Climate Change and the Stories We Tell

Climate change, as a wicked problem tied to stories and ceremonies, provides us with the opportunity to raise essential questions about our values and power structures and to think creatively about our future. The work of literary scholars, such as J. Edward Chamberlin, allows us to examine the nature of these climate change narratives by imaginatively (re) interpreting the common ground between Them and Us, and by transcending our localism, while also recognizing the validity of traditional place-based knowledges. In his text, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground (2004), Chamberlin’s notions of “believe it and not” (160), finding common ground through stories and ceremonies, “babblers and doodlers” (8), and the barbaric versus the civilized demonstrate the problematic nature of current climate change approaches, as proposed by several Western academics. In this essay, the authors question and extend Chamberlin’s contention that how we believe is less problematic than what we believe, as well as the dichotomy implied by the “Them and Us” labels (8). The authors contend that imaginative, transdisciplinary approaches, contextualized by our lived realities, grounded in environmental and social justice, and focussed on processes rather than outcomes are the principles that should underpin climate change action plans.