The climate crisis affects all of us around the world. And it poses “an existential threat that we can only overcome through concerted action and effective implementation,” according to H.E. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of Egypt. In light of the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference (also known as COP27) this November, our Climate Change Writing Competition invites young people to raise their voices in the fight for action.
Bill McKibben, Guest Judge for the competition, believes that personal narrative is a powerful tool when writing about climate change. “People understand the world through stories,” he says. “You need to have a very firm grasp of the science, but it has to be funneled through stories that people can identify with, that come with an emotional punch.”
Read on to find out more about his work, and for his advice on writing an effective personal narrative about the climate crisis.
"People understand the world through stories."
We’re asking our writers to weave together storytelling and reflection to help readers grasp the emergency we’re all living through. You did just that in your 1989 book The End of Nature, which was an eye opener for a lot of people about climate change. In what ways does personal narrative play a powerful role in advocating for climate action?
People understand the world through stories. You need to have a very firm grasp of the science, but it has to be funneled through stories that people can identify with, that come with an emotional punch.
For me, setting The End of Nature in the mountain wilderness where I was living gave it some of that. A good place to look for other examples might be Orion Magazine, which features just this kind of essay.
In November 2022, world leaders are congregating in Egypt for the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference (COP27). What do you consider to be the most important conversation for world policy makers to have this year?
The big conversation at the COP this year is going to be about ‘loss and damage,’ which is another way of saying what the rich countries who put most of the carbon in the atmosphere owe the poor countries.
Pakistan is underwater right now, yet it has produced just about 1% of all the carbon in the air. The US, on the other hand, has produced about 25%. You get the picture—we have debts to pay!
How can young people contribute to this conversation?
Young people will have their own forum at the COP—but truthfully, young people can do as much good from a distance. Figure out how to support groups like Fridays for Future.
You’ve written SO many books! What’s the secret to making time for writing a book while leading an otherwise busy life?
Writing books is different from writing essays or op-eds or all the other things I write.
Those you can do on the fly, but books require time and space to think—I need to really set aside several months for the actual writing.
I block out some parts of each year when I don’t travel because I really need to be home and quiet for that kind of writing.
What are you looking for in a winning entry? And what’s your advice to our young writers who are new to writing about scientific topics like climate change through the form of personal narrative?
As you’re deciding on your topic and writing your piece, ask yourself, “Does this help the reader see things in a new light?”
Stories can help us all move past the commonplace (climate change is bad, unfair, dangerous, scary) and into the particular, and hence the powerful.
About the judge: Bill McKibben is an environmentalist, educator, and author. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change and has appeared in 24 languages. He’s gone on to write 20 books, and his work appears regularly in periodicals from the New Yorker to Rolling Stone. He serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, and Foreign Policy named him to its inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers. McKibben also founded Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice, and helped to found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized protests on every continent, including Antarctica, for climate action.