Fact and Fiction: the Role of Storytelling in the Climate Crisis
In politics and media, there has been a rising recognition of the power of information and ‘facts’ in creating vastly different interpretations of the current challenges in our societies and the potential solutions to them. On climate, this is often most directly seen in the forms of misinformation and denial. However, even when the climate crisis’ existence and scientific reality is recognised, political and business leaders’ next line of defense is to argue that change needs to happen but not now or drastically.
This is all about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world: of what is true or false, urgent or irrelevant, or matters only to individuals or to all of us. The climate crisis is a prime example that when it comes to societal challenges, it is not only about fact but also fiction.
Politics as storytelling
In Ancient Greece and Rome, often referred to as forming some of the foundations of Western political traditions, oratory or the art of persuasive public speaking was seen as a core element of public life, politics, and education. Public speaking was how you made your case in the courts, convinced others of the advantages of your political viewpoint, and honoured others by recounting their good actions and character. Aristotle divided oratory into three types: forensic (which most closely links to legal public speaking), political (which focuses on deliberation), and epideictic (speaking for ceremony or show e.g. in funerals).
Focusing on the second, the ability to speak well and convincingly on political issues is one of the key characteristics of some of the most renowned political figures in history. People don’t always remember who delivered good policy but they remember those who delivered good speeches. The most immediate names that likely come to mind are people like Martin Luther King, JFK, and Churchill. Single speeches and phrases can capture the complex sentiments of a nation or people at a snapshot in time: “I have a dream”, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”, “We shall never surrender”.
These kinds of speeches are only one form of political oratory; in the everyday, when an average person tries to convince someone of their political viewpoint over the dinner table, they are attempting to tell a story of how and why their perspective should be believed over another’s. The language and setting may differ, but the intention is the same.
Over time, the medium, style, and context of where public speaking takes place has evolved. Instead of gathering in an agora like Ancient Greeks, now we have new places to gather such as online forums and social media platforms. Furthermore, the rise of popularism has prompted increased discourse on how politicians present themselves and communicate. Populists typically create a narrow, idealised image and narrative of ‘the people’ who they apparently represent, often contrasted positively against ‘the elite’ or ‘establishment’, and capture their core message in oversimplified messages and slogans.
As well as direct messages, the words of politicians and political parties tell us a lot about how they see the world.
Underlying narratives
When we look at the basis of political storytelling, we can uncover the narrative beneath what someone is saying. By this, I mean what the underlying parts of their story tell us about their view of the premises of how society does or should function.
Common differentiators include whether individuals are capable of or should act in the collective interest rather than their own; similarly, whether nation states should act for collective interests or protect their own; whether change in society should happen fast or slow; whether change is inherently good or bad; whether government has a duty to provide equality of outcome or only of opportunity; what a safe level of risk is for a country in exploring new policy; and many more.
When combined, these and other issues have formed the basis of different political traditions such as liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and many variations beside and between. Overtime, we have built arguments based on our perception of whether different approaches have produced successful outcomes for society or not. A common tension now is between those that argue neoliberal governments have shown the economic success of the free market and believe it will address crises like the climate in good time, and those who argue this position has driven and worsened the climate so will never lead to different results to be the source of change, only further damage. These are two clearly different stories of the past centuries, leading to very different conclusions on the role of government in society.
Narratives relate to these underlying arguments — some may say, ideologies — but also to less directly political matters: societal narratives also relate to our collective conception of what is and isn’t possible within society now and in the future, as well as how change happens.
Tales We Tell Ourselves
For this, I’d like to take a little detour from the obviously political. In addition to its politics and government, culture is one of the key ways to understand what a society believes. Oral storytelling has been core to society’s cultures, reinforcing communities’ common beliefs and myths through repetition, evolution, and eventually standardised documentation.
In Western storytelling, emphasis is typically put on a single protagonist and their ‘hero’s journey’ in which they overcome different challenges — including emotional and moral trials — before ultimately gaining the skills and transforming to be capable of achieving their end goals, often through some form of conflict. In recent years, this end goal has been saving the world (or e.g. a country, planet, city, etc). This is easiest seen in films but also extends to how we tell stories within media.
For example, Greta Thunberg has received intense media focus, becoming a protagonist of the youth climate action wave and a personification of a generation’s thoughts and feelings in the media’s eyes. Her journeys to different major climate events were heavily documented and analysed in a way that none of the many other young climate activists had (or has) experienced. Some of the most heavily covered moments include those in which she was physically (e.g. sailing across the Atlantic) or emotionally ‘tested’ (e.g. her “How Dare You?” speech at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2019). Arguably, Thunberg fulfills what we expect or ‘want’ from a story: an exceptional person facing an exceptional challenge seemingly alone and against great odds with only their strong morals to help them.
This structure of storytelling reflects the Western culture it is most present in — although there are, of course, variations within the West in culture, history, and therefore story components. Furthermore, this is only one tradition of storytelling. In contrast, Eastern storytelling tends to focus less on an individual’s linear journey, and more on the interconnectedness between events, people, nature, and societies. In some ways, these stories are more complicated, focusing more on a collective’s journey(s), often involving quite unexpected turns in life and allowing more room for not-only-happy endings and messages of transience rather than victory.
Of course, both of these traditions are generalisations and there are also many more traditions, for example in African cultures and in indigenous cultures around the world. Nevertheless, this offers some notion of how differently we expect stories to unfold and what we see as most important in this process.
Can we imagine new possibilities for how stories unfold when these mindsets and structures have been fundamental to how we learn about stories and are reinforced in the world around us? Can we imagine new possibilities for political stories?
How does this link to climate dialogue?
Dialogue on the climate crisis is inherently seen from the current narratives and mental models which have been built by our societies. When we consider what is possible, we are drawing on our understandings (which vary) of the political story of our societies as well as the inbuilt expectations and narratives we have of how change unfolds, who drives it, and what this entails.
The climate crisis offers a challenge to our expected story. We are in the messy middle: past the beginning when a problem is discovered, the journey is catalysed, and there are the first attempts to solve it, but not yet at a point of revelation. But one of the biggest challenges is that the climate crisis does not have a tidy closure or victory; it is not a war where an enemy can be defeated, nor is it a disaster that can be entirely avoided. Instead, it is an awkward story of needing to use many means to create a new existence to adapt to current effects while continuously striving to stop the problem from getting even worse. When our cultural and political stories often involve ‘overcoming’, ‘evolving’ and reshaping our world to better balance different needs is an unexpected plot even if achieving it would be a huge victory. Furthermore, there cannot be a protagonist (or even small group of protagonists); by necessity, the climate crisis requires action by many people, potentially without significant recognition. Additionally, it is not a story in which exceptional morality and sticking power will necessarily lead to success, challenging the Western hero’s narrative.
Considering the role of storytelling in the climate crisis is directly relevant for political strategic communications and oratory, but also more deeply for the need to investigate the premises of the mindsets and narratives we have. When we are in search of new ways of organising society, we can only imagine within the boundaries of possibility we believe exist and the patterns we expect change to take. Currently, we are focusing too much on fighting over the facts when we should also be exploring the role of fiction.
