A people-first approach, more emotional storytelling, fewer facts and more friendships, prime-time attention, and new narratives
I think we’re past the point of needing to sell a narrative about climate change. People don’t need to look far to see already drastic effects within their own communities.
What we need now is more storytellers! And more emotional stories!
This is absolutely not what we need. The time for telling stories is over. Now we need to be organizing actual change.
I dont feel these things are mutually exclusive. Not everyone will be suited to contributing in the same ways, and I think drawing more people to our cause is an important part of continuing to push forward
What a worthless article, no offense to the poster. Full offense to the author. It comes off to me as saying activists for climate change aren’t doing good enough to advertise the issue.
I kind of agree, but we do need stories of what that change is so we don’t end up with Ecofascism by accident.
It seems to me that the unfortunate reality is that hitting people with facts has either already succeeded (that’s most of us reading this thread I would guess), or it will cause eyes to glaze over, and the cognitive dissonance to kick in to high gear; so we do need to do something different to persuade the rest to do something useful.
But, simply “making friends and telling stories” (to trivialise the article) is useless, there are very many resources on ‘nonnormative non-violent’ action and at least one study that confirm that it is statistically effective (dense scientific paper). Here’s some resources:
- Nonviolent Direct Action and the Struggle for Climate Justice: A Perspective from 350 Seattle
- Foreign Policy News Nonviolent action: Why and how it works
- Organising Stories and Lessons from the 350 Organising Story Telling Lab
- International Center on Nonviolent Conflict 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action
