Clapperboard for climate change.
Get in quick, eBay has launched an auction to sell Love Island clothes - as seen worn by the islanders on the show. This is part of the shows commitment to profile eco-friendly behaviours and normalise re-use. Although we still await a frenzied debate about UK climate policy from the villa.
Once upon a time (well, in 2004), I authored the UK government’s first ever guide to communicating climate change. It laid out a new story for climate change, and the best ways to tell it to effect change. Specifically, how to engage normal people, living normal lives, in this very abnormal threat to everything we’re familiar with. And the urgency for compelling sustainability storytelling has increased ever since.
Even the Nobel-prize wining Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has taken up that call. Their latest report describes, for the first time, the specific impact that everyday people can have on limiting climate change. Not politicians, not businesses, but everyday folk – particularly those of us in wealthy countries. People who pop to the shops, take photos of their dog, rush for the school run and dream about their next holiday. People who watch Love Island (don’t we all).
All of us, the IPCC reveals, could “rapidly” reduce the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions by 5%, simply by making “lifestyle changes”. This could mean eating less meat, using less electricity, cycling more, you name it. Science says it will make a difference, and fast.
But the IPCC has gone further than behaviour change, and calls on storytellers to take up arms (pens?) in the cause. “Narratives enable people to imagine and make sense of the future through processes of interpretation, understanding, communication and social interaction.” The IPCC language might not have the pace of a thrilling bestseller – but their point is well made - stories matter for sustainability.
And we have a storytelling industry - of scriptwriters, show-runners, novelists, poets and creatives. Their influence shouldn’t be taken lightly, nor the responsibility that comes with it. BAFTA have long been aware of this, and my agency Futerra worked with the team to create Planet Placement – an inspirational guide for TV and filmmakers to making content that will set the cultural agenda in ways that support the planet.
Exercising this influence is more important, and more urgent, than ever before – not just because we are in a race to keep warming to 1.5 degrees, but because young people have already started losing hope. Our own research has shown that among those aged under 35, a worrying one in every five have now given up, saying it is ‘too late to fix climate change’. No wonder given that, globally, 62% of people say that they hear much more about the negative impacts of climate change than they do about the solutions for fixing it. People hear the stories they are told, and write their own ending.
How can we change the story? The creative, film and TV industry finds itself in perhaps the most exciting and possibility-expanding role of all when it comes to climate communications. Their characters, plotlines, scenes and settings are watched enthusiastically and at scale. Imagine if they included significantly more mentions of climate change than they did pizza, or goldfish? (Currently, they do not.)
Of course, repeating the words ‘climate change’ on screen isn’t the only answer here – exciting, emotive, unexpected sustainability storytelling is. That could mean Love Islanders competing on eco-friendly behaviours or taking on lifestyle-change challenges. It could mean food, fashion and travel magazine shows with a ‘green’-themed segment. It could involve scripting characters that choose vegan milk for their coffee, or meet their love interest on the train they took instead of flying. Let their environmentalism (or not) become part of their personality: green equals good, emissions equal evil.
Thanks to the IPCC, we know exactly which lifestyle choices that characters and plots can build excitement around. Transport is the biggest one. Could petrol cars and casual air travel go the way of cigarettes and rarely be shown on screen? Walking, cycling, public transport and electric vehicles are the norms we need. And to eat? Mostly plants.
And before you park these ideas with the rest of any existing mental image of ‘sustainability’ you might have (hemp clothes, disapproving looks, endless chickpeas), consider that fun and wit have just as much a place in climate change content as any other topic. More even, given the situation we’re in. Telling a new story of climate change is not about being earnest and un-engaging; quite the opposite. That might make it more creatively challenging than other subject areas. Good – the best creativity is borne out of constraint.
This challenge is an enormous opportunity. The creative, film and TV industry’s power to shape lifestyles really can shape the planet’s future. Its ‘brainprint’ – the environmental impact of its messages – is vastly bigger than its footprint. How will storytellers help write a better ending of the epic story of sustainability?
