This month I’m celebrating FIVE YEARS as a climate storyteller. Back in 2017, I started applying my creative skills to the crisis that defines our generation, and it’s been a wild time.
I’ve been doing this through years of wildfires, hurricanes, and heatwaves, a new IPCC report, the student-led climate strikes, and climate consciousness entering the mainstream.
Climate change is urgent and devastating and is already wreaking havoc on millions of lives. Having that narrative as part of my daily work should be overwhelming, right? Some days, for sure! But there’s also so much more to it… more than I would’ve thought just getting started.
I’ve learned so much, and I get excited about how there’s much, much more to learn.
Here are a few:
You can’t talk about climate without talking about the Global South… or better yet, talking WITH people living there, mostly listening. And you’ve got to use present tense, too. It’s not some projected threat. For Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, South Asia, and a host of other places, climate change is already messing things up. International development was sort of my pathway into climate, and those realms are completely inseparable.
You meet the coolest people along the way. I’m talking about my colleagues. I’m talking about biologists. I’m talking about farmers. Sometimes climate scientists get portrayed as over-serious. Their subject matter is serious, they’re some of the coolest people I’ve met. Every time I’ve interviewed someone with an ecological research background, it’s a whole bunch of adventure stories in epic locations. On the days that climate work seems the most draining, the people are the best pick me up.
Speaking of people and experts, nobody knows EVERYTHING. The field of climate is simply too broad. Different solutions require knowledge in technology and engineering, others in biology, but also city planning and design, policy, advocacy, communication, education, food systems, animal behavior, psychology, and for me… storytelling. It’s not so much about top-level experts, but people applying their little zones of passion.