Storytelling and Climate Change

I am increasingly thinking and indeed currently reading about the myths we are telling ourselves about climate change and the Anthropocene.  It’s strange that the word myth is nowadays used to convey a false belief or idea which is somewhat different today than in former times. It used to mean more weighty matters such as the purpose and meaning of life and how we might guide our planetary existence. Indeed, the myth of more- is the myth of human progress, which has underpinned our unsustainable lifestyles of excessive consumption and waste and in this sense is a linear trajectory towards another myth: our perceived mastery of the planet. The planetary crisis has not been a good story to tell according to one recent and highly readable book entitled We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins with Breakfast. Its author Jonathan Safran Foer argues that the story of climate change often does not captivate or transfer and hence fails to convert us and above all fails to interest us.  He goes further and suggests that the fate of our planet has a similar place in literature and is vastly different from that exhibited in the broader cultural and social conversation which is dominating the likes of XR and Greta Thunberg. He suggests that writers are sensitive to what kind of stories that work- ones that stick in a durable sense in our culture like religious texts, pages and passages from history, sensational actions and moral conclusions. How we frame the story often determines how we relate to it and how it may or may not motivate us to act.