So what's the story?
“The world is not made of atoms. It is made of stories." - Muriel Ruykeser
In earlier posts1 I argued that the main obstacles to our success against global heating are internal. We sabotage ourselves through the ways we think about the problem.
One of these ways is to tell ourselves, and others, a story that can’t end well.
The story matters
A good storyline is essential. We humans tend to think in terms of stories. As NYU’s Jonathan Haidt explains, “Stories matter. We think in stories, we teach in stories, we understand things best in stories. Pretty much anything you want to explain as a teacher, if you put it in story form, it goes over better, it’s more memorable than if you simply explain the facts. Stories are our natural vehicle for understanding.” 2
Source: Cinderella castle. Walt Disney productions.
At one level, there are just two kinds of stories: Comedy in the broad sense, stories that end well. And then there is of course tragedy in the broad sense, stories of destruction and defeat.
Children vastly prefer stories that end well. And in our entertainment choices, so do we Americans, by and large. Look at the blockbuster movie list, it’s dominated by this kind of story. Even our dystopias tend to end well, at least for some heroes. For example, “The Hunger Games”, and “Avengers: Endgame”.
Stories to guide our politics
Those are made-up stories. But we also apply the story structure when we think about the forces dominating our lives. When, every four years, Americans are asked to choose someone to govern us as president, we tend to reduce this choice to one between proposed storylines.
“Is the country going in the right direction?” ask the pollsters. In other words, is our national story going toward the good ending we prefer?
Famed Republican Party media strategist Mark McKinnon confirms:
Every election we are bombarded with billions of bits of information and we want it organized so it has meaning. I mean voters think in very simple ways. They want things communicated in an organized, compelling and simple fashion. There has to be a narrative arc...something that connects it all. The way we talk about a narrative architecture with candidates is to put it through a filter and the filter is you identify a threat or an opportunity, fear or hope. There’s a victim of the threat or the denied opportunity, a villain, a resolution and a hero. That’s a classic narrative architecture and so it has real power. It’s like a magnet and voters are iron filings. It just pulls those voters into your orbit.3
Source: “Damsel in distress”. Nsilent. Granger Collection.
McKinnon’s career confirmed to him: All campaigns are about either fear or hope. For example,
In 2004, less than fifty percent of America liked George W. Bush or his policies and so we had a real challenge, ‘How do we get above 51%?’ …People respond to fear because it plays on people’s emotions and the things they worry about most. So, the threat now is international terrorism, the victims are 9/11, the villain is Al Qaeda, the resolution is a very aggressive policy against the foreign threats and the hero is George W. Bush…
McKinnon helped to re-elect Bush that year by ads showing lurking wolves, dispersed by the strong, heroic President.
The climate story so far
What are the emotion, and the story, associated with the climate campaign? Until recently: only fear. And a story that did not look like it could end well: The victim of the threat? The entire world. The villain? Most of humankind, because everyone contributes to global heating. The resolution? That we all radically change our lives—What? And the hero? Well, that’s got to be everyone, because unless everyone does their part, defeat is inevitable???
That has not been a plausible story, never mind an appealing one.
There are various weaknesses with it, but perhaps the weakest is the offered resolution. Everyone must do their moral duty to cut back consumption, which means everyone must learn to sacrifice long-term, for the sake of other people in the world.
So we must all give up on fast cars and big homes and Big Macs, so that later generations and other people around the world whom we don’t know can benefit. Perhaps I can imagine myself undertaking self-sacrifice of that order, but.. everyone? And unless they all do it, it makes little sense for me to do it?
It’s hard to believe. And even harder to commit to.
A twist in the plot
That bad story may no longer be necessary.
It’s no longer the only story we have to offer, because of a technical revolution whose effects we are just beginning to process. Green technology has advanced enormously in recent years. The cost of wind power per kilowatt-hour declined over 95% since 1980. The cost per watt of solar photovoltaic (PV) power dropped by over 99%.
Source: This and the following four illustrations are from “Converting radical ideas into ground breaking companies” Bill Gross, Idealab. SOSV Climate Tech. October 21, 2021.
Conventional energy sources’ costs are rising, or at best, declining weakly. “Green energy” technologies–wind, and solar photovoltaic— continue to ride down the “experience curve”. They’re widening the cost gap. In 2017, the cost of generating electricity by four different sources, a combined cycle gas turbine, a coal plant, onshore wind turbines, and solar photovoltaic cells, cost about the same: $.055 per kWh. By 2020, oil rose to $.06, gas dropped slightly to $.05, wind halved to $.03, and solar sank 2/3, to $.02. 4
This does not mean we can simply replace fossil fuel power plants with solar or wind power plants, for the simple reason that the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. Utilities can’t rely on them to flow reliably, or sometimes, at all. They have to keep fossil fuel generators running to bridge the gaps.
But the cost advantages offered by green energy sources are so appealing that they’ve set off a race to develop equally revolutionary energy storage solutions. Even if a new U.S. administration turns its back on global heating, rational profit-seekers around the world know a good bet when they see one. (See my most recent post, “The gold rush is on”)
A new story
In other words, it can now make economic sense to transition to a carbon-free world, and not just ecological sense. That’s a game-changing advance, because very few people think and act ecologically, but almost everyone else thinks and acts economically.
Global heating calls for us to undertake a far-reaching “energy transition” to renewable energy sources. If by making this switch I can pay substantially less on an ongoing basis, there is no longer a hard economic penalty to going green. There is a switching cost to be faced, true. But now I can see this as a negative upfront cash flow that will be more than compensated by recurring positive cash flows after the switch. It means that the transition can pay for itself.
This transforms the problem. It’s no longer just a moral challenge: “Do I/we accept personal long-term hardship for the sake of others?” It can become a financial calculation: “Do I/we make an upfront investment to achieve recurring long-term cost reductions—and insurance against climate disaster"? And that’s the kind of choice that most of the world can make. The odds shift, dramatically!
And the storyline changes, fundamentally. In The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, Christopher Booker proposes that all stories can be reduced to seven basic plots: 1. Overcoming the Monster, 2. Rags to Riches, 3. The Quest, 4. Voyage and Return, 5. Rebirth, 6. Comedy and 7. Tragedy.5 Tellingly, the first six “end well”. (Though “Rebirth” can be wrenching.) Only the seventh declines into defeat and destruction. The dominant plot the climate movement has advanced to date offers at best an unlikely “Rebirth” of most of humanity, but really, much more likely, “Tragedy”.
With the astonishing new potency of green energy sources, a happy ending comes into view. It’s certainly not inevitable, it may not even look likely, but those were never requirements of good, engaging stories! Most obviously, the entrepreneurially inclined can begin to see a “Rags to Riches” story in climate, that of heroes who start poor but, by investing well, end spectacularly rich (e.g. Tesla). The technically minded may see a “The Quest” story, of inventors of magical devices that scrub our air of carbon, or unlock limitless energy through atomic fusion. Many of the rest of us will be more than content to see a story of “Voyage and Return’, whereby we can anticipate our children living again in a world that is no longer hurtling toward destruction. All of us can shiver with exhilaration, at the prospect of “Overcoming the Monster” of climate hell.
In short, we can hope again.
"A life becomes meaningful when one sees oneself as an actor within the context of a story." - George Elliot Howard
Especially “We have met the enemy”.
“How Human Beings Got Morality, Religion, Civilization, and Humanity.” Jonathan Haidt. A lecture in the “being human | human being” series. Posted on May 28th, 2013 in Oregon Humanities Center.
“How to Win an Election” By Sarah Klein and Tom Mason. The New York Times. February 18, 2016.
“Converting radical ideas into ground breaking companies” Bill Gross, Idealab. SOSV Climate Tech. October 21, 2021.
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. By Christopher Booker. Bloomsbury Continuum. 2004. Booker’s typology is summarized in “The Seven Basic Plots – A Summary”. By Michael Wheldon. The Discerning Writer, Wordpress.com. May 18, 2016.