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Abstract
The chapter 'What We Need Now to Accelerate Climate Solutions through Storytelling' highlights the urgent need for effective communication strategies to tackle the climate crisis. It emphasizes the role of storytelling in engaging and empowering diverse populations, drawing on decades of research in behavioral science. The text explores the advantages of storytelling over traditional communication methods, such as its ability to evoke empathy and drive action. It also provides examples of successful storytelling initiatives in climate communication, including entertainment-education strategies and popular entertainment projects. The chapter argues that storytelling can be a powerful tool for fostering real change in climate action and provides a tiered model of actionable next steps for climate storytelling.
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Abstract
In this concluding chapter, we emphasize that the climate crisis deserves the use of all tools at our disposal to achieve the recommended mitigation and adaptation goals. Effective communication strategies are necessary to accelerate climate solutions at the required speed, scale, and scope, and they can be designed and implemented based on decades of research in behavior science. We elaborate on storytelling as a climate change communication and action strategy and highlight the power of narratives for social and behavioral change through popular entertainment. We especially advocate for the more rigorous approach of entertainment-education for social impact with better alignment across interdisciplinary partnerships, social objectives, narrative contents, communication platforms, linked resources, and program evaluations. Finally, we provide a tiered model with recommendations for actionable next steps to accelerate climate solutions.
We are in a planetary race, and the climate crisis deserves the use of all tools at our disposal to achieve the recommended mitigation and adaptation goals. Effective communication strategies are necessary to accelerate climate solutions at the required speed, scale, and scope, and they can be designed and implemented based on decades of research in behavior science. The future is ours to choose (Figueres & Rivett-Carnac, 2021; Hawken, 2021). It is not too late to change the climate stories we tell ourselves and each other; difficult is not the same as impossible and nothing is inevitable (Solnit & Lutunatabua, 2023).
Time Is Now and the Future Lies in Us
The window for mitigating global warming is closing and closing fast before its impact becomes irreversible. However, we do have the capacity to avert this crisis in time. The urgency to scale climate solutions and avoid an unprecedented catastrophe for humanity is imminent. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its latest reports (IPCC, 2022a, 2023a) with the press release emphasizing messages like, “Pace and scale of climate action are insufficient to tackle climate change” and “The evidence is clear: The time for action is now” (IPCC, 2022b, 2023b).
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Although the climate crisis may seem insurmountable and often triggers anxiety and fear (Wang et al., 2023), many individuals and groups have come together, especially in recent years, to collect, evaluate, and share evidence-based climate solutions and organize collaborations and movements to advocate for climate empowerment and action (Figueres & Rivett-Carnac, 2021; Hawken, 2021; Solnit & Lutunatabua, 2023). For example, nongovernmental organizations such as Project Drawdown (n.d.) provide resources for achieving climate goals. These resources include detailed listings on source reduction for carbon dioxide emissions (e.g., transitions to renewable energy and increasing electrification) and carbon sinks (e.g., regenerative agricultural practices and habitat restoration). All these resources are periodically updated and provide excellent recommendations for climate actions.
Climate solutions are no longer just for governments, scientists, and activists; they must include and engage everyone. Leading an inclusive regeneration movement, the creator of Drawdown and environmentalist Paul Hawken (2021) urges us that, “Tens of thousands of organizations, teachers, companies, architects, farmers, Indigenous cultures, and native leaders know what to do and are active in implementation. The current growth of the climate movement is magnificent, but it remains a small fraction of the world. Hundreds of millions of people need to realize that they have agency, that they can take action, and that collectively it is possible to prevent runaway global warming” (p. 10).
Now the question is how?! It is well known in the medical community that, on average, it takes 17 years for scientific solutions to be translated into clinical practice (Green et al., 2009; Morris et al., 2011). Yet, accelerated solutions can be developed, validated, and scaled at an unprecedented rate in a polarized world as we have witnessed through the COVID-19 global pandemic in the last few years (Collins & Stoffels, 2020; Corey et al., 2020; Suran, 2022). In addition, public responses to changing guidelines such as COVID masking, indoor air filtration, and vaccination measures provide insights into how different the outcomes can be between public communication strategies that were thoughtfully designed and coordinated versus those that were not (Sachs et al., 2022).
Current climate change communication sometimes can be confusing, hard to relate, and difficult to act on or to scale up (Scott, 2023; Stoknes, 2017). To improve public engagement, we need messages that are “simple and clear, repeated often, by a variety of trusted and caring messengers,” and to promote climate action, we need to make the recommended behaviors “easy, fun, and popular” (Maibach et al., 2023, p. 54). The future of humanity and all life on Earth lies within us but we cannot afford to waste any more time in response to the climate change crisis. We need to admit that climate change communication that creates enabling conditions and facilitates concerted and transformative actions is just as important, if not more, as finding effective climate solutions. Information is helpful but information alone is not sufficient to foster real change. Storytelling—purposefully designed, implemented, and integrated into a larger and funded public communication system to help coordinate multilevel and interdisciplinary efforts—is what we need now to accelerate climate solutions at the necessary speed, scale, and scope to foster real change.
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Storytelling as a Climate Change Communication and Action Strategy
Storytelling is the practice of human communication with information shared in a narrative format (Fisher, 1987). As humans, we are wired as storytellers and crave stories (Abbott, 2002; Brown, 2015; Gottschall, 2012). From cave paintings and oral histories to Sundance documentaries and Netflix series, storytelling has been ingrained in our everyday experiences and shaping our cultures and societies since the dawn of humanity (Abbott, 2002; Brown, 2015; Gottschall, 2012; Wang & Coren, 2024). So, what makes a story? Although definitions and terminologies may vary across disciplines and over time, storytellers and narrative researchers generally agree that key elements and a path or arc should be in place. For example, Kreuter et al. (2007) defined narrative as “a representation of connected events and characters that has an identifiable structure, is bounded in space and time, and contains implicit and explicit messages about the topic being addressed” (p. 222).
What are the advantages of storytelling over expository or didactic non-narrative communication? Research in neuroscience, social sciences, and humanities has shown that information presented in a narrative format is easier to attract and sustain attention and creates shortcuts to facilitate comprehension and recall because it is more accessible and engaging (Gottschall, 2012; Polkinghorne, 1988; Schneider-Mayerson et al., 2023). Powerful stories can change people’s knowledge, attitudes, practices, and social norms (Bálint & Bilandzic, 2017; Bilandzic & Kinnebrock, 2009; Green et al., 2002; Murphy et al., 2015; Riley et al., 2022; Singhal & Rogers, 1999; Singhal et al., 2013). We rely on storytelling to organize information, generate meaning, and make sense of ourselves in the world and how we are related to each other (Gottschall, 2012; Polkinghorne, 1988). More importantly, for the purpose of this book, stories can evoke empathy and compassion, foster cooperation and collaboration, and drive human agency and action (Bietti et al., 2019; Bruner, 1990; Keen, 2006; Schneider-Mayerson et al., 2023; Smith et al., 2017). Storytelling can serve as an effective strategy for science communication (e.g., Dahlstrom, 2014; Martinez-Conde & Macknik, 2017) and climate action (e.g., McComas & Shanahan, 1999; Morris et al., 2019).
Climate change communication research to date has largely focused on either endogenous (e.g., demographic characteristics, individual knowledge, and cultural beliefs) or exogenous factors (e.g., geographic locations, extreme weather experiences, and news media framing) (Jones & Peterson, 2018). While they have provided important understandings of individual responses to and public opinions about climate change, their investigations follow the rational and linear knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) model with considerable empirical studies stopping at behavioral intention or likelihood of policy support as outcome variables. Yet, more scholars are pointing out now that we should move beyond the information deficit model and overcome the historically documented attitude-behavior gaps by prioritizing factors that facilitate and accelerate individual and collective empowerment and action (De Meyer et al., 2021; Harris, 2020; Hendersson & Wamsler, 2020; Jones & Peterson, 2018).
The idea of using storytelling in climate change communication is not new. Influential figures like Thomas Berry started advocating for conscious climate storytelling in the 1970s and the 1980s (Berry, 1988, 2003). “It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories” (Berry, 1988, p. 123). In more recent years, we see the efforts of applying the narrative policy framework, helping scientists become better storytellers, as well as individuals and groups working together to claim authorship of their climate stories (e.g., Climate Beacon Newsroom, 2022; Climate Central, 2021; Climate Solutions Cohort, 2022; De Meyer et al., 2021; Harris, 2020; Hendersson & Wamsler, 2020; Jones & Peterson, 2018). The capacity of narrative engagement through deep emotions, perspective-taking, and imagination is undeniably powerful for reducing counterarguing and complimentary to rational communication approaches (Bilandzic, 2023; Green et al., 2019). While we acknowledge storytelling as an effective tool for persuasion when used consciously for public good, we want to emphasize that, by communicating universally accepted truths through narratives, storytelling is an indispensable way to bring people together and build communities of practice (e.g., Coren & Tiwathia, 2023; El Amiri et al., 2020; De Meyer et al., 2021; Harris, 2020; Maibach et al., 2021; Sarfaty et al., 2022; Scott, 2023; Stoknes, 2017). And we need to bring people with diverse backgrounds together now and connect them in meaningful ways that enable, foster, and catalyze climate solutions. Some have even advocated incorporating storytelling in IPCC reports for better public understanding and engagement (Bloomfield & Manktelow, 2021).
Power of Storytelling in Popular Entertainment for Social and Behavioral Change
In a recent review, Maibach et al. (2023) thoughtfully articulated the rationale, evidence, and strategies for harnessing the power of communication and behavior science to promote climate empowerment and action. They used exemplary initiatives such as the Climate Matters program to demonstrate guiding heuristics. They recommended: Keeping climate change communication messages simple and clear, having them designed by an interdisciplinary science communication team, presenting them with diverse and trustworthy messengers across different platforms several dozen times, and making climate actions easy, fun, and popular to overcome personal, social, and situational barriers (Maibach et al., 2023). The practices, experiences, and insights in our book are complimentary to this review, and other similar efforts not only with a focus on narrative communication for social and behavioral change but also on specific ways stories can be created to help speed up and scale up change, especially through popular entertainment.
Decades of research (e.g., Green et al., 2002, 2019; Frank & Falzone, 2021; Riley et al., 2022; Singhal et al., 2004, 2013; Singhal & Rogers, 1999; Storey & Sood, 2013) have shown that:
Messages embedded in popular entertainment can quickly reach mass audiences and attract significant public attention.
These messages are stickier than conventional campaigns because of underlying mechanisms such as narrative transportation, character identification, and parasocial interaction that can enhance cognitive, emotional, and social engagement during and after the exposure.
Many narrative genres and communication platforms naturally allow the space for repeated messaging and extended exposure for longer-term and sustained engagement.
The more thoughtfully designed and implemented narrative entertainment experiences are, especially when behavioral modeling is incorporated and connected to matching resources in the real world, the more effective they can be in facilitating prosocial behaviors, which can range from starting conversations about taboo topics to collective actions that lead to policy change.
In the introductory chapter, Wang & Coren, (2024) reviewed the evolution and exemplary projects in entertainment-education: a social and behavioral change communication strategy that is built on over half a century of theory, practice, and research to purposefully leverage the power of storytelling in popular entertainment—with deliberate and collaborative efforts through creative content production, implementation across communication platforms, as well as program monitoring and evaluation—to tackle seemingly intractable problems in the real world and create enabling conditions for desirable and sustainable change locally, regionally, nationally, and globally (Wang & Singhal, 2021).
Here, we want to point out the importance of alignment of six key elements of the entertainment-education strategy (Fig. 1). (1) Interdisciplinary partnerships: The nature of complexity and urgency of seemingly intractable issues requires expertise in many different domains. No one can single-handedly solve a global crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change. Forging complimentary yet interdisciplinary partnerships is a prerequisite for creating any meaningful initiative. (2) Social objectives: Having clear and measurable objectives for social impact will guide the project team’s priorities in planning, implementation, and assessment. It is nice to raise awareness and shift attitudes, but without enabling the actual behaviors, the change will only stay in our heads while lives are slipping away in the real world. (3) Narrative contents: The art and science of storytelling will continue to evolve along with centuries-old traditions and emerging technologies and trends in contemporary society. Translating social objectives and scientific recommendations into thought-provoking, emotionally engrossing, and action-oriented change-making narratives will lie in the quality collaboration between professional storytellers and content experts. (4) Communication platforms: There are a myriad of ways to reach and engage the public while tailoring the experiences for different audience segments these days. Meeting them where they already are and communicating with them in compelling ways over time are imperative to achieving the desired outcomes. (5) Linked resources: Providing linkage to existing or newly created resources is an indispensable step for facilitating real actions from information-seeking and interpersonal discussions to community outreach and policy advocacy. This gets people closer to behavior change right when they are inspired and motivated to contribute to the cause. (6) Program evaluations: Rigorous research before (formative evaluation), during (process evaluation), and after (summative evaluation) a social and behavioral change communication initiative can inform message design, monitor project progress, and document intended and unintended outcomes and larger social impact. This element sets entertainment-education apart from many popular entertainment projects with good intentions but fails to facilitate meaningful change.
Fig. 1
Alignment circle of key elements in entertainment-education strategy
This approach that leverages the power of storytelling in popular entertainment has become a critical social and behavioral change communication strategy (Wang & Singhal, 2021). Creative professionals in the entertainment industry are increasingly interested in addressing health and social issues of our time, and more people are making deliberate efforts to work with subject matter experts to create compelling and life-changing narrative experiences (Frank & Falzone, 2021; Rippberger, 2022; Singhal et al., 2013; Skoll Center for Social Impact Entertainment, 2019; SIE Society, n.d.; Wang & Singhal, 2021). While social impact entertainment and entertainment-education have been expanding and thriving in the United States and around the world to promote healthy behaviors and human rights in many domains, there is still a “glaring absence” of climate change according to a recent review of 37,453 scripted TV episodes and films from 2016 to 2020 by the USC Norman Lear Center (Giaccardi et al., 2022). This is a tremendous, missed opportunity to accelerate climate solutions, especially when the field has established evidence on the low costs such as Population Media Center’s (n.d.) estimate of $2.54USD per person to start family planning, high returns of investment such as the 24:1 ratio in Hutchinson et al. (2022) report on youth development by Shujaaz, and significant societal impacts such as the reduced Mexico’s national population growth by millions as Sabido recounted in the Sundance documentary about entertainment-education (Friedman, 2013). The chapters in this book fill in the gap of climate storytelling in popular entertainment by providing timely and rich knowledge, grounded in theory and praxis across disciplines and geographies.
Narrative Strategies Across Disciplines and Geographies
This book, Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions, brings together scholars and practitioners from different fields to share knowledge, experience, and insight about how stories can be purposefully designed and effectively told to engage, enable, and empower various populations in climate communication and action (Fig. 2). As summarized in the introductory chapter (Wang & Coren, 2024), we present a wide range of current strategies and exemplary applications of climate storytelling, in terms of professional practices (e.g., popular media, journalism, literature, performing arts, and education), narrative genres (e.g., drama, comedy, and fiction), media platforms (e.g., television, radio, mobile, and immersive virtual environments), communication modalities (e.g., text, visual, audio, and multisensory), and geographic locations across five continents (e.g., US, UK, India, Nigeria, and Peru). This is our first step to leverage the work that has been done, build a multidisciplinary community of practice, facilitate coordinated efforts to promote agency, and advocate for increased support.
Fig. 2
Word cloud of the titles, keywords, and abstracts Chapters 2–19
The first part of this volume focused on evidence- and practice-based narrative strategies of entertainment-education and social impact entertainment. Sood et al. (2024) provided us with a comprehensive review in a 20-year span of social and behavioral change communication initiatives tackling the climate crisis from the Global South to the Global North. Brown (2024) showcased PCI Media’s “My Community Methodology” in collaboration with environmental sustainability initiatives in West Africa by engaging local actors through a participatory approach to narrative development to optimize program impacts. Bish (2024) offered the Population Media Center’s perspective on connecting the climate crisis with global population growth and the role of gender equity for a more just and sustainable living on Earth. Garg et al. (2024) shared BBC Media Actions’ recent collaboration in Indonesia that uses storytelling across media platforms for youth engagement on traditional and social media. Falzone and the PVI team (2024) told us the tales of now their Peabody-nominated children’s television series NGen in Sub-Saharan Africa, inspiring holistic learnings of science to promote climate education and human agency. Then, we transitioned to explore how entertainment-education and social impact entertainment strategies have been used and can potentially be improved in the Global North, represented by the United States. A comedy-drama prototype for climate communication tailored toward young adult Americans is proposed with detailed character development and story arcs based on theory and research (Coren, 2024). A newly established Rewrite the Future program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been helping Hollywood better incorporate climate change themes into their entertainment programming to promote effective solutions (Hinderfeld et al., 2024). Despite the seriousness of the climate crisis, comedians are having a ball firing their secret weapons to wake up their audiences and get them involved in climate action (Gurney & N’Diaye, 2024).
In the second part of this volume, we have included many other creative storytelling strategies for climate change communication. Climate fiction (or cli-fi) is a literary genre that uses fictional characters and storylines to inspire green actions (Baden & Brown, 2024). Visual illustrations created by professionals have a long history in science communication and should be increasingly supported to produce quality imagery to effectively convey messages about climate change (Monoyios et al., 2024). Music, with powerful melodies and lyrics, can evoke deep human emotions to care about planet Earth, as shown in The ClimateMusic Project (Dixon et al., 2024). The evolution of the food we consume can also tell compelling stories about the impact of global warming (Eiseman & Hoffman, 2024). Practices in journalism can benefit from cross-disciplinary teamwork, audience engagement, and artificial intelligence-driven technologies to generate hyperlocal news reporting that promotes actionable solutions (Whitwell, 2024). Understanding community-based resilience and learning from positively deviant initiatives can help us boost collective efficacy and reduce mental health challenges related to climate change (Cosentino et al., 2024). Maps and geospatial software applications can be powerful tools for climate storytelling and empowerment (Wolf-Jacobs et al., 2024). Interactive storytelling in immersive environments can create conditions for self-directed deep learning and large-scale public engagement in climate science communication (Spiegel & Wang, 2024). Inviting youth to observe and embody birds through puppetry, costumes, and movement in outdoor settings can better integrate the themes of equity and inclusion into environmental preservation (Osnes et al., 2024). In addition, instructional storylines developed by the Understanding Global Change Project use coherent sequences of lessons to help students connect their lived experiences with scientific concepts of systematic change (Bean, 2024).
Actionable Next Steps for Climate Storytelling
So far, in both the introductory chapter (Wang & Coren, 2024) and this concluding chapter, we have discussed the role of storytelling in climate change communication and the value and power of leveraging narrative experiences to promote climate action. Building on the collective wisdom of all contributors in this book as well as individuals and organizations that have inspired us, we leave you with a tiered model of actionable next steps. The three tiers represent what could be possible with varying levels of funding and institutional support (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3
Tiered model of storytelling for climate change communication and action
At the very minimum, assuming little to no investment in a unified communications effort, we provide guidance for existing programs on how to best support their current communications teams in crafting climate action stories that boost human agency. We recommend highlighting positive outliers and providing linked resources. First, start by identifying positive outliers by focusing on what is already working and shine a spotlight on those behaviors inspiring others to amplify it through their own actions. Positive outliers are behavioral traits that support people, individually or collectively, to achieve significantly better outcomes than their peers despite facing similar challenges (De Meyer et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2023). For example, they can be early adopters of electrification transitions in buildings and public transport. They can also be youth groups that have built a movement and advocated for policy change. These positive outliers are not limited to certain professions or social roles. What sets them apart is that their actions are highly effective but may be invisible to others. For example, a medical facility may be transitioning to all-renewable energy that can substantially reduce emissions, but members of its local community or the public may never hear about it. Therefore, we recommend intentionally seeking positive outliers within your domain of practices, especially increasing the images of existing participants that showcase what is working and already being done so you can feature their climate solutions in your story, linguistically, visually, and culturally. Stories about positive outliers are empowering, can boost self and collection efficacy, and foster actions especially when linked to enabling resources. Therefore, the second part of this recommendation is to provide linked resources to existing programs. For example, climate journalists can start including links to action-oriented and region-specific programs for people to obtain hands-on experience in their own communities. As part of our effort to advocate for positive and action-oriented framing in climate storytelling (De Meyer et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2023), we want to make a special note here that stock images do not represent realities. There is nuance to authentic visual representations that cannot be captured by stock photography. Public health messaging has developed an overreliance on stock images, but they impair our ability to relate at a personal level. This opacity is a consequence of systematic underfunding for communications efforts. These are technically resolvable issues with a little additional time and energy. Visual representations intersect with equity issues, and they can be either a tool for improving health equity or, when inadequately funded, inadvertently reinforcing health disparities (Charani et al., 2023; Chichester et al., 2023). Images that are specific to the real communities and exemplary members are necessary for people to see themselves and their peers participating in climate actions and stewardship.
Tier 2: Added Geospatial and Professional Support
One level up, given some investment in coordinated climate change communication efforts, we recommend programs establishing dedicated science communication teams. These teams can include content experts who can provide scientific knowledge and behavior solutions that need to be promoted, social scientists who can understand and analyze people’s information processing and behavioral patterns, and science communicators who can craft the messages and facilitate high-quality production of narrative experiences (Maibach et al., 2023). In addition, the geospatial tools previously discussed (Wolf-Jacobs et al., 2024) can be constructed into a base layer for generating an up-to-the-moment visual database of what climate action looks like regionally. This reference-material database can enable a range of linked resources, with topics sortable under subheadings specific to climate mitigation and adaptation solutions. We can also build in program supports for media teams similar in function to existing programs like the Climate Matters program for weathercasters connecting media programs to these real-time reference material feeds. The Climate Matters program already provides data analysis, localized graphics, science explainers, and other reporting resources (Maibach et al., 2023). Media partners could use these high-quality materials to tell science-based stories about how to participate in existing climate change actions. They can provide graphics support showing how the existing efforts interlink while highlighting needed areas of growth. These tools can be subspecialized for niches in communities of practice. For example, food storytelling and music teams would have different needs than journalists, and programs can be developed to meet the needs of each. The combination of a geospatial storytelling database and structured support for communities of practice such as environmental journalists and screenwriters provides reference materials and linked resources incorporated into existing media production pathways.
Ultimately with favorable policies and sufficient funding, we craft geospatial tools that are fully supported remote sensing products. They are provided to all media teams and in collaboration with schools and cultural institutions free of charge with staffed customer service support. They serve as a timing belt, of a sort, to provide coordination and reference materials to media teams. More importantly, we now can also employ fully supported entertainment-education programs that can be planned to match the needs of different audience segments and implemented at scale. This includes all media and distribution formats. You can work backward from what changes that you need to create and then plan the intervention to match your community’s needs and social objectives. If funding limitations weren’t an issue, we can map out a custom strategy for each region that is representative of the population groups and climate action priorities. Popular entertainment programs can be constructed in a similar pattern to the Rhythm and Glue prototype (Coren, 2024) launched for each demographically representative population and connected to actionable, regional implementation programs. Intentionally developed narrative contents can be created from scratch and reinforced through transmedia platforms (Singhal et al., 2013; Wang & Singhal, 2016; Wang et al., 2019) and crosslinked with media programs that are using the geospatial tool for reference materials but are not entertainment-education programs themselves. This tier, unlike the others, includes full research support for formative, process, and summative program evaluations that can shape the programming, monitor audience engagement, and assess the social impact it has. These formal program evaluations can more systematically guide the design of messaging embedded in the entertainment narrative experience and associated media products. In a fully developed entertainment-education plan, there are components that would improve the systemization of the whole process such as including data-powered positive deviance (Albanna et al., 2022) for identifying positive outlier behaviors at scale and the use of digital markers (Lutkenhaus et al., 2022) for tracking meaningful audience engagement and prosocial behaviors. Creating entertainment-education programs would empower us to meet our full potential for climate action.
Effective climate solutions must integrate technical solutions from both natural and social sciences with communication strategies to foster public engagement and prosocial behaviors. Media practitioners and creative professionals can create stories that reflect the changes already underway and help us connect with the people and resources in our own communities to engage fully in the self-preservation of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Streamlined funding can support this work and the people who do it. Investments made in developing a coordinated mechanism with equitable salaries for professional science communicators and research in behavioral science will allow us to craft and implement more effective interventions. In addition, most importantly, these investments will help us reach our climate mitigation and adaptation goals faster. Being slow on these tasks means incalculable loss and damage to human lives. We acknowledge that the climate crisis is complex but emphasize that there are ways to improve the communication methods that we use. In the hyper-interconnected world that we live in today, we are all in this planetary race together. There is still time. We can change the current trajectory. Focusing on positive and actionable stories and coordinating our efforts across disciplines and geographics will accelerate climate solutions. Let’s write the most epic story of our time.
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Emily Coren
is a science communicator and an affiliate in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University where she has been working to adapt entertainment-education strategies for health promotion and social change to create more effective climate communication. She has a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and is a certified professional Science Illustrator. She has worked in science communication for almost 20 years, contributing to collections at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History, consulting on a World Health Organization clean air campaign, and developing educational content for children’s films. In recent years, her work has led to new methods in developing frameworks at a national level, connecting community-led experiences to federal, local, and nonprofit sector programs for climate change communication. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Hua Wang
is a communication scientist who is passionate about using innovative strategies for health promotion, behavior change, and social justice. She specializes in the design, implementation, and evaluation of initiatives that leverage powerful storytelling, emerging technologies, and communication networks to facilitate positive change, particularly in the field of entertainment-education. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and is currently a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. Her interdisciplinary research has been funded by federal agencies, private foundations, and nonprofit organizations, appeared in high-impact journals, and received prestigious awards from the International Communication Association and the American Public Health Association.
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