Why Storytelling is Key to Climate Action

Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

How can we "read" or understand policy responses to climate change? We can "read forwards," drawing on scientific evidence and reasoning to project consequences and dictate policy responses. Or we can "read backwards"; we can look to the human beliefs, values, and goals that impute meaning to the world to understand the many lines of evidence and reasoning leading to policy responses. University of Cambridge professor of human geography Michael Hulme will discuss the power of "reading backwards" and the importance of embedding "climate actions" inside human stories, both dominant and marginalized.
Hulme's work illuminates the numerous ways in which the idea of climate-change is deployed in public, political, religious and scientific discourse, exploring both its historical, cultural and scientific origins and its contemporary meanings. He is the author of nine books on climate change, including Why We Disagree About Climate Change (CUP, 2009). From 2000 to 2007, he was the Founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
This webinar is part of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Building Sustainable Futures: Global Challenges and Possibilities series, which focuses on a different United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) each quarter.
This and other Winter 2021 webinars focused on SDG 13: Climate Action are co-sponsored by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and sustainNU.