Seeing is Believing

The news is that our planet is the headliner, today and tomorrow

Thoughts on climate storytelling in real times.

This season has been rife with news of wholesale change to our life work. As regimes change our work remains. We share our knowledge in narrative, our lessons in storytelling and our warnings through the characters that deliver knowing and understanding.

Recently, I was invited to join a radio panel, on KQED, of science communicators, climate reporters, and trend bloggers to talk about the impact of film on the group project of earth care. The discussion centered around the impact of movies, stories and images on our esteem of the earth and ourselves. The panelists included Sammy Roth of the Climate Colored Goggles substack, Jessica Kutz of the 19th and John Marshall of Potential Energy Coalition. The conversation ranged in perspectives and I joyfully stepped in to talk about the role of existing culture in shaping the tone and tempo of today’s messages about climate. Despite the decades of misinformation and misdirection, the word is out. Climate is changing everything. The work, until we win, is to make that truth matter in the every day lives of folks who will be tested by the extreme power of our planet.

As workers, laboring daily in climate facts, carbon thresholds, policy paradigms and gaslighting by industry we are not the audience. Environmentalists of every house, issue and tradition are tasked to speak clearly and plainly about what we know. It is our portion to make plain how dire the times are and the absolute choice we live in about our responses to government reframes, divestment and dereliction. In my experience in this movement, we have always fought denialists with facts, and made common cause with global movements for action. The news is that we will need to redouble our efforts to make sense matter when the politics try to numb us and marginalize what is happening before our eyes.

So it’s no small thing when Santa Claus mentions climate change in conversation in a holiday movie, or a hit movies’ context is a planet in high heat, drought, flooding and grief. Reality is the context for our vision, and the set piece for our care. It’s time that we see it in lights.

Take a listen to the podcast, and let us know if it resonated with you.

Founder and friend,

Tamara