Talking About Climate Change: We Want Stories!
Everyone loves a good story. Stories create social meaning and satisfy our imaginations. According to research compiled in George Marshall’s book Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, we need to tell more stories to inspire people to climate action. Facts and data influence our analytical minds, but our emotional minds make the decisions. Stories motivate our emotional minds.
In my new book, The Big Swim, climate facts weave through wild adventure of many kinds. Marshall’s book didn’t exist when I wrote it, but my writing group led me to the same place: tell stories full of emotional meaning.