**The Potential Energy Coalition × JOAN** In 2019, the Potential Energy Coalition partnered with creative agency JOAN to produce a campaign called Save Florida Man (Chapman, 2020; JOAN, 2022). The campaign was inspired by the Internet's fascination with frequent headlines about one "Florida man" or another doing something unusual, like trying to bring a kitten into a nightclub (Leibowitz, 2012). It centered around a video starring real Florida Man Robby Stratton, who made headlines in 2018 for bringing a live alligator on a beer run. In the video, Robby explains that sea level rise is encroaching on Florida Man's natural habitat and that soon enough, newspapers might be completely bereft of Florida Man hijinx. Now, we don't actually think Florida Man is an endangered species, and we defnitely don't want any more alligators to experience this kind of harassment. But we *do* want more funny videos that approach climate change from creative angles and garner millions of impressions (JOAN, 2022). With a Chief Creative Offcer who writes for McSweeney's and Reductress on the side, we know the Potential Energy Coalition will deliver—and JOAN's past work speaks for itself (McSweeney's, n.d.; Reductress, n.d.). Visit potentialenergycoalition.org and joancreative.com, @potentialenergycoalition on Instagram, and @JoanCreative on Instagram and Twitter for more.

**Celia Gurney** AKA one of the authors of this chapter, is an Upright Citizens Brigade-trained improviser who spent 3 years immersed in climate change communications at Climate Nexus. There, she produced a comedic video series about individual climate action called #9for2019 (Climate Nexus, 2019). Think mockumentary-style videos where "random people" get asked questions such as "Why do you only date people who live car-free?" and then answer things like, "They have better butts." The project test-drove an expanded suite of digital marketing tools, with the goal of generating sign-ups for a partner organization, The Environmental Voter Project. The #9for2019 website received over 4000 visits during the promotional period and recruited 20+ new "climate voters." At Climate

37The audience gasps.

 More recently, she created comedic content for Shut The Fossils Up and Yellow Dot Studios' campaign to protect New York State's climate law from fossil fuel interference. Find out what else she's up to at celiagurney.com.

# *Multiple Formats*

**Mamoudou N'Diaye** AKA the other co-author of this chapter (pay attention) is a Brooklyn-based comedian who accidentally made his way into climate crisis communication by way of his racial justice work. He was featured in the Think 100% documentary *Ain't Your Mama's Heatwave* as the host of the comedy portion of the documentary about the climate crisis effect on the city of Norfolk, VA, and then became a writer for it (Think 100%, 2021). Prior to that, he/me/I have worked with Rollie Williams on his New York-based climate justice late-night show *An Inconvenient Talk Show*, where he/me/I was the DJ and occasionally a correspondent, delivering out-of-the-box solutions to the climate crisis via PowerPoint.38 In 2019, I/myself/me performed at The Center for Cultural Power's (TCCP) Climate Woke Summit and then partnered with them where I wrote sketches/web series based on climate justice with TCCP one called *Law and Order: Climate Justice Unit.* On top of that, I've written too many treatments about the integration of climate justice into a TV format and I'm just happy to be nominated at this point. Not a fan of social media so I'll just leave this here: mamoudoundiaye.com.

**Inside the Greenhouse** This interdisciplinary program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, shows students that creative, funny climate change communication is possible and helps them produce some of their own. Among the offerings are two classes ("Creative Climate Communication" and "Climate Change and Film"); a science flm internship program with its own flm festival; a comedy show aptly titled "Stand Up for Climate Change"; and an annual short comedy video competition open to the public, in which several people/groups on this list have placed over the years (Boykoff et al., 2017b, 2018, 2020, 2021; CIRES, 2019). We have to hand it to Inside the Greenhouse for its massively successful efforts to incubate and incentivize the creation of climate change comedy in many different formats and from many different sources. We also have to pay them \$1,000,00039 for helping us fnd a lot of the creators on this list. Follow @everydayclimate on Instagram and @ ITG\_Boulder on Twitter, and for cryin' out loud, just go to insidethegreenhouse.org already.

38Often intersecting with topics surrounding race, reassigning the burden of blame for the current crisis, and adding Greta Thunberg to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Better than Hawkeye.

39 In Monopoly money.

**Chuck Nice** New York-based comedian Chuck Nice has long participated in science comedy via StarTalk, the podcast he hosts with Neil deGrasse Tyson (StarTalk, 2022), but in 2019, he founded the Shhh, It's Real Campaign, which uses entertainment to inspire young people to act on climate (Shhh, It's Real!, n.d.). That same year, he hosted a climate change-themed variety show at NYC Climate Week (New York Comedy Club, 2019) that showcased several stand-up comics, at least one musician, and pre-recorded sketches that Nice himself wrote in collaboration with his assistant. One of the funniest aspects of his sketches is the way he incorporates children (Climate Comedy, 2021). You don't have to look any further than the climate crisis to see that kids often act more rationally and responsibly than adults and Nice plays with that dynamic to great comedic effect. His limited-run podcast, *Pod Zero*, is all about the climate crisis and features interviews with Peggy Shepard of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, comedian Roy Wood, Jr. of The Daily Show (Nice, 2021a), and climate educator Dr. Eugene Cordero of San Jose State (Nice, 2021b). All the follows: @ShhhItsReal and @chucknicecomic on social media, and don't forget the Chuck Nice YouTube channel.

**Climate Town** Climate Town's funny explainer videos about things like the invention of the concept of carbon footprints by oil companies and fast fashion will teach you about climate change "in a way that doesn't make you want to eat a cyanide pill" (Williams, n.d.). The series is produced by documentary flmmaker Benjamin Boult, Daily Show writer Nicole Conlan, and Rollie Williams, who also hosts (Boult, n.d.; Conlan, n.d.). It's a natural continuation for Williams, who, in the Before Times, regularly dressed up as Al Gore and hosted something called *An Inconvenient Talk Show* at Caveat40 bar/theater in Manhattan (Caveat, n.d.).   For the grand fnale, improvisers impersonating various celebrities would play a climate changethemed, Jeopardy-style game. On multiple occasions, *An Inconvenient Talk Show* moved its audience to act: once, by allowing the Sunrise Movement to recruit volunteers at a show, and later by doing a pandemic Zoom show that doubled as a fundraiser for WE ACT for Environmental Justice. If you like this paragraph's energy, check out the Climate Town YouTube channel, @climatetown on all social media, and The Climate Denier's Playbook, the podcast Williams and Conlan started in 2023.

40Rare sincere footnote: Caveat has science comedy shows coming out of its ears. Get your tickets immediately at www.caveat.nyc.

# *Explainer Videos*

**Politically Aweh** A project of Bouncing Biscuit Studios with distribution by premier investigative news outlet Daily Maverick, Politically Aweh, creates fast-paced, funny, high-production value videos about South African news and politics (Schiffrin, 2019). One of those videos won frst place in the 2020 Inside the Greenhouse Comedy & Climate Change Video Competition (Boykoff et al., 2020)! Titled *Climate Change in South Africa: How Bad Can It Be?*, it was the frst in a three-part series featuring Zipho Majova as the host and frequent cutaways—to barrages of news clips, Nelly's Hot in Herre music video, and a GIF of Troy from Community (Politically Aweh, n.d.). More recent videos include one about South Africa's renewable energy future (Politically Aweh, 2020) and another about the Karpowership energy deal (Politically Aweh, 2021). Stephen Horn, the postproduction freelancer and flmmaker who developed Politically Aweh, describes the project as "South Africa's answer to 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.'" which might sound a little cocky—if it wasn't spot on (Horn, n.d.). Check out @politicallyaweh on social media and the Politically Aweh YouTube channel.

**ClimateAdam** ClimateAdam is a YouTube channel dedicated to explaining complex ideas around climate change in playful and accessible ways (right down our alley, yeah?). But you wouldn't know this creator's got a British accent so for some reason it just means more and hits harder. Anyway, the ClimateAdam channel, founded in 2014, is run by Dr. Adam Levy (read that with a capital DOCTOR), a climate scientist from Oxford who makes sketch comedy-infused explainer videos. Their channel has received over half a million views (Levy, n.d.-b), with videos shared by Huffngton Post, Scientifc American and Upworthy (Levy, n.d.-a). ClimateAdam has been awarded funding from multiple sources, including the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Climate Communications Project (Levy, n.d.-a). In 2019, the channel was awarded second place in the Inside the Greenhouse Comedy & Climate Change Video Competition (Boykoff et al., 2019). (We can only assume any awards ceremony was hosted by Captain Planet.)  You can hear that voice by visiting @climate\_adam on Instagram or @ClimateAdam on Twitter and TikTok.

**All About Climate** Roshan Salgado D'Arcy's channel functions as a kind of climate denier Mythbusters. In response to the common climate claim "one degree of global warming isn't that much," for example, he tactfully converts and contextualizes: The amount of energy absorbed by the oceans due to global warming is equal to seven billion Hiroshimas since 1871—or more than one Hiroshima every second from 1871 to 2017 (Salgado D'Arcy, 2021). Screenshots of studies referenced build credibility with viewers, as does his master's degree in Climate Change, Development & Policy from the University of Sussex and several years working in science television production in the UK (BBC, Channel 4 and Plimsoll Productions) (Salgado D'Arcy, 2022). While Salgado D'Arcy's use of comedy is sparing, it's also effective, combining with his upbeat delivery to keep his 1.18K subscribers engaged. All About Climate on YouTube, people.

**Just Have a Think** Dave Borlace's dry sense of humor sneaks up on you in his 10- to 30-minute explainer videos, which often explore earth systems and renewable energy technologies. For example, in an April 2020 video titled "Is the Gulf Stream collapsing?" he describes *The Day After Tomorrow* as "a great action movie starring Dennis Quaid and a very young Jake Gyllenhaal, which, in the best traditions of Hollywood blockbusters, provided two hours of fabulous entertainment, but bore very little resemblance to real-world events or possibilities" (Borlace, 2020). See also the following description of his YouTube channel: "The channel is not a debating forum about whether Human Induced Climate Change is a real phenomenon or not. If that's what you're after then I can highly recommend chat forums on social media, where people on both sides of the argument go round and round in circles achieving precisely nothing at all" (Borlace, n.d.). Borlace created Just Have a Think in 2018 after reading Arctic scientist Peter Wadhams' book *A Farewell to Ice* (Buckley, 2020). Today, his channel has over 370,000 subscribers (Borlace, n.d.). You could become one of them…

**Simon Clark** Simon Clark recently fnished his PhD in Atmospheric Physics and Dynamics—and you can experience this triumph vicariously in the PhD series of videos on his YouTube channel (Clark, n.d.). Or, you can click immediately over to the videos about nuclear power, the Kyoto Protocol, and how much carbon we can pump into the atmosphere before sh\*t gets really serious. Spoiler alert: We don't have much of that allowance left, and sh\*t is already really bad (Clark, 2021). Clark's editing choices, like opening a video about nuclear with footage from The Simpsons, defnitely succeed in harnessing comedy's memorability (Clark, 2020). Warning: You WILL click on the video titled "Why weathermen were illegal wizards for 97 years." Follow @simonoxfphys on social media or just go to the famed YouTube channel!!!

# *Podcasters*

**Thimali Kodikara, Mothers of Invention** Thimali Kodikara is the series producer and a host of Mothers of Invention, a podcast about intersectional feminist climate change solutions (Robinson et al., 2018–2020; Schlossberg, 2019). Her cohosts? Comedian Maeve Higgins and former Irish president (also Ireland's frst woman president) Mary Robinson. Casual. Kodikara works on not only an editorial strategy, but also a social justice strategy for the show, which she explains isn't typical for podcasts (York St. John University, 2021). She and the rest of the Mothers of Invention team keep conversational chemistry fresh by playing around with hosting confgurations and format. In one episode, they had climate activist Xiye Bastida come on to guest co-host with comedian Pooja Reddy (Bastida & Reddy, 2020). In another, they envisioned a climate-justiced future in which the frst Indigenous woman president of the USA had just been elected and Maeve was the longtime partner of Michael B. Jordan (Robinson et al., 2020). Kodikara is big on this type of thing, advising people to create "a giant mood board" of what they want to see down the road (York St. John University, 2021). "What is the point of being artists if we can't do exactly that: visualize the future from outside the boxes everyone else is functioning in?" she said in an interview. "We are very, very powerful in that regard" (York St. John University, 2021). Feeling inspired yet? Follow @oneloudbellow on Instagram, @apathysuckseggs on Twitter, @mothersinvent on both, and listen to Mothers of Invention at www.mothersofnvention.online or wherever you get your podcasts.

**Dave Powell and Oliver Hayes, Sustainababble** Hosted by Dave and Ol, two friends who both work at environmental organizations in the UK, Sustainababble is a weekly comedy podcast about climate change and nature. They frmly believe that just because everything is really bad and getting worse, that doesn't mean there aren't crumbs of hilarity to be found—even if it's only laughing at the dark sh\*t some companies and businesses get up to. Episodes vary from interviews with environmental professors and activists to Dave and Ol attempting to understand something they're told is simple but rarely is—like whether there are 60 harvests left (Powell & Hayes, 2021), or whether it's okay to own a cat41 (Powell & Hayes, 2018). They pride themselves on their human, no-BS approach to talking about the climate and nature crisis—and having a wry, but comforting chuckle from time to time. They also wrote most of this paragraph, which is why it has a charming "across the pond" vibe.42 Follow @thebabblewagon for updates and fnd episodes at www. sustainababble.fsh or wherever you normally listen to podcasts.

# *Journalists*

**Gizmodo/Earther** Brooklyn is part of New York City. So why do you have to write "Brooklyn, NY," instead of "New York, NY" when you're sending mail there? Earther's relationship to Gizmodo is kind of like that, meaning: We're confused about who to address this paragraph to. Gizmodo/Earther, please get in touch. Anyway, the people who write for this website, whatever it's called, regularly fnd funny ways to talk about the climate crisis.  \*Authors rush to episode\*.

42Sadly enough, we replaced "awfulness" with "dark sh\*t" so it would sound more consistent with the rest of our chapter.

Will Soon Be Required by Law to Tell You Not to Drive a Car" (Ropek, 2022), "Huntington Beach High School May Want to Change Its Mascot After This Oil Spill" (Noor, 2021), and "New York City Plan to Close Streets is Weak as Hell" (Funes, 2020), you'd be forgiven for thinking you were clicking on a piece from *The Onion*. Except *The Onion* doesn't consistently highlight the climate justice angle, or, ya know, write true stuff. Follow @EARTH3R on Twitter for regular climate snark.

# *Social Media*

**Mary Annaïse Heglar, Head Greentroller** If you have Twitter and think about climate change regularly, you've probably come across Mary Annaïse Heglar. She writes essays (and tweets) about climate justice and climate grief, and she gets to the heart of things so expertly that you just want to retweet all the way down her profle. She co-hosts an intersectional climate change podcast with journalist Amy Westervelt called Hot Take (Heglar & Westervelt, 2019–2021), and she also trolls fossil fuel companies on Twitter to disrupt and bring attention to their greenwashing tactics. As Kate Yoder reported in Grist (Yoder, 2020), sometimes this "greentrolling" can be pretty funny—like when BP suggested people calculate their carbon footprints and Heglar replied, "Bitch what's yours???" (Heglar, 2019). To a recent Shell post about EVs, she replied, "This you?" and linked to an Earther article about Shell's CEO getting roasted at a climate conference (Heglar, 2021). A highlight of the greentrolling movement seems to have been in November 2020, when Shell asked what people are "willing to change to help reduce emissions." It was a great alley-oop for hordes of Twitter users, with nearly 8000 people quote tweeting it and many fexing their comedy writing muscles (Shell, 2020). To that we say: like and subscribe. Or more specifcally, follow @MaryHeglar on Twitter and Instagram, and jump on the greentrolling bandwagon.

**Climate Meme Accounts** Many of the best climate change memes around used to come from @climemechange on Instagram. Bursting onto the scene circa July 2018, the account built a 125K-strong following in just a few short years. Among other things, it once juxtaposed the statement "wind turbines are such an eyesore," with an image of their alternative: hundreds of pump jacks littering a desert landscape. Unfortunately its old posts are no longer visible, (Climemechange, n.d.) but we hope the account will return from this dormant period someday with fresh content. Though we both know its creator personally, we'll never reveal their identity not even if you trap us in bathtubs full of all the deer ticks that have shifted their range north due to climate change. Mwahahaha! The @climate\_memes Instagram account, meanwhile, is a little less mysterious: It's run by Climatepedia at UC Irvine. Click over there for memes featuring Squidward and vintage Lindsay Lohan, plus a clip of Doja Cat talking about cow farts (Climate Memes, n.d.).

**Alex Engelberg and Other TikTokers** Alex Engelberg (@alexengelberg) is a TikTok star who frequently combines music and comedy, to the delight of app users (Engelberg, n.d.-b). In 2021, he posted a video that started out as a corny song about ways to go green, but when he started to list his tips for being energy smart, they weren't your typical individual actions. We won't spoil the ending—you should just go watch it—but we will say it was impressively succinct commentary. It also has at least 2.6 million views on TikTok alone. Engelberg doesn't typically post about climate change, and he isn't the only TikToker who's made a funny, one-off climate change video that went viral, but that's exactly why this vid makes us so happy. It's evidence that climate change is increasingly fltering into the Internet's collective consciousness and that at least 2.6 million people recently thought about it for 31 seconds (Engelberg, n.d.-a).

# *Infuencers*

**Levi and Leah** Levi Hildebrand is not just extremely photogenic43 and good at what he does, but he also specializes in helping others tell their stories about the effects of climate change and other environmental research. He loves it so much that he even has his own production company that he founded in 2017 to focus on this work called One Island Media (Hildebrand, n.d.). Finding his lane as a creative consultant and collaborating with companies such as Blinkist, Klean Kanteen, and Sunski Sunglasses (Hildebrand, 2022), Levi now shares a YouTube channel with his wife Leah, and the two of them leverage it to combat climate change by promoting recycling, minimalism, and a zero-waste lifestyle and by testing sustainably sourced items for their 135K+ followers (Hildebrand & Tidey, n.d.). Those two goodnatured, attractive Canadians will almost make you want to move in with them in Victoria, B.C.

**Kurtis Baute** Here's the thing about Kurtis. The man makes fre videos. His whole thing should be our whole thing; he believes in science for a better world! He believes that in order to take on big issues such as climate change the world needs to be more science literate. He believes this so much that rather than convince you through speaking to you about the atmosphere, the man sealed himself in a DIY biodome to talk about how people interact with the atmosphere (Baute, 2018). Y'all wanna know just how much plastic there is in the world? Kurtis tried to spend 24 hours not touching any plastic to show us just how prevalent it is and where it ends up (Baute, 2019).

# *Scientifc Papers*

**Scientists** Yes folks, things have gotten so dire that even scientists themselves are getting in the comedy game. In 2018, four of them—Guillaume Chapron, Harold Levrel, Yves Meinard, and Franck Courchamp—published an article in the journal *Trends in Ecology & Evolution* called "A Final Warning to Planet Earth." It was a satirical response to the "warning to humanity" a large group of scientists had put out the year before, fipping the script and demanding that Earth—not humanity change its behavior to resolve the whole environmental catastrophe thing (Chapron et al., 2018). Of all the canary-in-the-coal-mine moments we've observed while working on this crisis, scientists going all Jonathan-Swift's-A-Modest-Proposal on us is honestly one of the scariest—and defnitely the most likely to remind us of high school English class. Hats off to Guillaume & Company.

# **Discussion**

Well damn, it's almost as if the authors have been right the whole damn time.

# *Major Findings*

This study sought to determine whether the causes, effects, histories, perils, and solutions to the earth's climate crisis can be and have been effectively communicated via comedic pathways. And it identifed more than 25 distinct entities doing that, so…science…win? Comedy win? Scimedy win? You get it; these fndings clearly indicate that there are multiple people and groups who are actively out in the streets using their platform and senses of humor to inform the masses of the evil patterns of Big Oil, the mythic carbon footprint, the convenience economy, political interference in offsetting climate research and action, etc. They successfully disseminate pertinent and urgent information in a captivating and charming way. So, to the millions of people running around asking, "Where are all the climate comedians?" we say "Ummmmm…please stop asking that. They're here, in this chapter. Duh."

There is value in talking about climate change and justice in entertainment. The type of work that our respondents—and non-respondents, those f\*\*kers—are doing needs more visibility. More visibility makes these issues easier to talk about with clear information, an easier way into a hard conversation, and connects us all under the banner of "YO IF WE DON'T HANDLE THIS WE ALL GONNA DIE!"44

This study has examined how comedic artists are using their platforms to elevate the conversation surrounding the climate crisis and has gone some way to collect

44Can we get someone to fy that banner over Rockaway Beach this summer?

25+ different options for multiple different tastes of comedy in one place. Phrases get lazily bandied about when the climate crisis is pitched as an area for comedic focus: It's "too dark to talk about" and "no one is talking about it meaningfully." Well, all of these climate comedy creators have been able to make space and take time to craft a way into the conversation using humor, and research shows how laughing can break tension. Why not use the thermal energy from that broken tension and transform it into actionable energy?45

And that brings us to H2, which, in case you don't remember, was our hypothesis about what it will take to more fully harness the power of climate change comedy in order to improve the effcacy of the climate justice movement, invite in more allies, and build a more inclusive clean energy economy. More good news: Everything we hypothesized in H2 was supported, and we're about to elaborate on that for…wait, let us check…the rest of this chapter!

People learn about war, genocide, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, capitalist exploitation, etc., through mass media avenues such as *The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Full Frontal with Sam Bee, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver*. Sometimes those shows cover climate change, and they've been doing so more effectively for a lot longer than traditional news media (just google "Colbert Report climate" to see for yourself). However, the climate crisis has no singular voice in late night to propagate information and highlight the intersections of climate justice with many other types. And it deserves one. More about that in the "Future Work" section.

Notwithstanding, this is not all the voices out here making a splash about climate as the sea levels rise all around the world. Most of these voices highlighted in this chapter are in the continental USA and the climate crisis is global, often affecting communities that do not beneft from the hyper-focused lens of media attention on America and its (for lack of a better term) shenaniganry. Research shows the Global South and other states ravaged by settler colonialism and exploitation of workingclass indigenous people are unfairly and disproportionately negatively affected by the climate crisis in ways that get invisibilized by the powers that be behind the world's camera (Brändlin, 2019). BIPOC, immigrant, queer, native, poor, and disabled voices must be allowed at the table and not spoken for by other people.

# *Limitations*

Building off of the point above, a major limitation of this study was limited resources to be able to travel to other parts of the world or have access to people potentially using comedy to tell their story. Even Greta got a boat, Springer! Give the authors of this chapter a raft with Wi-Fi capability in the future.46

45This is science, right?

46A Hermione-style time turner wouldn't hurt, either.

Another limitation of this study was the defnition of humor. Humor cannot be defned by just two artist/activists.47 Comedy is hyper-subjective; not everyone can deliver *30 Rock* levels of joke volume with *An Inconvenient Truth* level of PowerPoint prowess and even so, that's not everyone's cup of tea. Armed with the resources and connections at their disposal, the authors did their best to present a wide array of senses of humor, but they acknowledge that they mostly used word of mouth to fnd the respondents in this study, and they're are aware that this chapter is just the tip48 of the tip of the iceberg.

# *Future Work*

Assuming we have a future,49 here are some steps we'd love to take to use the accessibility of comedy to further the message of the climate crisis without leaning into the dark, dreary, depressing facts, and fgures but rather laughing together *with* the dark, dreary, depressing facts, and fgures.50

All issue-driven comedy should shine a light on the issues and not make light of them. It's punching up like Mario, not punching down like if Mario gave up plumbing and became a horrible open mic comedian. The respondents to this study all are shining examples of highlighting the issue at hand. The climate crisis is not only here but it has been couch surfng on the earth for decades, and it's about time for us to address the elephant in the room; the climate crisis needs to get a job and not spend its entire day watching *Judge Judy*—okay I think we lost the plot here. The climate crisis is here, and we cannot pretend that a climate apocalypse is our future when we see its effects of it in our present (Well, 2022).

Al Roker, Lord of the Weatherfolk, will not be leading us to the Climate Promised Land, nor will Al Gore.51 It will take all of us to commit to change. In order to commit to change, one must know what is the problem and sometimes the best person to communicate what the problem isn't a dry, jargon-heavy specialist. That's where comedy comes in. So…

**Let Comedy Sit at the Comms Table** Comedy needs to be taken more seriously as a communication strategy. We're not saying "Hey, let's treat comedians with the exact same weight that we do our elected offcials!" However, what we are saying is that we need to engage the populace on the ins-and-outs of the climate crisis in a way that is personal, personalized, and unifes people around the goals outlined in climate solutions. Those changemakers can fnd agents in comedians who are

47 3? Maybe. Also, "activist" is generous in Celia's case, though she might get there someday.

48 If you looked at this footnote, you're immature :/

49Hopefully you're reading this from the future, in which case can you send a message backwards through time to let us know how we did?

50Cut to us at a dinner party with the facts and fgures.

51 Is it in the contract that if your name is "Al" you have to do something with the weather?

actively using research to get the correct, pertinent, and all-inclusive messages surrounding the climate crisis to the people through their humor. It is the stance of this chapter that these artists and others, if given space, resources, and more eyes, can draw more people toward climate action and, simultaneously, demystify climate justice by adding more information to replace overwhelming doom, gloom, and anger at billionaire exoduses to low orbit (or further). Hopefully, this chapter brings even one new fan to these people but supporting them where they're at the writing of this chapter isn't the only way to use their talents.

**Clone John Oliver, But Make It Climate** The climate crisis affects us all. Some more than others, but without a planet, where the f\*\*k will we tweet opinions from the toilet from? Most of these hosts come from the Jon Stewart Academy of Hahas Over Boohoos, and in September 2021, a lot of them participated in Climate Night.52 But on the whole, none has been more impactful than Liverpool's own John Oliver with *Last Week Tonight.* John Oliver's show fnds a way to take an issue that might be a bit off the mainstream beaten path and weave it into the current cultural conversation. With topics ranging from India's elections (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, 2014c) to FIFA Corruption (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, 2014a), John talks about it all including issues that overlap with the climate crisis like foods (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, 2017b) and the Paris Agreement (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, 2017a). His show's deep-dive format gives complex, intersectional issues more breathing room. Its once-a-week schedule allows things (the issues themselves, as well as his writers' draft scripts) to marinate and potentially develop further before airtime.

**Finesse Those Calls to Action** John Oliver is also particularly good at calls to action. Many of his hashtags and charity ventures have brought awareness, visibility, and resources to vulnerable communities through the power of comedy (Borum & Feldman, 2020, p. 65; Ohlheiser, 2015; Simerman, 2015). This man started a fake megachurch, thousands of people donated to it, and he sent all the money to Doctors Without Borders (Ohlheiser, 2015). Why did that work? We haven't done any peerreviewed studies on it, but maybe because he focused on one very specifc ask, embedded humor *in the action itself* (the megachurch was called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption), and consolidated individual actions into a more impactful collective action. You don't have to be John Oliver to do something in that ballpark. Think of Her-icane fundraising for disaster relief and Sunrise signing up volunteers at An Inconvenient Talk Show. Watch and learn, climate comedy people—and imagine the mobilization that could happen if an Oliver-style late-night show was completely dedicated to the climate crisis' effects, globally and locally.

52Delivering what it promised, Climate Night was an event where everyone made climate jokes *on the same night*. A helpful Gizmodo article (Kahn & Taft, 2021) ranked the hosts' performances and kept track of "hot burns."

**Give the John Oliver Clone Some Friends** Why stop at one content perspective about climate? Our results section presents compelling and diverse POVs on the climate crisis. Centralizing one late-night show isn't the answer, because no one show can encompass all points of view. We need a mutual highlighting of all the different people doing this work, a focus on the most vulnerable communities, and a seat at the table and more importantly an equal voice for those communities. This requires the TV/flm industry and the climate change think tanks/organizations to invest in voices outside of the same seven people of no color who do not live with the effects of the crisis (pollution, poor air quality, famine, sea level rises, constant fooding, residing in hurricane disaster zones, etc.) providing a solitary voice. Guess what, TV Exec? Everyone in your target demo needs this information about the climate crisis so invest, invest, invest! Invest in all voices from queer people, to BIPOC folks, to people living outside of "the West" and people living on reservations, from older conservationists to younger ones—especially that last part.

**Nurture New Voices Like You Work for American Idol** One way to invest in new voices: support and create more programs that welcome people into the social impact entertainment space and provide networking opportunities. The IllumiNative Producers Program (Illumi*Native*, n.d.), the Yes, And Laughter Lab, and Inside the Greenhouse are good examples. After-school writing and performance programs for underserved youth, like Story Pirates Changemakers and Superhero Clubhouse's Big Green Theater, are also key (Story Pirates, n.d.; Superhero Clubhouse, n.d.). And those of us who know about those programs need to make sure everyone else does, too. (ATTN comedians: share info!) We need projects like a movie about New York's Black food justice advocates (Thomas et al., 2019), a stand-up special featuring comics from Miami's climate-gentrifying Little Haiti (PBS, 2022), and a half-hour comedy about farmers in the Brazilian Amazon transitioning to chop-andmulch agriculture thanks to a fctionalized version of Projeto Tipitamba (Embrapa, 2020). If any of that's going to happen, people from those communities need to be at the helm, making decisions from conception to launch. So let's keep building out the infrastructure that gets them to the table and makes the table a safe place to be.

**Remember: There's Life Beyond Satire** When most people think of climate change comedy, they probably think of satire: late-night satirical news shows, *Don't Look Up*, articles from *The Onion* like "Optimistic Researchers Say There Still Time to Head Off Climate Change Before It Starts Killing Rich People" (The Onion, 2021). Satire is a key piece of the puzzle (it punches up with great force!), but it's not a one-size-fts-all answer to engaging people. Research has shown it's good at getting people who care less about climate change to sit up and pay attention (Anderson & Becker, 2018), increasing their certainty that it's happening (Brewer & McKnight, 2017). On the other hand, the people who are getting lampooned might mistake you for one of them (it's more common than you'd think), and your words could end up reinforcing their views (Lamarre et al., 2009; Garrett et al., 2019). They might also dig their heels in more in response to being the butt of the joke (Borum & Feldman, 2020, p. 65). That is, if they even tune in at all (Mitchell et al., 2014, as cited in Borum & Feldman, 2020, p. 65). Also, sometimes people are just looking for more of an escape from reality, or they could use some hope (Osnes et al., 2019), or they just wanna see vampires make out or whatever. So if we want this movement to have maximum comedy reach, we need a whole charcuterie board of different offerings. That means scripted episodic TV, stand-up, sketch comedy, comedic documentaries (Borum & Feldman, 2020, p. 79), musical comedy, reality TV, podcasts hosted by comedians, live shows that convert investigative journalism into stand-up or scientist monologues into improv (Borum & Green-Barber, 2018; Thank You, Robot, 2019), funny journal articles, and everything else we can dream up. Climate stuff doesn't always have to be front and center, it just has to be part of each project's world in a meaningful way. In fact, it would probably be wise for some projects to avoid the word "climate" altogether and stick to "clean air and water" language, too (Boykoff, 2019, p. 38).

**Make That Mood Board for the Just Transition** Humanity's current mood re: the climate crisis is not good, which makes sense. There's a lot to grieve. We know what we don't want, and we can see it very clearly because it's coming, but while we keep an eye on that, we also need to rally around a clear vision of what we DO want.

And that is climate justice and a complete overhaul of our relationship with this planet, with each other, with materialism, with capitalism, with food, fashion, technology, etc. There are a lot of experts who, all together, know the details of how we can get there and what it will look like. Comedy programming (and other art) can help the rest of us wrap our brains around that. So let's make that mood board like Thimali Kodikara advised. How will this new paradigm improve the lives of families in 2065, for example? A sitcom could show us. What kinds of health problems will completely disappear from hospitals? We bring you: Season 53 of Grey's Anatomy. How universal and robust will mutual aid be? How will island communities fnd a way forward? How will we dismantle white supremacy and capitalism? What new classes will be required in schools? Will every city block have a huge community garden in the middle, shared across all the backyards? Which countries will former fossil fuel execs have tried to fee to, only to be found and brought to justice, and what will that justice look like? Will we even have countries?!

Shared visualization actually helps make change. For example, in 2014, conversations about clean water and alternatives to extractive industry united an Appalachian community at an art festival. The next time "land men" tried to purchase their land to sell to energy companies, more residents were prepared to say no, and they organized for the long term (Helicon, 2018). The future they had in mind was more appealing than what the land men offered. To quote Mary Annaïse Heglar quoting writer Toni Cade Bambara: "The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible" (2020).

**Invest in The Future, Even If They're Roasting You** Youth are inheriting the world. What's scarier? They are making fun of us while doing it. Even spookier?! They're good at it and they're almost always right. Even more Hocus-y and Pocusy?!!53 Not enough people are taking them seriously.54

Times change. Media changes. The way we consume media changes. While the youth audience seems to be a perpetually vexing market for older generations to understand in order to platform, one immutable truth is that they will be here when older generations will not be. TV and flm may or may not be the best vehicle to get that crucial climate information to that population but you know what? They're already doing it without any of our help.

Millions of teens use social media daily to share information. They already have chosen the climate crisis as a priority threat amidst all the other social traumas they dissect, lampoon, roast, sing about, rap about, dance about, throw soup cans at, etc. Systemically they don't have power, but their infuence has immense worth when it comes to communication regarding adapting to the current crisis, cutting down emissions, etc. I mean, these mfs were using TikTok to get tickets to rallies so actual attendees would show up to an empty stadium (Lorenz et al., 2020). You understand how petty, nay, how *powerful* that is?  Infuse that youthful raw talent and motivation with the messaging and creativity and we got us one hell of an effective communication method that informs the community when they're actually babies and not just acting like one.55 Additionally, Gen Z should be hired to run all transmedia for the entertainment-education people (callback!!!56).

**Make Comedy a More Accessible Tool** We need more guidance and support for non-comedians who want to integrate comedy into their climate justice work. The vast majority of organizers, teachers, health professionals, social workers, nonprofits, communicators, etc., do not have access to boundary organizations who can advise them and/or connect them to entertainment professionals. They're on their own, and they might be too nervous to just start throwing spaghetti at the wall, jokes-wise, until they "fnd their brand."

So what's the answer? Can we somehow "Oprah's Favorite Things" boundary organizations? ("And you get a boundary organization!  Sounds great, but expensive and time-consuming. Maybe we could make people check out the special humor issue of the journal *Environmental Education Research* that came out in summer 2022—the call for papers alone cited enough research on humor in education about "thorny issues" to make your head spin (Chandler et al., 2022). Maybe we could make everyone check out The Good Energy Project's screenwriter playbook (The Good Energy Project, n.d.). Or maybe we could distribute PDFs with comedy communication tips across the internet, but

53The authors were going to reference the Disney Channel Original Movie *Twitches* here but chose to not do it. Wait, they just did.

54Except us because they scare us.

55 Insert GOP Senator's name here. Seriously, just pick one, it'll probably work.

56High-level comedy technique. Only the greats can swing it.

require a password and not give it to the bad guys?? Respectfully requesting that you conduct research into that yourself, because these authors are TIRED. We've worked hard to alert you to dozens of inspiring examples of climate comedy projects in the results section, so go forth and check those out ASAP.

# **Conclusion**

Look at y'all, you made it here! Either you had a good time or you had an *amazing* time! Or maybe you also just took a nap. Regardless, the aim of this experiment was to ask if comedy is an effective way to Trojan horse climate crisis education to the world.57 That hypothesis was supported by all the talented and wonderful comedic climate communicators that we rustled up. While it is a massive undertaking to inform the world of all the ins-and-outs surrounding the crisis, our investigation found that many people laced up their Gore-Tex boots and are already tackling this inconvenient (and impending) truth.

Comedy is subjective. And when the subject of said comedy is a global crisis powered by decades of exponentially rising CO2 levels, apathetic politicians with toothless promises, and corporations facing no accountability and attempting to shift the blame to the people?? Well, it's easy to get overwhelmed. But the artists who dive in, sift through the data, fnd the truth, and make it their mission, nay, their civic duty, nay on that nay, their PURPOSE to shine a comedic light on this hefty hefty hefty dilemma deserve a bigger platform, more space and time to share, and a tip of the hat for their contributions. Facts and fgures are not everyone's love language, but we all can use a laugh. Something that tempers the social anxiety surrounding climate change with something soft, sweet like a spoonful of sugar, which, as a famous English child endangerer once said, helps the medicine go down (Poppins, 1965).

Additional deeper investigations into all the nooks and crannies of the comedy, TV, and flm would build upon this experiment and illuminate more alternative methods of climate communication from even more people. Tackling the climate crisis as a fully backed primetime initiative, agreed upon by all networks, targeting the demos of each outlet would be a way to hit as many targets as possible. Peppa Pig, Rachel Maddow, Zendaya, Larry David, and RuPaul all talking about the Green New Deal? Can you imagine?! It's really an achievable goal. One step in the right direction would be admiring and hiring the brilliant communicators discovered in this chapter—and keeping an eye out for the new ones popping up constantly, Whac-A-Mole style. In the words of our wise editors, which we're too lazy to paraphrase: "Let's keep deepening engagement through a range of comedy at the local, national and international levels." Boom.

57Equal to or greater than Greta Thunberg with a gun? You decide.

# **Thank You**

*…to all the creators we mentioned, as well as everyone who provided feedback on drafts of this chapter—especially Caty Borum, Lauren Feldman, Rollie Williams, Bartees Cox, Patrick David Chandler, and of course our two editors, Hua Wang and Emily Coren. We could not have done it without you! (Well, we COULD have, but it would have been worse. Radical honesty.)*

# **References**

JOAN. (2022). *Save Florida Man*. https://www.joancreative.com/work/save-forida-man

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (2019). *YBCA 100*. https://ybca.org/ybca-100/2019-honorees/

**Celia Gurney** is an Upright Citizens Brigade-trained writer and performer who spent 3 years immersed in climate change communications at Climate Nexus. In 2019, she produced a comedic video series about climate action called #9for2019, which had the goal of generating sign-ups for the Environmental Voter Project.  More recently, she created comedic content for Shut The Fossils Up and Yellow Dot Studios' campaign to protect New York State's climate law from fossil fuel interference.

**Mamoudou N'Diaye** is a Brooklyn-based comedian who accidentally made his way into climate crisis communication by way of racial justice work. He was featured in the Think 100% documentary *Ain't Your Mama's Heat Wave* as the host of the comedy portion of the documentary about the climate crisis effect on the city of Norfolk, VA, and then became a writer for it. Prior to that, he worked on the New York-based climate justice late-night show *An Inconvenient Talk Show*, where he was the DJ and occasional correspondent, delivering out-of-the-box solutions to the climate crisis via PowerPoint. In 2019, he performed at The Center for Cultural Power's Climate Woke Summit and partnered with them, writing sketches/web series based on climate justice like *Law and Order: Climate Justice Unit.* On top of that, he has written way too many treatments about the integration of climate justice into a TV format.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Climate Fiction to Inspire Green Actions: A Tale of Two Authors**

**Denise Baden and Jeremy Brown**

The fourishing genre of "climate fction" (cli-f) is increasingly prevalent across the arts as anxieties rise about the fate of the planet. The phrase itself was not visible until frst used by Dan Bloom in 2015 (Svoboda, 2016). But cli-f, as a trend, was already noticeable in the 1990s with the signifcant rise in fctional books depicting human-caused climate change as a focal point of the narrative. Toward the end of the 2000s, dozens of cli-f novels had entered circulation as the impacts of climate crisis became more obvious (Schneider-Mayerson, 2017; Trexler, 2015)—*Solar, The Year of the Flood, The Wind-Up Girl, A Children's Bible* and *Clade*, to name just a few best-sellers. Similarly, Svoboda (2016) provides an overview of 60 movies which fall within the genre of cli-f. Notable examples of climate flms include *The Day After Tomorrow,* entering cinemas in 2004, dramatizing the collapse of ocean currents (Lowe et al., 2006), and most recently, *Don't Look Up* (2021), a dark comedy about an apocalyptic comet which parodies much of the world's indifference to the climate crisis. At the time of writing, the flm had already broken records on Netfix (Lewis, 2022). Similarly, many works of literary cli-f are receiving a positive reception. For example, *Florida* (2018), an anthology of short stories by Lauren Groff, was a fnalist of the National Book Awards (Schneider-Mayerson et al., 2020).

However, empirical evidence is mixed over whether climate fction can bring about the desired changes in behavior needed to make a meaningful contribution to "saving the planet." For example, a study by Schneider-Mayerson (2018, p. 494) found that many of the new behaviors reported by novel readers did little to "contribute to climate mitigation, collective adaptation, or the pursuit of climate justice" with very few political actions. For example, reading *Flight Behavior* merely caused one participant to start using recycled shopping bags—a necessary but insuffcient response to the scale of the climate emergency. *The Day After Tomorrow*

University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

D. Baden (\*) · J. Brown

e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS><EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2024 203

E. Coren, H. Wang (eds.), *Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54790-4\_10

meanwhile, left viewers "feeling" motivated, but somewhat unable to respond, given the flm fell short of depicting adequate solutions to the climate crisis (Lowe et al., 2006).

Furthermore, climate dystopias, while attempting to raise awareness of the need for change, may have unintended consequences, such as defensive reactions on the personal front, such as avoidance, denial, and/or on the political front such as hostility against immigrants. Another concern is that even if climate fction increases awareness of the hazards of unmitigated climate change, this awareness may result in eco-anxiety, rather than effective action (Baden, 2019). However, the outlook is more promising for stories that depict positive solutions. For example, Baden (2019) recruited 91 participants to read and comment on a selection of four short stories with an environmental theme. The results showed that fctional stories with a solution focus were more effective than catastrophic stories at motivating intentions to carry out ecofriendly behavior.

The authors of this chapter come from different backgrounds, with different objectives and genres. For example, compared to Denise Baden's *Habitat Man*, the stories of Jeremy Brown begin with a greater degree of dramatic or "scary" suspense about the threat of monsters, villains, and potential disasters. Yet the authors agree that increasing a sense of agency is important to showcase the kinds of behavior that might avert the futures we fear and bring about a happy ending. As creators, we share the belief that raising the alarm without increasing a sense of being able to do something about the issue often simply leads to eco-anxiety. Helping to move readers from high eco-anxiety and low agency to a sense of being able to make a difference (see Table 1) is an important driver for our work.

A particular aim of Denise Baden is also to reach the disengaged (low ecoanxiety/low agency), and her novel *Habitat Man* is targeted at a mainstream audience who might avoid "green" literature but would enjoy a rom-com. In the following section, Denise describes how she drew upon psychological theories of behavior to inspire green actions in readers. Techniques utilized include highlighting the benefts of green behavior to the user, presenting green actions as the norm, showing solutions, and tapping into more spiritual aspects relating to humanity's relationship with nature. At the same time, romance, humor, and mystery are used to keep readers engaged with the plot and balance the tips on wildlife and climate mitigation that readers can adopt themselves.

In *The Renegades* series, aimed at younger readers, the solutions promoted are not always immediately achievable for the reader, but Jeremy Brown highlights that

**Table 1** Objective of moving toward low eco-anxiety and high agency

the aim is to plant ideas and values that may provide seeds of future actions in the long term, while modeling some behaviors that readers can engage in, such as political protest.

The common approach that we share in this chapter is around the need to create role models that generate this positive sense of agency, which can be radical, or focus more on gentle changes in behavior. In the remainder of the chapter, we illustrate this point through our experiences in writing, or co-creating, our own works of eco-fction. In doing so, we seek to share our wisdom with creative writers embarking on a similar journey into climate fction. We conclude our chapter by showcasing an ongoing initiative that promotes fction to inspire green actions: the free series of Green Stories Writing Competitions set up by Denise Baden in 2018.

# **Denise Baden**

# *Motivation to Write Habitat Man*

When you work as an academic in the world of sustainability, it is easy to be extremely busy, while achieving very little. We share among ourselves latest news, fndings, and articles about climate change problems and solutions and publish academic articles that only those who care about climate change read and teach courses on sustainability that only students who already care about the topic choose. It's a sad fact that we spend most of our time talking in our own echo chambers. In desperation, I turned to fction as a way to reach a wider audience—those who wouldn't dream of watching a climate change documentary. A perfect framework for a book came to me in the form of a visit from a local ecologist in 2019 who'd retired early to become a green garden consultant, advising people how to make their gardens more wildlife friendly. It immediately occurred to me that this would make a lovely TV series—a bit like "All Creatures Great and Small"—each episode he could visit different gardens with character arcs in the form of a love story and mystery. I realized the best route to this was to frst write a book which could then be adapted if successful. In Sept 2021, I published *Habitat Man* (D. A. Baden, 2021)—an ecothemed rom-com. The blurb is below:

Tim is ffty, single and in a job he hates. Inspired by a life-coaching session, he sheds his old life to become Habitat Man, giving advice on how to turn gardens into habitats for wildlife. His frst client is the lovely Lori. Tim is smitten, but frst he has to win round Ethan her teenage son. Tim loves his new life until he digs up more than he bargained for, and uncovers a skeleton, one that threatens to bring out the skeletons in his cupboard too. Only Jo, Tim's long-time best friend knows his secret, but can she be trusted?

I began by thinking of what I wanted readers to do as a result of reading my novel, and then considered how I could inspire such behaviors. In the next section, I present extracts from my book *Habitat Man* which illustrates how I drew upon psychological theories of behavior change to promote certain behaviors. I also discuss the steps I took to avoid the trap of info-dumping or preaching. The age-old premise of "show don't tell" came in very useful, as did the use of humor to disguise the green message.

# *Theory of Planned Behavior*

One of the best known and most widely used theory of behavior is Ajzen's (1985) Theory of Planned Behavior (Fig. 1). Ajzen posits that behavior is a product of:

A similar concept to "perceived behavioral control" is self-effcacy (Bandura, 1997). Self-effcacy can be broken down into three aspects: (1) *self-effcacy expectancy*, i.e., perceptions of competence/capability in carrying out the behavior, (2) *outcome expectancy:* belief that the behavior will result in the desired outcome, and (3) *outcome value*: the outcome of the behavior is desirable.

For example, according to this model, recycling behavior will be affected by attitudes toward recycling, which in turn is affected by awareness of issues related to recycling. The normative aspect would be whether the people close to us will disapprove if we don't recycle, and whether there are recycling facilities available (perceived behavioral control).

**Fig. 1** Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985)

Research indicates that the most effective drivers of behavior are social norms and perceived behavioral control. Countless studies into sustainable behavior report an attitude-behavior gap. For example, despite most people claiming positive attitudes toward green products, and intentions to purchase them, most purchase decisions are based on price and quality (Miller & Levine, 2019; Sheeran, 2002; Sheeran et al. 2003). Indeed, it is normative infuences and feelings of being able to make a difference that drive behavior in reality. This is an issue as currently almost all climate change communications, including cli-f, focus on raising awareness of the issues.

Those of us who are engaged in our own personal efforts to mitigate against climate change may have been inspired to do so by documentaries showing the effects of plastic on ocean creatures, orangutans wondering homeless in decimated rainforests, frightening statistics of rising temperatures, and desertifcation and acidifcation. Not unnaturally, we take what inspired us and try to share it more widely. However, many, when faced with such bleak prospects, switch off, go into denial, or succumb to paralyzing eco-anxiety, which, unless accompanied by effective action, simply adds mental health issues to the growing list of impacts of climate change (Baden, 2019).

One way to protect against this is to focus on solutions, especially those that people may not be aware of. In *Habitat Man*, there were plenty of opportunities for my character to hold forth about the terrifying statistics relating to biodiversity and extinction, but I decided to skip the alarm and focus almost entirely on the solutions. Possibly the only time the issue of biodiversity loss is directly mentioned is on his frst visit as follows:

I rubbed the grey soil between my fngers… I dug another spadeful, still looking. A lone woodlouse, what had happened to the rest? Where were the worms, the springtails, the beetles, the millipedes? These were the building blocks of the food chain. I felt a jolt of anxiety in my gut. I'd not dug in soil for twenty years. Statistics were one thing, but the soil was barren. Where has all the life gone?

The above extract focuses initially on attitudes—raising awareness of the issues and consequences of barren soil. The next paragraph moves quickly onto perceived behavioral control—ways to solve this issue that are possible for readers to do and importantly solutions that readers may not already be aware of. Please note Florence is a dog!

Florence trotted into the garden and squatted, gazing serenely into the distance.

'Do you use a wormer on Florence?'

'Yes?'

'That will kill all worms it comes in contact with.' I held some unmoving soil in my hand. 'How about fea treatment?'

'Is that bad?'

'Pets rarely get feas in winter so maybe give it a rest till summer.'

'The vet recommended it each month just in case.'

'It's a good income stream for them, but one typical fea treatment has enough pesticide to kill millions of insects, not just feas, but bees too, and it gets into the water supply, affecting aquatic organisms and amphibians.'

'OMG, I feel like a murderer now.'

'Look for less toxic alternatives. If they don't work you can always do a stronger treatment if problems occur.'

That is probably the longest info dump in the whole novel and the plot quickly moves onto the relationships developing between the characters. But most readers, even if they don't own a pet themselves, will know someone who does, and few are aware of the toxic effects of pet treatments. This focus on solutions that continue throughout the book, and no issue is presented without corresponding information on what anyone can do to address it, thus tapping into readers' feelings of behavioral control—they know what can be done and how to do it.

However, if readers wanted a book on green solutions or wildlife gardening, they'd have got one, and my aim was to reach a wider audience who wouldn't choose such material, so in each garden there is something to keep the reader hooked. In the gardens with the love interest, Lori, the readers are kept engaged by seeing the romance play out. Similarly, in the chapter called "The Polyamorist," I cover the topic of home composting, but the reader is hooked, waiting for Dawn the polyamorist to make a move. In the scenes with the wizard, Tim promotes the idea of a pond to attract frogs and bats, but the reader turns the pages in anticipation of some fun magic or wizardry. In Daisy, the Feng Shui gardener's garden, there's the mystery of the body in the garden unfolding to keep the reader's interest.

Having a body naturally results in the need for a coffn and a burial, enabling me to promote the idea of green funerals. An inquest into the death provides a natural opportunity for a witness from the Natural Death Center to talk about the environmental benefts of shallow burial in a willow coffn, and avoiding toxic embalming fuids. Following the rule of "show, don't tell," this is followed up by a natural burial scene, so we experience an alternative approach for ourselves:

The intermittent sound of fddles gave way to a proper tune, and gradually the chatter subsided and everyone looked towards Andrew and Katie. They brought their fddling to a graceful close and we stood before the curtain of fowers and willow. Brian's voice still taking to Paul was discordant in the sudden quiet, and he bumbled to a halt.

The music of the garden took over from the fddles. Undeterred by the crowd, a tiny brown wren, tail cocked in the air, trilled its liquid song from the new willow fence. Nearby, a chiff-chaff chanted the repetitive call of its name.  A brimstone butterfy futtered by, investigating the fowers on the willow bower, its bright yellow wings a fash of sunshine.

A roar of a plane fying overhead reminded us that we weren't in the deep countryside, but in a suburban small garden, underneath the fight path from the airport a few miles down the road. When the plane had passed, Fern nodded at Andrew and Daisy and together they carefully lifted the willow curtain down from the branches and walked it to the end of the garden.

I steeled myself to look. But it wasn't the deep, dark, rectangular coffn-shaped hole I'd pictured in my head. The hole in the ground was just as I'd left it, pond-shaped and three feet deep, except now Grandad, as I thought of him, was laid out in his baggy trousers and a colourful knitted jumper in the willow coffn, surrounded by the bones of his wife. I exhaled with relief. This was absolutely right. The shallow pond-shaped hole was like nature's opening arms welcoming them back to the earth.

Another climate change solution I wanted to promote was food choices, especially the use of insects as a greener alternative to meat. The main barriers here are negative attitudes toward insects as food, so simply raising the idea makes a start toward normalizing the concept. I used the device of the comic side kick to develop a sub plot. Jo, the lead character's best friend, devises a recipe generator that randomly picks seasonal ingredients to create recipes. Most challenging is the joker column which can include anything from edible insects to nettles. This provides humor and the opportunity to promote sustainable food choices. Fiction is now driving reality as a student inspired by the idea is working on making it a reality (see random recipe generator at Baden, n.d.).

Some sections focused on tapping into the normative drivers of behavior. The hero Tim leaves his job in fnance in the city where the culture is one of competition and material values, because they turn down his proposal for costing for nature accounting system. He sets up as a wildlife gardening consultant—Habitat Man and in the process comes across a variety of other characters who all represent different motivations toward sustainable behaviors. One character is a Buddhist who rejects material values and another is a pagan—the Wizard of Woolston who wants a habitat for bat and frogs. This allows me to show the overlap between the love of nature, fundamental to many pagans and alternative religions, and practices that promote biodiversity. Tim also visits the back garden of a psychologist who researches in trends toward non-consumption, which provides an opportunity to suggest that conspicuous consumption is out of date.

I turned to Eric. 'How does your neighbour like your garden?'

'Now they want to copy us.'

'It proves my research, I think.' Eleanor set down a bowl of steaming pasta in front of me. 'What's your research?' Lori asked.

'It was psychology of consumption, wasn't it?' I said.

'Now I look at the new tendency to non-consumption.'

'Like the Share Shop?'

'Not quite. For example, our neighbour tells me they also want upcycled decking, but before, she'd insist on new. And it's because the meaning has changed you see. The story behind new decking might be rainforest destruction, air pollution, climate change, it's not a nice story, but the story behind your decking is a lovely story. We don't just buy the product, we buy the story.'

The above extracts all show in various ways how the drivers of behavior, as delineated by Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (1985): attitudes (informed by awareness), social norms, and perceived behavioral control, were utilized to inspire greener behaviors in readers.

# *Rational Choice Model*

Another common model of behavior is the rational choice model (Becker, 1976), which posits that people will make decisions based upon the costs and benefts to themselves. Thus, in *Habitat Man*, I often chose to emphasize the pleasurable aspects of the desired action, rather than the green aspects. For example, ponds are one of the most effective ways to increase biodiversity in back gardens, but instead of presenting it in those terms, which may make readers think they *should* install a pond for the greater good, I include a scene that allows readers to experience the delights of a pond through a child's eyes. To keep readers hooked, the back story about a lost child that has been hinted at throughout the book is revealed in more detail.

Similarly, Tim, aka Habitat Man, visits a family whose members are very proud of their composting toilet and keen to highlight the green benefts, but in the next extract, the focus is on the more pleasurable aspects, and again readers are kept engaged by the gradual revealing of the back story of the child. When asked if he has children, Tim fnds an excuse to leave by asking to use the composting toilet the family has in their garden. This allows the reader to experience a composting toilet vicariously through the character. The extreme decline of amphibians is hinted at rather than stressed:

'Erm…' I put the wine down and shook my head. 'I think I will have a go at your composting toilet.'

Eric smiled delighted. The boys jumped up to follow me, but he held them back.

'Leave him in peace. It's his frst time.'

I left the sounds of chattering children and walked outside. A few slow soft drops of rain remained, then petered out when the sun emerged, setting the raindrops sparkling against the vegetation. I walked down the garden to the hut and went in. I sat down. It was perfectly quiet except for the distant sound of a wood pigeon. It smelled of forests and fresh air. The feeling of calm and sanctuary in the toilet reminded me of Daisy's garden. That sense of perfect harmony between art and nature, soothing to the senses and the spirit. No harsh lights, whirr of fans, smell of urine overlaid with air freshener. Instead, daylight streamed in through the small window, which I now saw had a picture set into the glass, a frog on a lily pad amidst dragonfies and bulrushes. The sun caught the stained-glass window and brought the scene suddenly to life creating an almost religious experience. The elusive frog so sensitive to water pollution, safe here where our waste was used to nurture life. A benign, quiet smell of wood shavings. I heard the characteristic chirp of a grasshopper and smiled. Danny would love that, and the pond too.

This time, I didn't push the memories away. I thought back to the decision I'd faced, try again to see him and risk a jail sentence and destabilising a new family, or walk away. In the sanctuary of the composting toilet, at last I forgave myself.

I must admit, I wondered if I'd gone too far when I read the last line in the following review on Amazon:

What I loved most about Habitat Man was the gentle, non-preachy way in which it nudges the reader to think green and love nature, whilst being sucked into an enthralling drama. Yes, there are 'radical lifestyle changes for the beneft of all' messages, but they are peeking out from behind the willow hedges, rather than stuffed down the reader's throat. Emerging from the pages is a satisfying triumph of good over evil, of love over anger, and of green solutions over wanton consumerism. There's also a slightly weird fxation with pooing outside!

# **Jeremy Brown**

# *Backstory of the Renegades: Defenders of the Planet*

The basic job description of most superheroes is to "save the world," but in the age of the climate crisis, who on Earth is going to "save the planet"? This is a question that's been at the front of my mind since 2017, when a friend shared her idea of

developing a comic book about climate change, out of her passion for the Marvel universe. I jumped at the earliest opportunity to bring the idea to life, because it strongly resonated with my love of art and undergraduate learning about the power of storytelling.

In 2018, I started sketching ideas for the plot and the three main characters— Katelyn, Leon, and Mo, otherwise known as "The Renegades." But it soon became obvious that the comic would only become a reality with the help of professional artists, scriptwriters, and friends. Thankfully that's where Katy, David, Libby, Ellenor, Jonny, and others came to the rescue, and within 18 months, we had completed three 96-page graphic novels in *The Renegades* series—all edited, printed, and sold by our publishers at Dorling Kindersley (Fig. 2).

In the following section, I draw on both my personal story of producing *The Renegades*: *Defenders of the Planet* (Brown et al., 2020, 2021a, 2021b), and learning from my academic studies, to offer the following three recommendations frstly, to design characters that model both achievable and aspirational behaviors; secondly, to break outside of our echo chambers; thirdly, to play around with careful metaphors. My advice here is intended for any creative writers that plan to enter the exciting universe of climate fction (in general). But as I'm a PhD student specializing in comics, that's where I will begin my discussion.

# *The Role of Cartoons, Comics, and Comedy*

I went down the route of comics and graphic novels because their visual nature strongly appealed to my artistic side—especially having enjoyed painting and drawing as a teenager. But as revealed in the word "comic" itself, part of what sets apart

**Fig. 2** The three graphic novels in the series, *The Renegades: Defenders of the Planet* (Brown et al., 2020, 2021a, 2021b). © 2020–21 Jeremy Brown, and Dorling Kindersley Limited

this form of storytelling from others, such as photography, is their humor (Bouchard et al., 2018). The academic literature similarly underlines the psychological importance of comedy, especially among children, with one study illustrating how humorous cartoons about earthquake risks eased children's fears of disaster in Iran (Sharpe & Izadkhah, 2014). However, the relevance of comic books even holds among young adults, with evidence from the USA revealing that 23% of 18- to 34-yearolds were reading comic books once a month (or more) during 2018, while 48% had done so at least "occasionally" (Yougov, 2018; cited by Statistica, 2021).

Superhero movies often enjoy a larger audience than printed comics, even across several age groups (National Tracking Poll, 2019; cited by Statistica, 2021b). But many flms (from *Captain America* to *Spiderman*) were originally adapted from comics, and compared to flms with actors, comics have the ability to imagine endless possibilities, without breaking the bank. Similar is true for animated movies and TV shows: *Not bounded by the physical laws governing 3-D space, animated programs can feature casts of hundreds and take place in any geographic or historical time frame* (Arnold et al., 2004, p. xiii). One of the most notable examples is *Captain Planet*—an animated TV series from the 1990s, starring a fun superhero created to inspire kids to go green. The story follows the adventures of fve young "Planeteers," recruited from across fve continents to save the Earth from destruction. To aid their mission, the Spirit of Gaia endows the Planeteers with the powers of Water, Fire, Earth, Wind, and Heart. When combined, they usher the arrival of the Captain Planet himself, who aids their fght against polluting villains (TBS 1990, cited by King, 1994).

On refection, engaging with comedy and superhero stories would have been a much healthier way to cope with a traumatic period of eco-anxiety that I experienced in 2018. It was partly triggered by watching *Before the Flood*—a gripping documentary emphasizing the serious moral injustices of the climate crisis. Within my mind, I've now moved on from the worst of the eco-anxiety, especially since I'm less exposed to the dangers of extreme weather than many communities on the frontline. But in my body, I can still feel the side effects of the trauma, even as I write this paragraph. My story was complicated by several stressful mistakes I made at the time, but I can only wonder whether some of the trauma would have been avoided if instead I'd watched cli-f comedies, such as *Don't Look Up*. With hindsight, it also would have been much better if my frst instinct had been to reach out to trusted friends, like-minded activists, and professional therapists. And if you are experiencing eco-anxiety yourself, I would especially recommend the resources provided by the Climate Psychology Alliance (2022). But in my own case, I'm thankful that I eventually managed to channel my diffcult experience into writing about eco-anxiety in the comic series. It was a therapeutic process that gave meaning to tough times.

In the next section, I will focus on a series of top tips from my comic experience that are relatable to climate fction in general.

# **Tip 1: Model Actions That Are Both Achievable and Aspirational**

When writing *The Renegades: Arctic Meltdown* (Brown et al., 2020), one of the environmental dilemmas we faced was about how our comic heroes would travel between the various and distant ends of the Earth where our stories were set: Eastern Africa, Bangladesh, Brazil, Texas, Britain, and the Canadian Arctic. In a typical twentieth-century story, we might expect the characters to catch a plane. But to be true role models for the twenty-frst century, we felt it was important to invent an alternative mode of transport. Initially, we came up with the idea of a solar-powered sailing boat (Fig. 3). While this was suitably sustainable, it didn't resolve the "need for speed" demanded by our heroes when suddenly alerted to the far-off locations of our villains and monsters. As a result, the team later came up with the futuristic gizmo of a solar-powered "jet." (I like to think it's what Luke Skywalker would fy if he was watching his carbon footprint!).

This raises the question of whether our fctional solar jet has potential to inspire something similar in real life. The paper by De Meyer et al. (2020) underlines the psychological importance of featuring characters that act out behaviors that are easily "doable" or "meaningful" to readers. Otherwise, readers are often left confused over what they can specifcally do about the climate crisis themselves. This fnding is reinforced by Baden's (2019) experiments which show that positive solutions that can be easily replicated by readers tend to be more effective at producing ecofriendly intentions. Unsurprisingly, none of our readers have so far told us they plan to buy a multi-million pound electric aircraft! But as social scientists and authors, do we also need to consider the potential for a "legacy" in the long term?

**Fig. 3** The solar sailing ship in *Arctic Meltdown* (Brown et al., 2020)

# *Aspirational Legacy*

The importance of legacy is clear in the pioneering works of early science fction. For instance, Hunley (1995) observes that at the age of 17, Robert Goddard was resting in a cherry tree at home while reading the *Journey from the Earth to the Moon* by Jules Verne and *War of the Worlds* by H.G. Wells. These stories stirred Goddard to imagine a technology that would have potential to travel to Mars—a highly enlightening experience for Goddard, which he commemorated by returning to the tree on the anniversary of his revelation (Hunley, 1995). As an adult, Goddard eventually went on to become the pioneer of the liquid-propelled rocket.

Some scholars of eco-psychology could argue that, strictly speaking, over 99% of readers of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were *not* inspired to invent a pioneering technology. But it is unlikely their true aim was to motivate all readers to become world-class engineers themselves. Perhaps a more universal objective was to bring about a more widespread change in attitudes about risky technologies. Indeed, James (2016) remarks that Wells managed to foretell the future of atomic weapons, planes, and tanks, thereby harnessing the power of creative writing to help either bring about a better world or warn of potential dystopias. Wells was also a highly political author (James, 2016), unafraid to draw parallels between the Martian invaders and the ecocide and racism of imperial expansion:

We men, the creatures who inhabit this Earth, must be to them [The Martians] at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us... And before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and dodo, but upon its own inferior races (Wells, 2003, p. 42–43).

Wells' efforts to infuence the "attitudes" of readers may have been a necessary frst step toward real action such as readers' actions to resist racism and dystopian technologies. Following in the tradition of Wells, our *Arctic Meltdown* comic intended to raise awareness of the threat of methane from thawing permafrost, at the same time as modeling radical political behavior that could act to reduce the threat. In all honesty, most of our readers (especially children) are unlikely to take part in nonviolent direct action as a result of our comic's story—in this case, a scene where the protagonists occupied the villain's airport, inspired by the real activists of the Zone à Defendre, near Nantes in France (Jordan, 2019).

# *Achievable Behaviors*

Yet we still attempted to balance this radicalism with general climate solutions which can be more easily imitated by the majority of teen readers, for example, fctional solar gadgets that could, in theory, inspire readers to campaign for their schools to install solar cells on their rooftops. It is likely that modeling these types of solutions would be perceived to be more "doable." "Doable" in this context, equates to Ajzen's concept of perceived behavioral control or Bandura's concept of self-effcacy as discussed earlier. Thus, presenting solutions that are "doable" would be likely to have a greater impact on readers' behavior.

# **Tip 2: Break Free from the "Echo Chamber"**

When the time came to plan our comic's sequel (*Flames of Amazonia)* (Brown et al., 2021a), I was keen to feature characters that modeled the benefts of plantbased diets. This would come naturally to the character of Leon, our vegan climate activist. But to be more easily achievable to most readers, we suggested that not everyone has to strictly follow Leon's example of cutting out animal products completely. In another words, eating the occasional cheese omelet would not threaten the Amazon, as long as our heroes (and readers) stayed clear of beefburgers that originated from deforested land.

At the same time, I became increasingly conscious of the risks of demonizing low-income workers in the global cattle industry, particularly after listening to a lecturer's (at King's College London) warning of the perils of political polarization. Indeed, it is very diffcult to escape the reality of the so-called "Culture Wars" that have erupted since 2016. As a result, I invented the character of Jack (Fig. 4)—a rugged cattle rancher from rural Texas—whom we presented not as a villain but as a hero. There was of course a need for the other characters to question Jack's choices, to the point of eventually persuading him to devote at least part of his

**Fig. 4** Jack, the cattle rancher character in *Flames of Amazonia* (Brown et al., 2021b)

farmland to growing a plant-based alternative. But the point is that Jack became "part of the team," as well as being someone who could challenge Leon whenever he verged into being too sanctimonious.

After publication, I was grateful to see that several (but not all) of the online reviewers agreed that we had succeeded in our efforts to prevent the narrative from being too "preachy." Importantly, I suspect this resulted from how we had reached out to people outside of our echo chambers. In our case, this meant having conversations on Zoom with agricultural scientists from the typically Republican state of Texas. These conversations were particularly fruitful in the task of feshing out the character of Jack—since they were people that had actually spent time with cattle ranchers in real life. Ideally, we would have likewise had video calls with real communities that had inspired the character of Alma (a teenage activist from an indigenous community living in the Amazon rainforest). But this proved to be too diffcult within the constraints of our tight deadline. Conducting other forms of online research was therefore our best alternative effort at breaking free from another dominant echo chamber that cli-f writers need to be aware of: the highly industrialized world of the Global North.

# **Tip 3: Play Around with Careful Metaphors**

My fnal nugget of wisdom is around how best to balance entertaining metaphors with educational science. Here I speak again from experience, because when embarking on *The Renegades* comics, I was all too aware that I came from a scientifc background. I have a creative side; but my earlier years were focused more on landscape painting and cartoon drawings, rather than creative writing. Therefore, I'm guessing the honest advice of anyone reading my frst attempts at fctional storylines would have been "don't give up the day job, mate." Except I had already given up my day job! (A long story for another time.) But thankfully Katy and David soon came to the rescue. Essentially, I recruited them to bring to life my initial ideas for fctional characters and sketchy story arcs, with the end product being a professional script that could be shared with the publishers.

As well as adding emotional and literary depth to the fctional characters, the rest of the team's input as experienced creative writers was crucial to introducing vivid and engaging metaphors. For example, in our third comic in the series, *Project Neptune* (Brown et al., 2021b), Katy suggested portraying the melting ice as a metaphor for the tragic disintegration of her parents' health—a symbolic representation for how personal grief can often feel as overwhelming as a melting glacier crashing into the ocean. Another example is how we depicted the saltwater trees of the Bangladesh coast as "mangrove creatures" that could breathe, crawl, swim, or fy, as mythical animals. Beyond the beneft of being more visually playful, this metaphor meant that the gradual process of mangrove conservation could instead happen at the dramatic pace of the narrative. The consequences of the heroes' actions could therefore play out within days or hours, at a speed fast enough to chase the villains.

However, such fctional 'shortcuts' and metaphors can dilute the educational messages about how the audience can act themselves, so there may be trade-offs between exciting fantasy and effectiveness at inspiring relevant environmental action. This was evident in *The Day After Tomorrow,* in which the flm dramatically exaggerated the speed at which the climate crisis could disrupt the world's ocean currents, culminating in a thick ice sheet enveloping the Statue of Liberty. The result was that several viewers encountered problems in separating science from fction. As expressed by one participant of an academic study: "you didn't know exactly where the truth ended and Hollywood started" (Lowe et al., 2006, p. 447).

We faced a similar dilemma with *The Renegades* in how our villains played an exaggerated role in the physics of coastal fooding. But to minimize any confusion between real science and fantasy fction, we included two pages of non-fction at the end of the book. These pages gave us the space to explain certain scientifc details about sea level rise. This was important because the enjoyment of the narrative would have been diluted if we had crammed too much science into the story. Another tactic was to harness our book launch events as opportunities to explain real-life solutions to climate change in more detail. This was challenging for our launch of *Project Neptune,* given that Southampton isn't exactly well known for its tropical mangrove forests! But linking back to my frst tip, I still feel there is potential to explain how the mangrove creatures can be metaphors for achievable solutions on a local level, such as the protection of saltmarshes in the UK.

To sum up, I'd recommend to any writers of climate fction that you feature entertaining role models that act out solutions that are sometimes metaphorical and always aspirational. But it's important that your protagonists balance their heroic aspiration with solutions that are still achievable to readers of many different cultural and political identities. I hope the experience and knowledge I have shared here has been useful. Good luck with all your writing adventures—our planet needs all the help it can get!

# **Conclusion**

Our work approached the topic of the climate through different genres and styles, yet both adhered to the guiding principles that fction should demonstrate the risks of climate disaster, while highlighting the possibility of hope and presenting solutions. Progressive climate fction highlights both radical actions individuals can take, such as non-violent direct action, alongside more gentle climate activism such as sustainable gardening.

Appendix 1 lists some positive examples of climate fction and Table 2 demonstrates some of the variety of approaches that can be undertaken.

Both *Ministry for the Future* and *The Carbon Diaries* are hybrid, showing a mixture of policy solutions and disasters, yet both fnish on a note of hope. *The Carbon Diaries* has a happy ending on the personal front in the romance tradition, yet the climate issues remain. It also shows that the carbon rationing introduced

**Table 2** Mapping examples of climate fction onto a framework of suspense and agency

suddenly and drastically on an unprepared population in the story does operate as a solution, but also implicitly, one can see that personal carbon allowances, if applied earlier, might have prevented the worst of the disaster at a fraction of the cost.

In his Ph.D., Jeremy Brown is planning to apply these insights by exploring how comic style stories may have the potential to entertain and empower young people to imagine a brighter future for our planet. In doing so, the hope is that the audience will be inspired to imitate fctional superheroes that model a range of both gentle and radical responses to the climate crisis.

New, developing sub-genres such as "solarpunk" and "hopepunk" lead the way in this effort to resist a dystopian ending to our planet's story. Hopepunk was defned in 2017 by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland as, "standing up and fghting for what you believe in. It's about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts." We believe this emerging type of storytelling has an exciting future ahead.

# *Green Stories Project, Denise Baden*

In 2018, I set up the Green Stories Writing competitions (Green Stories Project, n.d.). These are a free series of competitions that anyone can enter and have covered a range of formats from stage plays and radio plays, to fash fction, screenplays to full-length novels, even interactive fction (Green Stories Previous Competition Successes, n.d.). The aim is to create a cultural body of work that would engage the mainstream audience, not just in green issues, but informing them and hopefully inspiring them to adopt the kinds of green solutions that would be effective.

On the website, we present transformative solutions that could enable a genuine shift toward a truly sustainable society (Green Stories Project, n.d.). For example, changing our metric of success from the GDP, which measures mostly consumption, to a metric, such as the well-being index or Happy Planet Index, would shift attention toward sustainable policies rather than short-term economic gains at the expense of a healthy eco-system (Hoekstra, 2019). Similarly, shifting from a culture of ownership—buy, use, dispose—to an access-based culture or sharing economy allows greater equity and access to resources at much reduced resource costs and planetary impact (Baden & Frei, 2021). For example, almost all of what we own isn't being used. It's estimated for example that the typical drill is used for an average of 8 minutes a year (Skjelviket al., 2017). A library of things or shared shed would allow everyone access at much reduced environmental impact (Baden, Peattie, & Adekunle, 2019). Similarly, ideas such as personal carbon allowances or carbon credit cards would drive sustainability innovations across the board and enable a more equitable and rapid transition to a net zero economy (Fuso Nerini, Fawcett, Parag, & Ekins, 2021).

Twenty competitions have been run since its inception with thousands of writers entering and engaging in these solutions, so the green stories competitions were successful on that front, resulting in several publications: *Visco* by David Fell (2022) and *Fairhaven* by Steve Willis and Jan Lee (2024). However, they have been less successful in terms of authors writing these green solutions into their stories. Inevitably free competitions will attract many poor entries, but it was disappointing that not even ten percent met the green stories criteria:

	- Showcasing what a green/sustainable society might look like and/or how we might get there
	- Smuggling green solutions into a story aimed at mainstream readers, which can be quite subtle
	- Using positive role models

We found that even among the well-written stories, many had green themes but few included solutions that readers could engage with. For example, several showed a heroine heading off to the rainforests to take on evil loggers. However, this is an issue that most are already aware of. On its own, awareness does nothing to address the problem. Much more effective, I believe, would be a story that did not have an explicitly green theme but did show positive role models of characters enjoying plant-based diets, or upcycling, or campaigning against companies that engaged in deforestation etc.—behaviors that will make a difference.

Social marketing approaches aim to apply marketing strategies to promote desired behaviors rather than products (Lee & Kotler, 2019). Thus, just as some books/flms product place products, we encourage writers to "product place"

sustainable attitudes behaviors products and policies. It may be more effective at engaging a mainstream audience if the story *isn't* specifcally about climate change. Any kind of genre—rom com, crime drama, legal drama, children's book, sci-f, etc.—can showcase sustainable technologies, practices, products, or ideas in the background. BAFTA's "Albert" project trains production companies' editorial staff on how to do this through "planet placement."

We incorporated this technique in our anthology, *No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet,* where we teamed experienced writers with climate experts to create 24 short stories each with climate solutions at their heart. One story—a whodunnit—set in a citizens' assembly has been adapted as an interactive play *Murder in the Citizens' Jury*, which engages the audience in choosing what should be done (see Green Stories Project, n.d.).

Another acceptable approach could be to focus on characters. Currently, characters in fction who are green/ethical are often portrayed as priggish or aggressive, and we'd like to see attractive characters behaving in sustainable ways. Green Stories partnered with BAFTA for the #ClimateCharacters, which is a series of fun social media posts comparing the carbon consumption of various fctional characters. For example, James Bond with his walk-in wardrobe of luxury suits and singleuse sports cars kills bad guys with a much higher carbon footprint than Jack Reacher who travels by bus and shops in thrift shops! (See website Green Stories Project, n.d.). We want to start a conversation that asks if it is okay, in a time of climate and biodiversity crisis, that many of the top series and flms have characters whose lifestyles are destroying our beautiful planet?

Check out upcoming competitions, projects, and events via the website https:// www.greenstories.org.uk/

# **Appendix 1**

# *Online Resources*

Green Stories Project. https://www.greenstories.org.uk/

Role modeling. https://theconversation.com/positive-fctional-role-models-themissing-ingredient-to-fght-the-climate-crisis-177684

Heated. Substack newsletter. https://heated.world/

Inkcap Journal. https://www.inkcapjournal.co.uk/

Lights On newsletter. https://lightson.substack.com/

Down to Earth by The Guardian newsletter. https://www.theguardian.com/info/nginteractive/2021/oct/20/sign-up-for-down-to-earth-the-best-way-to-makesense-of-the-biggest-environment-stories

How to Save a Planet podcast. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet

# *Recommendations for Positive Climate Fiction*

### **Adult Fiction**

Baden, D.A (2021). *Habitat Man.* Habitat Press. Chambers, B. (2021). *A Psalm for the Wild-Built*. Tor. Cade, O. (2020). *The Stone Wētā*. Paper Road Press. Fell, D. (2022). *Visco.* Habitat Press. Wigmore, R. (2021). *Foxhunt*. Queen of Swords. Walker, L. (2018). *Melt.* Lacuna Publishing. Miller, S. (2018). *Blackfsh city*. Ecco. Woodrow, L. (2020). *470*. Melliodora Publishing. Willis, S. and Lee, J. (2024). *Fairhaven.* Habitat Press.

### **Childrens Fiction**

James, L. (2021). *Green Rising*. Walker Books O'Connell, J*.* (2020). *Beauty and the Bin*. Pan Macmillan. Reynolds, E. (2021). *Amara and the Bats.* Simon & Schuster. Gold, H. (2021). *The Last Bear.* HarperCollins. Miyazaki, H. (1996), *Princess Mononoke*. Studio Ghibli Sutcliffe, W. (2021). *The Summer we Turned Green*. Bloomsbury. Smith, M. (2021). *If Not Us.* Text Publishing. TBS Productions, Inc. and DIC Enterprises, Inc. (1990). *Captain planet and the planeteers: The power is yours*. Public Relations kit. Okogwu, T. (2022). *Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun*. Simon & Schuster. Vachharajani, B. (2019). *A Cloud called Bhura: Climate Champions to the Rescue*. Speaking Tiger.

Simmons, A. (2021). *Burning Sunlight*. Anderson Press.

# **References**

**Denise Baden** is a Professor of Sustainable Practice at the University of Southampton. Following a degree in Politics and Economics, she worked in the publishing industry in sales, then returned to academia in 2002 to obtain a Ph.D. in psychology. Since then, Denise has been a researcher and lecturer primarily in sustainable practice and business ethics. Her primary interest is in how to promote green practices to the mainstream. Denise set up the University of Southampton Green Group in 2001 and represents the sustainable implementation group at the University. Denise has published numerous publications in the academic realm on positive role models and the role of fction in promoting pro-environmental behaviors. Denise set up the free series of Green Stories Writing competitions in 2018 which have run 20 free competitions. She has written three screenplays, two plays, one musical. Her frst novel *Habitat Man* was published in Sept 2021, followed by an anthology—*No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet*. Denise is listed on the Forbes list of Climate Leaders Changing the Film and TV industry.

**Jeremy Brown** is studying for a Ph.D. in climate communication under the supervision of Denise Baden. After an integrated master's in Environmental Sciences, he specialized in comic books while studying for an M.A. in "Climate Change: History, Society and Culture" at King's College London. While completing his M.A., Jeremy managed a team of artists and writers to create a series of superhero comics about the climate crisis—*The Renegades: Defenders of the Planet*. The three titles were published by Dorling Kindersly between autumn 2020 and 2021. His Ph.D., based at the University of Southampton, is currently focused on exploring the potential for climate fction comics to inspire readers to imitate the fctional role models.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Visuals as a Catalyst for Climate Science Communication**

**Kalliopi Monoyios, Kirsten Carlson, Taina Litwak, Tania Marien, and Fiona Martin**

If someone told you that your city produced 54 million tons of carbon dioxide gas each year in emissions, you might be impressed. But then you would realize you really have no idea what 54 million tons of gas looks like—is that a lot? A little? Is that concerning? And you're suddenly lost. In 2012, a data visualization frm called Real World Visuals and the Environmental Defense Fund recognized this as an opportunity to experiment with how they could make this very statistic, the annual CO2 emissions for New York City, instantly understood by audiences "who don't know they need to know" (Real World Visuals, 2017).

Their brilliant solution was to translate the volume of a single metric ton of carbon dioxide gas into a large blue sphere measuring 33 feet across. They then animated the streets of New York as these spheres accumulate at the rate of one per

K. Monoyios (\*)

Visible Science LLC, Denver, CO, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
K. Carlson Fathom It Studios, Stuttgart, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
T. Marien Talaterra Inc., Riverside, CA, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
F. Martin Visualizing Science® LLC, Kirkland, WA, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Kirsten Carlson, Taina Litwak, Tania Marien and Fiona Martin contributed equally with all other contributors.

T. Litwak United States Department of Agriculture, Darnestown, MD, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
**Fig. 1** Stills from the animated sequence "Carbon Emissions in New York in 2010" (courtesy of Real World Visuals). (**a**) Each 33-foot sphere represents 1 metric ton of CO2 emissions. (**b**) Daily emissions. (**c**) Annual emissions. (**d**) Collage of some of the >100 articles and blogs featuring the images and animation (Real World Visuals, 2012). (Images used with permission)

0.58 s. A single day's emissions form a pile of spheres roughly the height of the Empire State Building. Eventually, 1 year's worth of carbon emissions forms an imposing mountain of blue balls covering Manhattan Island. Since its publication, the animation has been cited in over 100 articles and blogs (Fig. 1) and viewed over 400,000 times on YouTube (Real World Visuals, 2012).

Carbon Visuals and the Environmental Defense Fund could have simply shared the numbers with the world: 54,349,650 metric tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by New York City in 2010—that's 148,903 tons a day, 6204 tons an hour, and 1.72 tons a second. But they would have lost most of us who aren't accustomed to dealing with large numbers and/or who don't have a working concept of how much gas weighs (beyond "very little"). Their great insight was that we are visual animals. Making the invisible visible was all that was needed to get an important point across about the untenable rate of greenhouse gas emissions coming from New York. And we can look to the overwhelmingly positive media response and high engagement numbers on YouTube as evidence of the potential for great visuals to carry science messages far and wide (Real World Visuals, 2012).

The success of Carbon Visuals' animation was no accident. Their creatives have backgrounds in both art and science. They are able to delve into the details of the science without intimidation and then zoom out to apply their understanding of how people *see* things to create visuals that are intuitive and striking. They are quintessential examples of what we call *visual science communicators.*

In this chapter, we aim to draw back the curtain on what visual science communicators can bring to the table on climate change communications. We break down the many fronts on which visual collaborations can effectively push climate science forward. With visuals that have the power to transcend language and cultural barriers, learning differences, and knowledge or skill gaps (between highly specialized scientists and your average Weather Channel watcher, for example), we have the opportunity to broaden and deepen engagement as quickly as possible—improving understanding and increasing the rate of cultural uptake of mitigation and adaptation skills. We are here, with our sleeves rolled up, ready to work with scientists, policymakers, and communications teams on the critical work of climate communication.

# **From Science Illustration to Visual Science Communication**

Science illustration is a natural collaboration between two disciplines—science and art—with common roots in observation. In the Age of Exploration, scientists routinely documented their discoveries, mapped out their knowledge, and drew elaborate illustrations of exotic species to share their stories with people back home. In the twentieth century, our increasingly specialized world siloed scientists apart from artists. Exacerbating this gap was fne art's turn away from realism toward abstraction and modernism in the nineteenth century where concepts and processes eclipsed technical skill (Remington & Pontis, 2021). Despite this increasing trend of siloed disciplines, an enthusiastic group of practitioners known as science illustrators persevered, bridging the gap between science and art.

Science illustrators comprise a specialized group with advanced training in both science and art. Their work has been, until recently, primarily descriptive with most of their efforts spent documenting the anatomy of plants and animals. Traditional science illustration work goes back well beyond the Renaissance and scientists/artists like Leonardo da Vinci (d. 1519), human anatomists like Andre Vesalius (d. 1564), and botanical artists like Leonhart Fuchs (d.1566), to the exacting botanical paintings of Xu Xi (China, d. 975) and the painters of the Tomb of Nebamun (Egypt, 1350 BCE). You'll recognize contemporary practitioners' work in medical settings (patient pamphlets and doctors' offces), in resources like birding books, specialty science journals, and popular science magazines.

As science advances into understanding more and more of what cannot be seen easily, or seen at all, traditional scientifc illustration is changing too. It has become a valuable method of conveying complex concepts like minute cellular and molecular structures and biochemical mechanisms and processes (see, for example, Jennifer Fairman's spectacular depictions of SARS-CoV-2 done for the Johns Hopkins medical community at the height of the pandemic (Fairman Studios, 2020) and Mesa Schumacher's spread for National Geographic on viruses in general (Mesa Studios, 2021)). At the other extreme of the scale of scientifc exploration, it is an invaluable tool for describing the vastness of space and our understanding of the physics of the universe (see space artists such as Mark Garlick (n.d.) and Lynette Cook (1998)). Of critical importance to us at this moment in history, it can also be used to illustrate

**Fig. 2** In this sweeping depiction of how rising sea levels will affect the Red Sea coastline, visual science communicator Xavier Pita literally brings a solution-minded approach to the fore by illustrating two scenarios—how the coastline might change if we invest in infrastructure adaptations (*front*) and what we might face if we do nothing (*back*). In this way, Pita unpacks the suite of changes that may or may not unfold in the complex interplay of climate change and mitigation efforts. (Illustration by Xavier Pita/King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST, 2021). Image used with permission)

complex systems and how they work, as in Xavier Pita's masterfully executed tableau titled "Sea Change in the Red Sea; Adapting to Climate Change" (Fig. 2).

In these cases, what a select few scientists can view directly with highly specialized equipment or understand via complex calculations is made accessible to much larger audiences with images that feel intuitive and real. Creating these illustrations requires a signifcant understanding of the science and the ability to translate and crystallize complex information into an image that tells the story and can be readily understood.

Refecting this change in how science has advanced, the skill set of science illustrators has also changed in stride to stay relevant. Consequently, many science illustrators have adopted the title "Visual Science Communicator" to more accurately refect the broad array of visual art tools and science communication skills they have at their disposal. Visual science communicators typically have formal training in both science and art, which results in a unique combination of skills: a high level of understanding of the science and the ability to distill and communicate that information visually. They excel at telling engaging stories through well-designed graphics and illustrations that appeal to wide and varied audiences. These are the people who are critical to establishing a robust catalog of imagery that accurately and effectively conveys the seriousness of our climate situation and spurs policymakers and the public to act swiftly and decisively.

# **Why Are Visuals More Effective Than Words Alone?**

A striking characteristic of human memory is that pictures are remembered better than words (Grady et al., 1998, p. 2703).

If a story does not sustain our attention, then the brain will look for something else more interesting to do (Zak, 2015, p. 6).

With the proliferation of the Internet, smartphones, and ubiquitous online publishing, information is more accessible than ever. Our attention has become a valuable commodity, with advertisers fnding more ways to monopolize it and monetize it (Iyengar & Massey, 2018). As a result, accurate information has a tougher slog to break through the never-ending scrolling we engage in, and people increasingly ask the question "why should I care?" or "what can I possibly do about it?" when confronted with challenging scenarios. We need tools to compete effectively, engage viewers, and inspire action. Visuals—particularly those with a narrative bent that engage our emotions and trigger the neurotransmitter oxytocin—are a powerful tool to harness in this pursuit (Zak, 2015).

Research supports the assertion that visuals add to the impact of scientifc endeavors by improving dissemination and deepening engagement (Ibrahim et al., 2017; Zaelzer, 2020). Aside from the anecdotal evidence members of the general public can easily conjure (e.g., school textbooks chock full of explanatory fgures, museum displays employing heavy use of two-dimensional and three-dimensional visuals, and a nearly endless supply of social media feeds populated with eyecatching imagery), studies suggest that when put into the world with imagery, original scientifc papers enjoy more engagement on platforms like Twitter than papers that are tweeted without (Ibrahim et al., 2017; Koo et al., 2019). Simply put, using effective imagery translates to *increased visibility* for scientists' research. The value in increased visibility need hardly be argued among researchers, but it begs the question: How does this ultimately translate to a better informed and engaged public, particularly on the vexing problem of implementing climate change solutions?

For one, images are processed differently than words and seem to engage the memory centers of the brain more directly (Grady et al., 1998). Furthermore, imagery that is novel and/or triggers emotions can heighten attention and memory in ways that words cannot (Grady et al., 1998; Zaelzer, 2020; Zak, 2015). After all, there's only one way to write the word "water" but near-infnite ways to depict it visually. In this way, images can serve as a universal communication tool reaching beyond language and education barriers (Zaelzer, 2020). They can communicate large data sets and real-world impacts "at a glance" (e.g., weather patterns), allowing easier comparison of fndings. And they have the power, as with infographics, to mitigate information overload by visualizing fndings and solutions in more succinct and appealing ways (Houser, 2020).

When paired with storytelling principles, images can invite viewers along for a ride, increasing their sense of empowerment and belonging. This often entails utilizing artistic techniques that evoke feelings in a viewer, ideally allowing the transfer of information in nonthreatening ways, such as by adding culturally sensitive, emotionally moving, and/or entertaining content (Hassenzahl et al., 2013; Houser, 2020). Neuroscientifc studies have shown that areas of the brain involved in processing visual, esthetic, and emotional stimuli—the prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and insula (the limbic system)—are closely linked to learning and memory, as well as decision-making under social pressure (Zaelzer, 2020). All of these aspects give visual science communication in government, NGOs, news media, pop culture, youth education, and informal learning environments an outsized role in educating the public and spurring societal change.

# **Invisible Visualizers?**

Increasingly, there is a trend in academic circles to train scientists and educators to be better science communicators (Thorp, 2021). Organizations like the Alan Alda Center for Science Communication and conferences like ComSciCon do an admirable job of training thousands of scientists each year in this endeavor. Typically, these programs focus on written communication, but conversations about visual communication do occasionally seep into their curricula. This training for academics has great value, as scientists beneft from an increased understanding of the importance of communication in everything from grant writing to reporting results, but also an appreciation of the skill set that is required to be a good communicator. However, this cannot be a replacement for collaborating with trained science communicators.

As H. Holden Thorp points out in a recent editorial for *Science,* "not every scientist wants to take time away from research to be a voice for science… most scientists prefer to persuade by performing meticulous, credible work" (Thorp, 2021, para 3). Though he is referring specifcally to science writers, the same holds true for visual science communication—expecting every scientist and researcher to also be a graphics expert is unrealistic. For most people then, teaming up with professionals who specialize in communicating with the public is the best use of their time and funds. The time is ripe to recognize that science research and science communication are different, equally skilled, technical specialties. We must build teams of professionals with the broad array of skills necessary to disseminate research, make it relevant, and make it actionable to critical masses of people around the globe. These teams absolutely should include specialists such as visual science communicators.

Astonishingly, an outsized portion of people looking to increase their reach via visual science communication (often referred to as "SciComm") have no idea where to fnd professionals in the feld or how to go about productive collaborations. In a pinch, academics equip graduate students with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and ask them to create fgures with little or no training in visual arts. Likewise, publishers may tap social media editors and graphic designers who may well have good design skills, but lack suffcient understanding of the science. Despite the rise in popularity of the "graphical abstract" in a number of peer-reviewed medical journals, numerous guidelines available to authors on the nuts and bolts of creating graphical abstracts fail to mention that there are visual science communicators trained to do this work. Contributing to the problem with advocating for the use of trained visual science communicators in science outreach efforts are the multiple terms we use to describe what we do: "science illustrator," "data visualizer," "information architect," etc., all describe various specialties that can all fall under the umbrella of visual science communication. Adopting the overarching umbrella term as an industry standard with subspecialties such as "data visualizer," "infographics specialist," etc., contained within will only help others conceptualize what we can offer.

Finding a visual science communications professional is easy if you know where to look. There are several professional associations of visual science communicators in the United States and Europe, each with hundreds of skilled and accomplished members. These include the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI), the Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI), and the Association Européenne des Illustrateurs Médicaux et Scientifques (AEIMS), among others. More specialized organizations cater to subfelds such as the International Association of Astronomical Artists, the American Society of Botanical Artists, and the UK-based Society of Botanical Artists. There are also numerous small companies in the USA and elsewhere that specialize in science-based visual storytelling. Figures in published works often include a credit line or acknowledgment of the artist (or at least they should) allowing one to fnd reputable illustrators that way. Resources such as the AMI's Medical Illustration and Animation Sourcebook (2019) and GNSI's (n.d.) online gallery of practicing visual science communicators offer a convenient concentration of professionals who advertise their portfolios to potential clients in the science and medical illustration realms. Additionally, medical illustration programs and the numerous certifcate programs in science illustration can serve as valuable resources (see the AMI's list of Graduate, Undergraduate and Certifcate Programs for training medical illustrators at the Association of Medical Illustrators (2000) and the GNSI's expansive list including single courses and certifcate programs for people interested in broader science illustration on their website's education page and via their monthly newsletter (2019)). Often, emailing the instructor of a science illustration program can open the door to many talented and eager professionals, some fresh out of school and others with years of experience.

Though we highly recommend seeking out visual science communicators to collaborate with, there are other models that exist. Recognizing the very real constraints of funding, companies like BioRender are attempting to create tools that assemble icons and spot images in automated ways to create fgures for research papers and presentations—a sort of DIY tool for researchers on a budget. ClimateVisuals.org has built a curated library of photographs depicting positive and inspiring actions by communities worldwide as they adapt to their new climate realities. These photographs are available for use by climate communicators free of charge, many under Creative Commons licenses. But though these types of resources have real benefts,

they do not yet approach the utility of having visual science communicators embedded in outreach and communications efforts across research, news media, public health, and educational institutions.

# *PART I: What Visual Science Communicators Bring to the SciComm Table*

I work with some of the best science communicators in the world, and I see how hard they have endeavored to hone their craft. This is a profession and a full-time job - not something that can be picked up in a workshop. —H. Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief, Science journals (Thorp, 2021, para 4).

Drawing is really hard (Colbert & Munroe, 2014, 01:35).

### **Research Publications and Academic Training**

There are many situations in which academics working on climate research could take better advantage of the power of visual science communication. Poster sessions—where research results are displayed visually with text and graphics—have been integral parts of scientifc conferences for decades. Yet the concept of submitting a graphical abstract, also known as a visual abstract, to be shared in online settings where scientists convene is relatively new (Ibrahim et al., 2017). Despite the widespread adoption of graphical abstracts in at least 75 medical journals (Ramos & Concepcion, 2020), a quick survey of author guidelines for the top journals publishing *climate science* reveals no mention of graphical abstracts to promote engagement or dissemination of critical research.

In the current landscape, without access to staff visual science communicators, researchers' graduate students, lab techs, and postdocs—who are often not interested in or able to provide satisfactory graphics for their papers—may resort to repurposing old publication graphics. If a repurposed diagram is not laser-focused on communicating the author's intent, it fails to inform quickly and seamlessly and risks losing the viewer altogether. In teaching, this is particularly important, but nowhere is it more important than on social media, where scientifc conversations and informal learning are increasingly happening (Ramos & Concepcion, 2020).

Ibrahim et al. (2017) found that adding quality graphics to Twitter posts about scientifc research leads to higher impact factors for published papers and greater reach in the scientifc community, the news media, and beyond. It follows that dedicating resources to at least one visual science communicator in an academic department, or even one position shared across closely related departments (where budget constraints are real), is well worth the investment.

External impacts are not the only benefts of working with a good visual science communicator. Working with someone who brings a different set of skills and perspectives to the workspace can allow researchers to see their work in new ways and

even open new lines of inquiry (Schwabish, 2021). Good visual storytelling can make potentially inaccessible research sing, inspiring students and colleagues to pursue new lines of research that suddenly spark their interest. It can also reveal patterns in the data, clarify thinking, and/or expose areas in which further research is needed. In one example, Kalliopi Monoyios, working as a staff illustrator at the University of Chicago, was given video footage of African lungfsh engaging in a walking behavior and was tasked with fnding an elegant way to show the novel fn locomotion for publication in two-dimensional media. By illustrating stills from the video footage (Fig. 3), Monoyios created a stacked time-lapse depiction of the walking movement that highlighted pivot points around which the lungfsh was propelling itself forward. This visual prompt in turn sparked new questions for the researcher as she pondered whether future experiments could quantify how much force was exerted with each "step." It is well accepted that having diverse perspectives in a boardroom leads to better business outcomes; the same holds true for scientifc laboratories.

**Fig. 3** Lungfsh walking. Working with a departmental scientifc illustrator led the lead researcher, Heather King, to consider designing force plate experiments she hadn't previously considered. (Illustration by Kalliopi Monoyios (King et al., 2011). Image used with permission)

### **Public Outreach by Governmental and Nongovernmental Organizations**

Ignoring the chance to improve our visual communication is inexcusable given the urgency of climate change… (McMahon et al., 2016).

It is important that government agencies—with their vast collection of scientifc teams doing critical research on climate change and solutions—use effective visual storytelling to engage with the public. Likewise, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as nonprofts, social movements, and citizen science groups can amplify their efforts to combat climate change complacency with quality support from visual science communicators. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021), the earth will warm between 2 °C and 6 °C (3.6–10.8 °F) over the next century. In many regions, warming has already surpassed 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels. The US National Intelligence Council Report (National Intelligence Council, 2021) predicts the impacts of climate change—rising temperatures, extreme weather, droughts, food insecurity, health risks, and confict—will accelerate trends of massive migration and global instability within the next 20 years. Obviously, getting these types of academic fndings seen and understood on a personal, even emotional level, by the largest possible audience is critical. We have little time to act if we are to assist governments and NGOs in the swift, decisive action that is warranted.

In the United States, 13 federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), worked on the *2018 Climate Change Report*. All these agencies have communications departments staffed with quality journalists and "visual information specialists." They are not staffed with "scientifc illustrators" (a different US government job description series), and there is no offcial classifcation for visual science communicators. Without a formal category for specialists combining science degrees with visual communication skills, federal agencies risk hiring candidates who may unintentionally misconstrue the science and/or fall short of motivating decision-makers and the public to take action. Clearly, there is a need to create staffng structures within the communications sections of government agencies that specify an appropriate skill set for producing scientifc graphic communication.

Furthermore, "existing communications teams are too dependent on stock images," says Taina Litwak, who at the time of this writing, is the sole staff scientifc illustrator we are aware of for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), a collection of 29 units employing over 100,000 people. While stock photos can sometimes approximate what you are trying to say or establish an overall tone, rarely do they convey the context and nuance that make a scientifc revelation stand out. And context and nuance are critical elements of effective graphics, according to Jen Christiansen, Senior Graphics Editor at *Scientifc American* (Schwabish, 2021).