
During the summer, I asked several teenagers about their thoughts on the climate crisis and how they view the future. It was darker than I expected.
One of the youngest said:
"We might not necessarily have a habitable planet when I'm as old as you, Peder."
Some of the older teenagers were more concerned about double standards and hypocrisy. Politicians and business leaders make promises of a radical green shift, but young people don't see the change in their daily lives.
A few years ago, they created their posters and went on climate strikes. At least then, they had a way to channel their enthusiasm and a place to address responsibility.
"Now we don't bother anymore," they said, "Nothing is happening, after all."
In their future scenario, they lose the opportunities we've had. In their story, they inherit a planet in worse condition than the one we - a generation or two before them - inherited.
I recently saw a study indicating that one in four 15-year-olds experiences climate anxiety. Who is causing that anxiety? What good does it do for our planet that our young people are anxious about the future?
A change of narrative
The generations from post-war times up to those like me, born in the 70s and 80s, have been accustomed to thinking of the future as something that improves linearly. Slightly higher GDP year by year, we become progressively more enlightened and progressively more tolerant, almost like a historical necessity.
That's not the narrative among the teenagers I spoke with.
Can we offer them different stories moving forward? Ones that lead to hope and action instead of fear and apathy?
I've worked in communication professionally for 20 years. I recently completed a master's degree in strategic communication and storytelling.
We know a lot about how different messages affect people. Let me briefly mention three lessons relevant to how we talk about climate.
Three lessons to change the game
Lesson 1: Storytelling. The best way to get people to do something and engage is to tell them a story they want to be a part of. Doomsday is a poor marketing trick. Not because things aren't severe but because fear is a terrible motivation for action. Remember that people always like to be the hero in the story. In climate communication, we're mostly seen as the "bad guy."
And that leads me to the next:
Lesson 2: Shaming. Placing too much moral responsibility on individuals to save the world tends to have the opposite effect of what the sender desires.
If we're told how dire the situation is without being presented with concrete, accessible, and better alternatives, it leads to apathy and denial. Sometimes, even active resistance.
Lesson 3: Hope. We need more hope than hopelessness to engage and act. Psychologists talk about a 3:1 ratio. We need three pieces of good news for every catastrophic news to be resilient in tough times.
While Greta Thunberg was a unifying figure for many young people, she has become too extreme and political. The focus is solely on the world being destroyed.
Researchers have looked at how often climate news stories frame issues catastrophically. It's more than 80 percent of the coverage.
It reminds me of the narrative I encountered in my upbringing at the religious gathering in Gjerstad.
It went like this: "Peder, you must stop most of the things you enjoy. You should be more ashamed than you are today. And quite likely, it's going to hell anyway." It's a story easy to abandon.
But now, the environmental movement is the new layman's Christianity. The storytelling is eerily similar.
Can't we talk about the solutions instead? A lot.
Three sources of hope
Here are three examples of stories that promote hope instead of hopelessness:
Solutions Exist: Prominent technologists, economists, and investors believe we already have the solutions and technology to reverse climate change. What we need now is scaling.
Fossil Gradually Becomes Yesterday's Energy: Burning fossil fuel causes around 75 percent of all CO2 emissions globally. The price of solar and wind energy globally is dropping rapidly, and it will soon become economically rational to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. That fundamentally changes the game.
The Green Business Models: Business models are being developed everywhere based on a circular use of materials instead of a use-and-discard approach to consumption. One of the most significant global business opportunities is turning what used to be garbage into raw materials.
I said that the environmental movement is similar to pietistic layman's Christianity.
But there's a big difference. Layman's Christianity can at least offer salvation and grace. There's a way out of the abyss.
As an adult, I understood that's the point. And I experienced the grace that brings new life.
The Man in the Mirror
Grace is missing in much of today's climate communication. And it's needed a lot. For my children. For your children and grandchildren.
Let's be the kind of people who, in our networks, always tell more about the existing opportunities than the problems that might arise. It's self-reinforcing.
I'll conclude with the words of Raymond Williams:
"To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing."
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