Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
It’s time to focus on positive climate stories
LET me tell you a story.
Picture this: over the past 60 years, incredible scientists have dedicated their lives to trying to convince everyone about the effects of pollution and a heating planet.
Millions of children all over the world took to the streets in 2018 and started the Fridays for Future movement, protesting to get world leaders to sit up and listen.
Pacific Islanders, Indigenous Peoples, communities of colour and Global Majority – anyone who's lived through extreme weather events – have been telling us for decades that we are destroying our homes and communities.
And it has been working. Concern about climate change is going up by 17% compared with a decade ago in the UK.
Yet, it feels like nothing has changed.
Governments keep using the excuse that we need to prioritise the economy.
Businesses keep using the excuse that people don't want to buy green products.”
Public willingness to take action is flat-lining.
Why?
Clever storytelling, legal clout and financial and political influence – some of the best campaigners and PR experts have been bought by the bad guys and used to spin up the tightest grip across every piece of critical infrastructure that keeps modern life working.
The insight?
Getting people to care isn't enough.
“No one wakes up in the morning and says it's a great day for decarbonisation.”
The iconic words are from John Marshall, a climate marketer who's run three billion ads on what it takes to hit a home run when talking about climate change.
Last year, I was interviewing John for the Climate Curious podcast when he revealed the number one message that is most effective across all demographics: love.
Fast forward to October, I was working with Dr Kris De Meyer on his TEDxLondon Talk when he shared the best analogy I've heard: “Think of doctors and nurses on the floor of an emergency department. Because of their training and their professional expertise, they instinctively and intuitively know how to deal with that endless stream of emergencies that is coming through the door. There is a person having a heart attack over there. Someone is bleeding heavily. They just know how to respond to that.
“Now, if you put me, as a layperson without any medical training, on that floor in the hospital, I'll be running around like a headless chicken. I would not know what to do in that situation.
“And the problem is that when it comes to climate change, most of us are like the headless chicken.
“Most of us are like the lay person on the floor of an emergency department.”
It is becoming increasingly clear that we are facing a massive climate storytelling challenge.
Last year's Edelman's Special Report: Trust and Climate Change found that “fear-based communication may have gotten people to pay attention to climate change, but we need optimism to take action”.
While we've spent decades getting people to care, those who want to keep trashing the planet for profit have used the same narratives to make people fearful, worried and pessimistic.
What now?
I believe we need to tell stories of winning.
Stories of how we've used solutions to come together to make people's lives better.
It doesn't matter how much you care or if you don't know what to do and how to do it.
How have parents made councils reduce speed limits and traffic near schools to reduce air pollution and rates of asthma?
How has the world come together to heal the ozone layer?
How have we supercharged the global transition to electric vehicles?
How did Ecuador vote to halt oil drilling in Amazonian national park?
Like Kris De Meyer told us in his TEDxLondon Talk, being on the floor of a medical emergency room and being shouted at to “do something” doesn't make you any more able to perform open-heart surgery if you're not a surgeon.
“If we don't know how to overcome the barriers that exist in the system and other people, then no amount of caring more can lead to doing more,” Kris says.
We want people to know and believe that the narrative we're being sold by the fossil fuel industry, by global financial institutions and by governments is wrong.
We need to give people the confidence and optimism to challenge the status quo.
We need to believe we can win. By seeing how we have won.