glaciers retreat, and weather patterns grow more erratic.
An article in 'The Atlantic' suggests that part of the reason is that research funding itself has reduced drastically: “From 1980 to 2014, conservation research papers based on fieldwork dropped by 20 per cent whereas research done by data analysts and modellers rolling around in cubicles increased by at least sixfold.'
They go on to suggest that actually being involved with communities, villages and areas that are impacted by climate change in real time would add a sense of urgency.
Field-based research would enable the tracking of local challenges and arrive at region-specific solutions. Large, AI-based models of climate change may be useful, but they do not focus on the everyday implications of flooding, drought, or increased heat.
This matters for more than methodological reasons. Models and satellite data, of course, are indispensable as they let us see patterns across continents and project decades ahead.
But they also speak in a language that does not immediately connect with people. For example, they do not tell us what a third consecutive failed harvest means for a village, how a week of fifty-degree heat alters the working day of a construction labourer, or why a particular wadi floods when it never did before.
The everyday implications of flooding, drought and rising heat are lived locally, and they are best understood locally.
A related part of the problem lies in how we tell the story. Environmental narratives have often been framed as an upcoming catastrophe, just like in the movies. We are constantly being told that time is running out, but we also see the world carrying on in the same way. This leads to information fatigue, which is different from apathy.
What is needed is a different kind of storytelling, one that connects the disastrous nature of the predicament with success stories that are motivating and inspiring.
For example, solar and wind energy are now among the cheapest sources of new electricity in many parts of the world. Countries that once depended solely on hydrocarbons are investing in renewable capacity, and also focusing on diversification as a necessity.
These are significant shifts, but they rarely make news because gradual success is less dramatic than sudden disaster.
This is where art comes in. Stories are great ways to share knowledge, especially when that knowledge is one that we are trying to avoid confronting.
Stories are also ways in which larger, more abstract ideas can be shared in bite-sized ways that are immediate, attractive and powerful. So are stories of success which exude positivity and hope.
If environmental concerns have become abstract, and are being ignored because of the way in which they are shared, part of the remedy is to share the evidence more positively. While data can tell us that the planet is warming, people and their stories tell us what that warming could mean and how it could be potentially averted.
Climate change is a reality, but how that reality is communicated and shared will make all the difference in how it will be solved.