Opinion | To move the masses into climate action, we need a really good story
- COP26 has generated many climate agreements but no one seems to have found the right narrative to unite us in confronting a frightening future of climate catastrophe
- To inspire action, we need to evoke an emotional reaction from more people that global warming is everyone’s responsibility
But how do we convince more people to make the change on climate action?
There is so much distrust of authority that many are cynical. Elections seem to solve nothing because when the majority margin is wafer thin, coalition governments cannot make tough decisions. We become like Josef in Franz Kafka’s book The Trial, in a faceless court facing charges and accusations we cannot understand with no idea how to get out of the predicament.
Kafka describes very well how many feel alienated, hopeless against a faceless bureaucracy, frustrated against the system and lost in an absurd reality. Many hark back to a lost golden era, which causes identity conflict between race, religion and cultures.
Politicians at both ends of the spectrum from democracies to autocracies understand the power of mass movement. People have always been mobilised by powerful storytelling. Either we unite against an enemy or we strengthen the institutions and shared interests that bind us. No one seems to have found the right narrative to unite us in confronting a frightening future of climate catastrophe.
