From Grief to Action: Effective Storytelling in the Climate Crisis

From Grief to Action: Effective Storytelling in the Climate Crisis

FREDRIK MORBERG

During the latter part of 1997 and most of 1998, coral reefs around the world suffered extensive bleaching and die-off due to rapidly rising temperatures in tropical seas. The heat caused corals to expel the algae living inside their transparent tissues, which provide them with energy and color. Such widespread bleaching had never been seen before and shocked the scientific community, including myself. That year, my wife and I welcomed our first child, a son. The thought that he might never experience coral reefs as I had was a profound emotional blow. For a couple of years, I gave several public lectures and wrote articles about the threats to the reefs. I tried my best, thinking that I would make everyone care by describing the threats and shouting as loudly as I could about the imminent demise of the world’s reefs. Even though a few people wanted to listen, it didn’t work very well in convincing the masses.

Sadly, as I write this, coral reefs are again suffering from an even worse bleaching event due to even warmer ocean temperatures. The severity of this recent bleaching event has surpassed previous records, raising widespread concern among scientists, environmentalists and others. It serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing challenges we face in protecting these vital ecosystems in the face of climate change. The recent bleaching in 2023 and 2024 has captured headlines all over the world as it represents the most severe and widespread episodes of coral bleaching on record. This crisis has highlighted the vulnerability of coral reefs in the face of climate change and has reignited discussions about the need for immediate and effective measures to mitigate global warming and protect these vital marine ecosystems.

The widespread media coverage has certainly raised public awareness about the dire state of coral reefs and the urgent need to preserve them for future generations. But will this lead to lasting change significant enough to save the world’s coral reefs? Will people listen this time, or are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes we made over 25 years ago?

Negative messages tend to gain attention in the moment and certainly make it easier to reach out in the media. But in the long run, another type of communication might be much more successful. Many environmental psychologists understood this long before I did, but I had to experience it myself for it to really sink in. The Norwegian environmental psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes has summarized this in an educational way in his book “What we think about when we try not to think about global warming”. In it he describes the climate crisis and the psychological defense mechanisms we humans tend to use to keep worries and demands for behavioral change at bay. Among us researchers, it has been common to deal with this by presenting more and more convincing diagrams and other facts about, for example, the climate crisis or the state of the world's oceans. According to communication research, this rarely works. We simply need other ways to communicate in order to truly reach and influence people's attitudes and behaviors.

We need new stories. We must stop describing nightmare scenarios and instead connect different environmental and climate measures to positive visions of health and well-being. Such messages work for a variety of audiences, not just those already convinced. The more often we tell this type of forward-looking and visionary story, the more we will begin to live according to them, says Per Espen Stoknes. Recently, it may seem that the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and her movement "Fridays for Future" have disproven this thesis by gaining enormous traction for their message that we cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. As usual, reality is more complex than theory, and therefore I believe that both Greta and Per Espen are right.

In any case, during that period in the late 1990s, I decided to change the direction of both my research and how I argued for the preservation of coral reefs. In terms of research, this meant I began to study all the benefits, so-called ecosystem services, that people derive from coral reefs, and how dependent we are on their existence. Moreover, I tried to find solutions instead of merely describing the problems.

In 1999, for example, together with professor Carl Folke, I compiled a review of the ecosystem services provided by coral reefs, which we published in the scientific journal Ecological Economics. The article is still frequently cited today by researchers who, at the beginning of their own studies, want to refer to those who, in scientific terms, have demonstrated the obvious: that it is beneficial to save the world's coral reefs because they provide a lot of value to us humans.

In this way, I became part of a new generation of marine biologists who diverged from previous researchers. As American ecologist Nancy Knowlton described, this earlier generation was “a whole generation of scientists trained to describe the ocean's death in increasingly detailed and more grim obituaries.” Instead of writing these “death notices,” I began to think like a doctor, focusing on seeking cures and solutions. While it may sound presumptuous, it genuinely felt like I was part of an important shift. Seeing coral reefs as heroes rather than just victims is also a part of the story of biomimicry—sustainable solutions inspired by nature. By learning more about coral reefs and the benefits they provide, we can not only better understand how we can save them but also learn a thing or two that can inspire new smart solutions to the great challenges of our time. For example, among the diversity of life forms in coral reefs, researchers have found inspiration for medicines against HIV and leukemia, as well as a new type of climate-smart concrete.

Nowadays, when I give lectures, I often show a modified satellite image of our planet shaped like a giant human brain. The image demonstrates that we humans both dominate the planet and possess enormous collective intelligence. The reason our species, Homo sapiens, has become so successful is precisely that our large brain capacity has made us smart, adaptable, and good at cooperating. After that, I click to a slide showing that the human population on the planet has more than doubled since I was born more than 50 years ago. Quite astounding. With a wry smile, I ask: “What could possibly go wrong with so many smart minds? Eight, soon nine billion of them. Surely it shouldn't be a problem to solve the great challenges we face in ensuring a positive future for both ourselves and the planet's climate and environment?” I say this somewhat jokingly, but also with the utmost seriousness. I am and remain an almost incurable optimist, and, just as the late Swedish health professor Hans Rosling used to remind us, quite a few things have improved in the world – such as reduced extreme poverty and increased life expectancy. But the problem, as my research colleagues and I often remind people, is that not everyone has benefited from the increased prosperity, and during the same period, things have gone very wrong regarding most global climate and environmental changes.

The key is to build on positive developments in human health and well-being while protecting the planet. Fortunately, I see more and more positive signs that we are beginning to take global environmental changes and injustices seriously and that we are more often putting our billions of wise heads together to collectively solve the problems. The Paris Climate Agreement, the UN's global goals for sustainable development, the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity agreement, EU’s Green Deal, the worldwide school strikes for the climate, and the increase of conscious consumers who shop more sustainably (and consume less) are some clear indications that we have slowly started the transformation and are moving in the right direction.

In my more than 25 years as an environmental researcher and science communicator, university teacher, and lecturer, I have otherwise been confronted with a lot of much more negative images of the world – like the gigantic crisis facing the world's coral reefs that opened this text. Science has often been better at describing problems than solutions. And the media is generally more interested in sudden environmental disasters than in small positive steps toward more sustainable development. But does this negative attitude make us engaged? Or does it just lead to apathy in the face of threats that we feel we cannot do anything about? According to brain researchers, we have an innate ability to mimic each other because of a certain type of nerve cell called mirror neurons. They form the basis of our compassion and actually make both negative and positive thinking contagious.

Of course, it's not as simple as everything getting solved just by thinking a little positively. That’s not what I mean. It is truly high time to treat the global climate and ecosystem crises as real crises. But sometimes it feels like many of us suffer from a sort of paralyzing “mental acidification”, which doesn’t solve any problems either. I believe more in another form of storytelling. And it's not about ignoring the problems; rather, it's about opening our eyes to all the positive things that are also happening – or can happen – in the world.

Like many coral reef researchers, I share in the profound “reef grief” over the loss and degradation of half the world’s reefs. However, we cannot remain paralyzed by sorrow. As Callum Roberts noted in Reef Life, “It all comes down to emissions. If we fail to reduce them, the reefs are doomed. But I’m still an optimist. Now we need to act, not mourn.”

This underscores the importance of our storytelling. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his “dream,” not a “nightmare,” highlighting the need for hope and action over despair. In addressing global challenges, we must find and share narratives that inspire and mobilize us. As the American writer and activist Rebecka Solnit aptly puts it, “In order to do what the climate crisis demands of us, we have to find stories of a livable future, stories of popular power, stories that motivate people to do what it takes to make the world we need.” Focusing on such hopeful and empowering stories, is probably the best chance we have to drive the necessary change to protect our coral reefs and secure a sustainable future.