The climate movement specifically has historically suffered from a lack of compelling storytelling. While there are undoubtedly numerous climate communicators working hard to deliver climate stories with nuance, creativity, and care, a lot of the messaging developed by environmentalists and reinforced by the media over the past several decades has fallen into the same handful of traps: it has framed the climate crisis as a faraway problem, both in time and space, it has fixated on abstract trends and quantitative data, and it has failed to connect climate change to social justice issues and everyday quality of life. The most-discussed solutions have been framed as too small, like minimizing one’s own carbon footprint, or too out of reach, like passing federal legislation or inventing groundbreaking technology. The tone of climate discourse has frequently oscillated between cold, fact-focused language, extreme panic and doomism, and technocentric optimism. Altogether, dominant narratives around climate change have largely failed to mobilize the masses into action. They have instead left many folks feeling overwhelmed, mired in guilt, unsure how to act, and afraid in the face of the future.

This moment calls for a new set of climate stories and amplification of the folks who are already doing climate storytelling differently. To successfully navigate our way through and beyond the climate crisis, we will need to prioritize radical imagination and collectively envision different ways of being in the world and relating to one another and the more-than-human world. Thoughtful storytelling is the first step in helping people to expand perceptions of what’s possible and actualize just futures.

Storytelling is not just about looking into the future- it’s also about remembering and uplifting the past. Stories have always been essential to preserving and passing down cultural traditions, teachings, values, along with memories of people, places and moments. Reclaiming ancestral stories can be deeply healing, especially for peoples who have experienced systemic erasure of their culture(s). Stories of/from the past can also invite connection across generations and help to revitalize practices, beliefs, and ways of being that are more relational, reciprocal, and regenerative.

Story-based strategy asks us to take a closer look at the narratives that undergird the status quo and existing power dynamics and ask what they’re saying and not saying, who created them and why, and which assumptions allow these narratives to operate. That process is crucial in helping us to identify, challenge, and intervene in the widely-accepted myths that make systems change so difficult, such as “police keep us safe,” “the economy must keep growing,” “transitioning away from fossil fuels is too expensive,” “rejecting capitalism means defaulting to communism,” or “anyone can be successful in America if they work hard enough.” The realm of politics tends to follow the lead of culture, and culture is shaped by stories.

Melissa Reyes said it best in her essay featured in Climate Resilience: “Narrative strategy…is very much about understanding power. It’s about understanding underlying assumptions and the values embedded in the narratives that we are saturated with. Because stories are one of the pieces that uphold the system. Like, if we look at the story of Thanksgiving, there are whole sets of values embedded there around whose lives are more valuable than another’s. When we begin to understand the stories that we’re saturated with in mainstream or dominant culture, we can intervene and change those stories, and in combination with organizing and taking action together, that’s how we can actually shift power and shift the values that uphold the systems that are hurting most people and this planet.”