We Need Another Hero: Why Climate Change Needs a Narrative

As the gap between scientific consensus and the public’s perception of climate change continues to grow, scientists are looking for new ways to communicate their research. A new study in Social Science Quarterlyconsiders the power of storytelling and explores how scientists can use it to shape perceptions of risk and policy preferences.

An internet-based experiment involving 1,500 U.S. respondents explored a range of climate narratives which contained the classic story telling ingredients; settings, plots, characters and a moral.

Narratives ranged from ‘Profligacy: An Egalitarian Story,’ in which the cause of global warming is overconsumption and groups such as Ecodefense and Earthfirst are framed as heroes; to ‘Business as Usual: An Individualistic Story,’ which casts the Cato Institute the Wall Street Journal as heroes while suggesting that governments and idealists have concocted climate change.

The narratives offer stories which assert an interpretation of climate change and propose specific policy solutions: cap and trade, nuclear energy, or renewable resources.

The research concluded that narrative structure, and specifically the casting of heroes and villains, helps people form initial emotional assessments to the issue and helps steer those assessments towards specific policy ideas.