The Current Story

Last weekend, I sat under a beautiful cedar tree, staring out over a sparkling sea of water. I was tabling—volunteering with the Sierra Club, promoting the retrofitting of local homes to help homeowners convert from heating and cooking with fossil fuels (gas, oil, propane, or wood) to efficient electric heat pumps and induction stoves. I love doing this work because it’s a direct action I can take in my region to eliminate carbon emissions. Electrification, especially when the electricity comes from renewables, helps keep fossil fuels in the ground one home at a time.

As we waited for the event to start, I discussed with my co-volunteer a news article I had just read that made me go YIKES! The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could totally shut down much sooner than expected, throwing the world's climate into a tailspin. What is the AMOC? It's the current that moves warm water northward through the Atlantic, bringing necessary nutrients to ocean ecosystems and helping the ocean sequester carbon. It also plays a major role in regulating our global climate. It's a big, big deal. We don't want to go without it.

Why was I so upset about a potential change in this current? Losing this vital Atlantic Ocean current could alter temperatures in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres by many degrees, disrupting normal weather patterns which we depend on for growing all the crops needed to feed the billions of us on this planet. New research shows this tipping point could happen as soon as a decade from now, and once the current stops, it won't switch back on in our lifetimes. The prospect of that dangerous tipping point coming at us so quickly left me stunned. A thought gripped me: we have to scale back, fast—meaning we need to reduce our highly consumptive/carbon emitting habits to keep the current alive.

As climate change heats the ocean water, it also sends fresh water from Greenland's melting glaciers into the salty ocean, reducing the churning of its layers and slowing the current down. Combating climate change is what can help keep the current moving, and among the many things that need to happen is reducing consumerism. Those of us who create the most emissions per capita, because we have a highly materialistic, energy-intensive lifestyle, need to cut back to make a difference. That's where storytellers have a part to play.

As I sat beneath that tree at the tabling event, I wondered, "It seems like half of the world is just struggling to survive, but the rest of us are living relatively high on the hog, so how do you talk about scaling back with people?" People often turn away when you mention sacrifice, indignant at the thought of curtailing their way of living in any manner. Pushing people to give up something they desire is a nonstarter. As I looked at the posters and flyers we had spread out on our event table, though, I realized that activists, especially climate storytelling activists, only need to emulate what we were doing as we talked about electrification.

When we table at events, we talk to the public about the positives of heat pumps and induction stoves. We offer financial subsides to convert their homes, which always grabs attention, but there are benefits for their health and their budget beyond that. Heat pumps and induction stoves are less costly to operate. They are certainly much healthier too. For instance, gas stoves can release benzene, formaldehyde, and nitrogen dioxide into indoor air, which can be a problem, especially for those with asthma. When people understand that cooking with gas isn't clean, the health benefits of the electric alternative becomes clear, and so you change what people want by changing what they see as desirable.

Just like with electrification, there are positive health and budget benefits that come with cutting back on our materialistic lifestyle. One of my previous posts discussed in detail the idea that miswanting—the act of being mistaken about what and how much you will like something in the future—will not bring us happiness. The excess acquisition of products that advertising, and often television and film, pushes on us is not only wrecking the climate, but making us miserable. We believe we need more money to buy more stuff, but that puts us on a work-too-much treadmill bringing stress, isolation, and dissatisfaction. Turning away from the pursuit of possessions, and engaging more in experiences and social relationships, will be less costly and healthier for us. Stories that question our obsession with accumulating more things can make scaling back desirable, and this can be incorporated into film, television, and novels to help turn the ship of climate change around.

I have already made a start on that. My novel, The EarthStar Solution, features the wealthy daughter of a hedge-fund manager who becomes a climate activist and works to change her father’s mind about his pursuit of profit for profit’s sake. I've now taken another step in getting that story into the world. I’ve adapted the novel as a screenplay and submitted it to a wonderful fellowship program sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council called Rewrite the Future. This program encourages Hollywood to integrate the climate issue into films and television. Rewrite the Future puts on presentations for the industry and consults on screenplays. Every year, they choose three scriptwriters to get feedback and mentoring on their climate-focused screenplay.

The EarthStars script that I submitted to this year's competition demonstrates what a present-day climate story can tackle. Whether or not it is chosen, my screenplay is an example of how to tell the story of scaling back our pursuit of luxury, glamour, and possessions. The characters embrace the idea that we don’t have to sacrifice happiness if we try to simplify. Stories like mine can help audiences reset priorities that may lead everyone to live happier lives.

There’s still more to do with stories. Sitting under that beautiful old tree while tabling, I resolved to get back to work on another one of my novels. I have a good draft for a new book to polish. It’s a fantasy, set in present-day Oregon, and it captures the imagination of readers by invoking the magic of forests, which are in peril with our fast-changing climate. Trees are an important antidote to our fossil fuel addiction, and I want to make readers love them as much as I do. It's another aspect of fighting climate change that can become part of the wide-ranging river of stories needed to ward off the shut down of the Atlantic Ocean's AMOC.