The Power of Positive Climate Narratives
Dr. Denise Baden is Professor of Sustainable Business at the University of Southampton and founder of Green Stories.
At Green Stories, Dr. Baden has run 16 writing competitions since 2018, focused around sustainability and storytelling. She is herself also the author of multiple eco-fiction novels, including Habitat Man and is the editor of a collection of short stories called No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet. She's working with BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, on a project about the role of screenwriters in consumer culture. And she's co-created the #ClimateCharacters campaign with them to highlight TV and movie characters who take on climate positive lifestyle behaviors.
Dr. Baden and Cody have a wide-ranging conversation about the role of storytelling as a lever for climate action, her work in researching how characters who demonstrate positive behaviors tend to drive better outcomes than fear mongering via disaster scenarios, and how the climate attitudes amongst her students have changed during her time in academia.
*We encourage you to share feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests at info@mcjcollective.com.
Episode recorded on Jan 4, 2024 (Published on Jan 29, 2024)
In this episode, we cover:
[02:37]: Dr. Baden's realization about the impact of storytelling while teaching ethics
[04:35]: Her findings on the impact of positive vs. negative storytelling
[09:50]: The concept of Thrutopias and Dr. Baden’s Green Stories competitions
[12:31]: #ClimateCharacters collaboration with BAFTAs
[17:35]: How fictional narratives shape subconscious value adoption
[19:01]: Concerns about dystopian themes in climate storytelling
[22:54]: The role of humor in climate-related storytelling
[26:33]: Promoting sustainability through Green Stories competitions
[31:25]: Personal carbon allowances for sustainable behaviors
[34:00]: Positioning climate change stories for broader audience engagement
[37:50]: Techniques for making climate change stories broadly engaging
[41:59]: Leveraging existing movements like minimalism and other trends
[45:12]: How climate attitudes amongst students have changed over time
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Cody Simms (00:00):
Today on My Climate Journey our guest is Dr. Denise Baden, Professor of Sustainable Business at the University of Southampton and founder of Green Stories. At Green Stories, Dr. Baden has run 16 writing competitions since 2018, focused around sustainability and storytelling. She is herself also the author of multiple eco-fiction novels, including Habitat Man and is the editor of a collection of short stories called No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet. She's working with BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, on a project about the role of screenwriters in consumer culture. And she's co-created the #ClimateCharacters campaign with them to highlight TV and movie characters who take on climate positive lifestyle behaviors.
(00:53):
Dr. Baden and I have a wide-ranging conversation about the role of storytelling as a lever for climate action, her work in researching how characters who demonstrate positive behaviors tend to drive better outcomes than fear mongering via disaster scenarios, and how the climate attitudes amongst her students have changed during her time in academia. And we cover a lot more than this too. But before we start, I'm Cody Simms.
Yin Lu (01:20):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (01:21):
And I'm Jason Jacobs. And welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (01:27):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (01:33):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
(01:46):
Denise, welcome to the show.
Dr. Denise Baden (01:48):
Hi, Cody. I'm pretty pleased to be here.
Cody Simms (01:50):
As I mentioned to you as we were warming up and prepping here a little bit, I personally think that storytelling is one of the most important climate solutions that gets the least amount of attention. And this is your life's work, so I'm excited to have you on and learn from you about the research you've done around storytelling, role models, all of that. But in addition, also the work you do to help try to generate more activity in this space so you're not just researching, you're out there encouraging more works of fiction, more works of storytelling that can help communicate climate-related topics and help people take action as a result.
Dr. Denise Baden (02:37):
That's the idea, yes.
Cody Simms (02:38):
Well why don't we start with your current role at the University of Southampton. You are a Professor of Sustainable Business there. We're going to get all into the storytelling stuff, but I just want to set the stage. So maybe tell us a little bit about the work you do in the university context.
Dr. Denise Baden (02:55):
Actually, I feel a bit of an imposter because my background actually is in psychology. It was my PhD and before that I did economics and politics, but I did spend a bit of time out in the world in big business, small business, and an NGO. So I think, unlike most academics, I kind of have been a bit of a butterfly. I think that's stood me in good stead.
(03:17):
So my current role is Professor of Sustainable Business. I teach corporate social responsibility, sustainable business, did teach business ethics. My work, I very much don't want to be a ivory tower academic. For me, especially with the climate crisis being so serious, I want to make sure what we know gets out there. So I try and integrate sustainability across the curriculum. So I really try and keep my eye on the ball as to what's going on, where the solutions are across many different aspects.
(03:48):
And I guess what got me into storytelling is you realize quite quickly that the solutions are all out there actually, we're just not doing them. And very quickly when you're looking at sustainable business, you get to the point you think, well, there's the public, there's business, there's government, and no one can move too far ahead without the others following them. It's like a three-legged race. And for the government to do the policies, they need the public behind them. For business to care, they need government regulation and consumers. And I kept coming down to the fact that I'm writing these papers on sustainable solutions and so few people read them and it's always the same people, the people who already care.
Cody Simms (04:31):
You're hitting the echo chamber as opposed to finding new minds.
Dr. Denise Baden (04:35):
So that's what made me think, hang on a minute, we need to find a way to reach the kind of people who are never going to read an article in a sustainability journal or watch a climate change documentary or even the news. We need to reach those people and we need to not just scare the bejesus out of them, we need to find a way to engage them. I think a lot of the times we've been, with the best of intentions, doing it wrong. And I put my hand up that I was doing it wrong. The first hint I had that I was doing it wrong was in a business ethics lecture. And the standard way a lot of people teach business ethics is to point to a big ethics scandal like Enron or the BP oil disaster, and you say what went wrong and what terrible things happened. And the idea is it's a cautionary tale and you learn what not to do.
(05:25):
And then we had quite a few students who were non-English speakers and maybe something got lost in translation, but one of them came up to me afterwards and they thought I was teaching them how to be unethical as a way of getting ahead in business. And I thought, no, no, that wasn't the message. And I began to think, and I'd done some research as well trying to test the effectiveness of business ethics teaching, are students any more effective afterwards? Any more ethical? Not just through their own reporting, but did they choose, say, a fair trade or ethical alternative when given a reward for taking part? No effect at all. So I did some research where I teach the grand theories in a lecture, but in classes they either had to do a class on ethical role models, positive role models, or case studies of businesses that had gone wrong and ethics scandals.
(06:15):
And then I discovered that actually the ethical role models were way more effective at inspiring ethical behavior than the ethics scandals. And then I turned my attention to news reporting and I did similar research with students and with non-students and qualitative replies versus big surveys. In every case, I got the same results. If you show the problem, for example, plastic in oceans and you see baby whales full of plastic or you see a new story with a solution, like people clearing it up, the positive story is way more likely to inspire intentions to be more environmentally friendly, write to their politician, a campaign, and so on than the negative stories. And the negative stories will raise awareness, but actually awareness doesn't translate into behavior. And that's the big mistake.
(07:10):
And then when I started thinking beyond just teaching and about stories, I applied that research to storytelling and I exposed people to four short stories. Two were more catastrophic, two were more solution focused, all with a green theme, and I got, again, the same results. The negative stories would lead to a passive despair, a sense that something should be done. Whereas the positive ones were, "Oh, I saw this person doing this, I could do that." So actual intentions to mimic that behavior. Also the negative ones, the more catastrophic ones, I think a significant number of people just switched off. They said, "I don't like this. I didn't want to read it. I didn't finish it." So you get avoidance, you get denial, you get guilt. Now it did inspire some, really did, but just as many were switched off.
Cody Simms (08:05):
So it's the idea of trying to shift people from a we-should mindset to an I-will or I-did mindset, I guess?
Dr. Denise Baden (08:13):
Cody, it's also worse than that is, again, where negative stories do inspire behavior, it's not always the behavior that the author intends. So I know many dedicated climate fiction authors and they're thinking, right, if I write the terrible dystopia that will happen if we do nothing, people will then give up flying, buying [inaudible 00:08:35]. No, they're much more likely to buy up all the toilet rolls, get a gun, engage in these self-protective behaviors. So I think a lot of us in the field of trying to campaign for climate change think if we tell people how terrible it will be, that's the way to do it.
Cody Simms (08:51):
That's fascinating. So the idea is people are hearing, "Hey, the world is already totally screwed, so you might as well fend for yourself," as opposed to, "Hey, here are ways we can all improve and make things better."
Dr. Denise Baden (09:04):
Exactly. And there is already plenty out there in terms of the catastrophic stories. They do have their place. And again, it depends where you are. So I think in Europe, perhaps, we're further ahead in climate awareness than in the U.S. So you don't really need to raise awareness anymore. If people don't know, they're choosing not to know. And it's kind of like revving the engine without being in gear, you're just creating a lot of negative energy, you're not going anywhere. I think in other places, perhaps you do need to raise that awareness, but tie it to a solution. Don't just leave it hanging. Tie it to something you'd want people to do.
Cody Simms (09:39):
So let's spend a bit of time talking about the initiative that you created. You are the founder of something called Green Stories. Share more with us about that.
Dr. Denise Baden (09:50):
Yes. So I thought there's nothing much in this space, whether it be film or fiction or novels. There's very little in the space of positive, realistic visions of what a sustainable society might look like if we did it well. And I've come across this term, Thrutopia, which I love. Because utopias are unrealistic, dystopias are depressing, Thrutopia has this vision of what it might look like if we do it well. And then you work backwards from there to see what it might take to get there. And I kind of like that because you end up with very different policies.
(10:26):
So for example, if you start from where we are now and try to be just a bit less unsustainable, you might put energy into electric cars and tax incentives towards less gas guzzlers and so on. If you think about what we need to be truly sustainable, you would put a lot more money into really, really good public transport. So good no one needs a car because there's only so much lithium in the world, there are carbon embedded in the cars. If it's that good, then everyone benefits. At the moment, not many people would think of giving up their car unless they live to somewhere like New York or London where, again, you don't really need it, there's such good transport networks.
(11:04):
So I liked that idea. So I set up the Green Stories competitions to try and get more fiction in that space, of positive solutions. We've done, I think about 20 competitions now, all free. We've had a variety of sponsors. We've done novels, we've done short stories, we've done film scripts, radio plays.
Cody Simms (11:23):
I saw some of the examples on your website. You've had a competition called Microbes to the Rescue. You've had a competition called the Superhero Short Story Competition. You had one called EcoSanta. Some pretty clever topics I suppose you've asked people to submit ideas around.
Dr. Denise Baden (11:40):
Well I love Santa Claus, because if you're looking at role models, there's an ultimate cross-cultural role model there. But at the moment, I guess he's more a symbol of consumption. So one of my favorite stories there was Green Santa, where toys get made in a toy hospital rather than a toy factory, promoting reuse, upcycling. So it's a lovely way when you target children, you're also targeting the parents because they're reading the stories out.
(12:04):
But yeah, so we had two criteria. Well, it had to be entertaining first and foremost, because if they don't turn the page, you've lost them. But also they either had to give a positive vision of a sustainable society set in the future, or just product place sustainable behaviors in an everyday genre. So for example, you might have people just eating a low-carbon diet or traveling by bus or so on.
(12:31):
And we did a project with BAFTA last year, that's our kind of version of the Oscars, where we did fun Instagram posts where we highlight the issue of characters in fiction becoming like role models for people. So you might have, for example, if you're Sex in the City or Emily in Paris, every time you're wearing a new outfit, the heroes drive sports cars and that's portrayed as aspirational and that sets the culture. So we did a fun one where we had James Bond with his single-use sports car Aston Martin, his walk-in wardrobe of luxury suits. He has a really high-carbon footprint to take out the bad guys. We compare it with Jack Reacher who travels by bus, shops in thrift shops.
Cody Simms (13:16):
I'm obsessed with Reacher right now. I love that show. I can't wait for the new episode to drop. I'm on season two, episode four I think right now.
Dr. Denise Baden (13:25):
But that's a great example, isn't it, of how you promote walking lightly upon the earth in a character that you'd love to identify with?
Cody Simms (13:34):
They show him buying his clothes in thrift shops multiple times.
Dr. Denise Baden (13:37):
Yeah, so we've done a number of different projects. One, we're trying to encourage people to write things into their own books, one with BAFTA. We've done a play, Murder in the Citizen's Jury, which is fun. And if any theater groups out there listening would like to put it on, it's royalty free but it's a lovely way to showcase climate solutions because we imagine eight people in a kind of citizens' assembly kind of thing, and they're there to debate climate solutions. And then there's a murder. So you've got all the full whodunit elements, but you can also make an interactive version where the audience can become part of the citizens' assembly themselves and say which climate solutions they like.
(14:18):
And one of the key climate solutions is that process of participative democracy itself, because one of the issues we have with our governments is they're based on short-term electoral cycles. You also got lobbying by business, vested interests. So it's actually constitutionally quite difficult for, in democratically elected governments at their best, really to prioritize urgent issues like the climate crisis over more immediate issues. Whereas citizens' assemblies, like they've been doing loads of them in Europe and Northern Ireland and we're doing them a lot in the UK now. It's like a jury. You invite random people there to represent the population, you give them an issue, they're informed by experts, not misinformation distributed by social media, and they will deliberate upon the decisions.
(15:09):
And one of the issues is that they don't have any power. I think there was a couple in Europe that did have power, but most of them are recommendation only. So you have all that investment of resources and then nothing happens. But they've been shown that if you give people that responsibility, they do take it seriously. And there's more and more research now showing that they make more longer term sustainable decisions. The trouble is lack of awareness. So having this play is a lovely way to raise public awareness. I mean there's a group campaigning now in the UK for the House of Lords, so archaic, to give way to a house of citizens as a second chamber to complement our House of Commons.
(15:48):
So these are lovely ways where stories can go where politicians can't. It would be too risky for a politician to make these kinds of suggestions, but yet you can raise awareness bottom up to the point at which it is something they feel they can talk about.
Cody Simms (16:03):
On that note of awareness, positive action, storytelling helping to break through and even push change politically, certainly there is a lot of historical precedent of culture driving politics and movements coming out of popular culture and those two things relating to each other. And yet, as I mentioned, it's not often talked about as a huge lever in the climate crisis.
(16:31):
And yet, obviously, art, song, and film and television are a long tradition in history of being politically associated in certain ways. How do you see this, in climate in particular, starting to gain more momentum? I would expect in 2020 that we'd see climate art, for example, eco modernism, whatever you may call it, becoming this solar punk, I guess is the phrase, becoming this really mainstream cultural phenomenon. And it's there on the fringes, but it certainly isn't this driving force in culture today, given that when you ask young people what they're concerned about, the climate crisis is always one of the top answers. It feels like a mismatch to me, and this is the mismatch you spend your days thinking about. So I'm interested to hear how you think this becomes more of a cultural groundswell as much as it is a business and political one today, which is where most of the conversation seems to be happening.
Dr. Denise Baden (17:35):
Cody, yes, you're completely right. So many people were inspired by Star Trek, for example, for better or worse. I'm afraid I'm in the camp that thinks let's sort out problems on our own planet first before putting too much resources into getting to Mars. But there's no doubt it has inspired people. And there's quite a lot of research into how books inspire people and stories. There's this phenomenon called narrative transportation where, when you engage in a story in the character, you adopt their values as your own. And it's a subconscious process. So when you're listening to a lecture, you're consciously processing it, it's very rational. But when you're engaged in a story, it goes right to the heart of you.
(18:15):
So you're probably less aware actually that you're learning from it or that you're being influenced by it, but the influence is there. I think this is beginning to happen. So I think talking to people in an advisory capacity, Project Flickers for the Future, the Global Action Plan, Richard Curtis headed that, of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame. Climate Spring has been working with the British Film Institute and other organizations to try and engage script writers in putting climate into scripts. There's the Hollywood Climate PitchFest where they're trying to look at that, Netflix are now trying to introduce more sustainability content. I've been talking with the BBC who are also looking at that.
Cody Simms (18:57):
There's the Hollywood Climate Summit in L.A. as well, which happens in the summertime.
Dr. Denise Baden (19:01):
That's the one, yes. So it's beginning to happen. My fear is that the focus will still remain on dystopian themes. And there is a role for that. If we're frightened, I think we like to see our fears portrayed in stories. It helps us practice our responses or we feel we're getting prepared, but at the same time, it's not necessarily going to lead to the kind of behaviors you want. So I really do hope to see some more solution-focused stories out there.
Cody Simms (19:32):
It feels like Hollywood has embraced diversity over the last few years in a much greater than lip service way. When you just look at the number of diverse actors and actresses in leading roles where the role doesn't even matter what the racial or gender makeup of a character is, they're just choosing to put someone who represents different physical qualities, different gender qualities, whatnot on screen just because they are trying to do that. And you wonder if that same trend will follow with trying to showcase visions of positive future, if that's the way you would describe it.
Dr. Denise Baden (20:12):
Well, I really hope so. Now you look back at films even just 10 years ago and you think, "Oh my goodness, they were so sexist," for example. I'm really noticing a big shift in that. So I would like to see low carbon behavior normalized.
(20:26):
For now, if I see anything happening on screen where someone's just casually throwing away food, I don't know, on TV, does anyone finish their food? Everyone orders, it's always beef, and then they get in a huff about something and off they go. No one asks for a takeout bag so it's not wasted. So huge emissions are food waste.
(20:45):
I would like to see people, if they're going out on their big date, I'm so bored of that trope of girls with big bags flapping against their thighs. I would like to see them going to thrift shops trying on things, fashion swaps. There's so much happening in that field. There's so many ways that you can just normalize greener behavior. And so I do think that there are changes and there's a lot more awareness, but I'm not sure it's always going to go in the right way. I do feel we might just see more climate dystopias.
Yin Lu (21:16):
Hey everyone. I'm Yin, a partner at MCJ Collective, here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ Membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast.
(21:28):
We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally. Each week we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established, and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming, like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops, and more. Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the Members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (22:17):
It's such a good point. Why does the leading character who's the big strong whatever always have to drive a giant truck, for example?
Dr. Denise Baden (22:25):
Yeah, why not cycle?
Cody Simms (22:26):
So tell me, I'm curious what you think about the role of humor. When I think of works of fiction that have really cracked popular culture that are climate related in the last few years, Don't Look Up as an obvious example that jumps to mind, and that used a different device, which was the device of humor and sarcasm, I suppose. And I'm curious how you think of that in terms of what any research you have shown or you've done shows about its effectiveness.
Dr. Denise Baden (22:54):
Yeah, sure. When I just think anecdotal research, I first came to the idea of using fiction as a way to reach people from reading Ben Elton, I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's written loads. Oh, you should check him out. I mean some of his books are a bit dated now, but his first book was called Stark and it was about a conspiracy of all the rich people to mess up the planet and then leave and go off to space. It's a spoiler, sorry about that. But it was so funny and it was a real adventure. But in the middle of this adventure, he would just have little snippets of the characters. So it'd be like, Dave was born today and it was a water birth, but in moments of being born, Dave had died. And then you realize that Dave was a dolphin caught in a fishing net that a previous character we just mentioned was really pleased he'd designed this new fishing net that was hard to get out of.
(23:45):
And then I thought, "Hang on, I could buy dolphin-friendly tuna. I could do that." So there was my first hint that a novel that was very funny could also change your behavior. So I think one of the next steps in my progression from sustainability professor to Green Stories founder to being an author myself was I found that so few entrants into the Green Stories competition actually focused on solutions. They only focused on problems. For example, I'd get loads of entries about characters who'd give up their job to go and fight evil rainforest loggers, but they're not evil. Most of them are bonded slaves in many countries. It's a systemic issue. And also, even if you could do that, is it likely the reader is going to do that? No.
(24:31):
So I came up with my own book called Habitat Man, and that was kind of funny. So to come back to the humor, it's about a guy who gives up his job to help make gardens wildlife friendly. Based on a real-life character I know, but I threw in a body that he digs up in the garden, I threw in a love story. The body that's dug up gives a lovely opportunity to talk about natural burials. And a lot of people didn't know just how high carbon footprint a burial can have and that you shouldn't fill bodies full of formaldehyde because that kills everything in the earth. So I got so many emails coming back from people saying, "I've now changed my will for a natural burial. I found that scene incredibly moving."
(25:13):
And the English department here and the University of Utah actually joined to do some research into readers' responses to Habitat Man. 50 people read it, mixture of American and English, and six weeks after reading it, we checked the behaviors and 98% had adopted at least one green alternative as a result of reading it. It might be home composting, planting pollinator-friendly plants. But we also had a funny sidekick character who set up this random recipe generator using low-carbon seasonal foods and always a joker food that you had to include, insects or stinging nettles, and it turned into this viral cookery challenge with the catchphrase, "This tastes absolutely disgusting."
(25:57):
But a lot of people found that character very funny and then they could try the random recipe generator, which I posted on the website because we kind of had a little play with it. So we found that by having an eco-themed rom-com, a lot of people engaged with it, enjoyed reading it, but it also changed their behavior. So you can prove that you can move outside that echo chamber. And if you keep people entertained, they'll keep turning the page enough to engage with the solutions.
Cody Simms (26:26):
It's a good reminder that you have to start with a good story and good characters and the solutions can be woven into that.
Dr. Denise Baden (26:33):
Yeah, we got this close to a BBC Radio 4 sitcom. We were down to the last two apparently, because they quite liked the idea as well. But yeah, in every scene you have to have, if you're going to have a green solution, it has to come out of the plot. So we had one character, the Wizard of [inaudible 00:26:51] who wanted a habitat for bats and frogs, so there's a nice opportunity to talk about ponds and their contribution to wildlife and so on. So we had a lot of fun with that.
(27:00):
And with our BAFTA project, so anyone wants to check it out, it's #Characters. We had Emily in Paris who needed her own Paris Agreement to have her wardrobe. We compared Eric from Sex and the City who cycles everywhere to another character. We had a lot of fun with that and we linked it to a survey to get a sense of where people were at in terms of what do they think screenwriters should do? And BAFTA gave us access to all the screenwriting courses they engage with. So they weren't a pre-green sample. They were just normal students in media and film courses. And nearly half said actually they were influenced by what the characters did and that they did think it mattered that high carbon weren't presented as aspirational.
(27:46):
So no one thought all characters should be vegan and ride bikes. No one thought that, but they did think we should start thinking twice about making that aspirational now because it's a cultural norm. Why do we consume so much? We consume so much because we're told to. Now, businesses put a lot of money into marketing to make us buy, buy, buy, and culture weighs in on top. So you do need some counterpoint to that. And I think culture, we've got a greater chance that culture might move away from high consumption than business are going to suddenly start saying, "Oh, stop buying our products."
Cody Simms (28:21):
Share more about the collection of short stories that you recently edited and published together that I believe were a collection of stories that came in through the Green Stories competition?
Dr. Denise Baden (28:31):
That's right. A chemical engineer, Steve Willis, who's based in Malaysia. He unsuccessfully submitted a story to one of the short story competition, but he did quite well in the following one, so he's doing well. But he said, "Why don't we team experienced writers with climate experts?" Because he ran Herculean Climate Solutions as a consultancy, and he said, "We've got so many climate projects and people don't know about them." So we did. We got people like Kim Stanley Robinson, he wrote Ministry for the Future, donated a few chapters. Paolo Bacigalupi donated a chapter. So a number of really good climate fiction authors, and some who were just really great writers but not so knowledgeable about climate, and we paired them with climate experts where if they were too climatic and preachy, we got a writer to work with them to make them engaging. If they were really good stories but not enough solution, we'd get a climate expert to weigh in.
(29:26):
And we ended up with 24 short stories. Every genre. We've got a family drama, we've got comedy, we've got whodunits, action, and so on. Every kind of solution as well. So we've got your nature based, planting sea grass. You've got your more tech ones, carbon capture and storage. You've got ones that look at the systemic aspects, so a couple look at the issue of should we still be having the gross domestic product as our metric of success? Because climate change, it's not going to be too bad for the GDP, be bad for humans. But yeah, obviously they overlap with wellbeing, but they are not the same thing, especially when you throw climate into it.
(30:05):
So I was really concerned, there was a couple that I wrote, that the GDP was steering governments towards policies that prioritize the economy over the people. So we addressed that in a couple of stories. We looked at some policies that are quite hard politically to get off the ground, but would be massively effective. Things like personal carbon allowances.
(30:27):
Now one of the issues that you keep coming across when trying to engage people is, "Well, I can give up flying and beef and so on and my high gas-guzzling car, but what's the point unless everyone does? I'm disadvantaged, but it makes very little difference." So there's an issue, you can have carbon offsets. When they're voluntary, you're penalizing people's green conscience and it's just not enough. It's not going to do the job. So the idea of personal carbon allowances is everyone has their own set carbon allowance and you spend that, with start off probably just looking at fuel and transport, and then as it gets more accepted, you can introduce other things, but it would drive innovation into low carbon practices and policies and products because people wouldn't want to use up their carbon allowance. And if they go over, they can purchase carbon credits from anyone who's gone under. So low-income households would probably be better off.
Cody Simms (31:22):
So your story pushed on this as a theme?
Dr. Denise Baden (31:25):
Yeah, so what we did, we gave an example that was included in the Murder in the Citizen's Jury one. So we had a short story adaptation and every different character would have a different relationship to that policy. So you could see how it would affect different kinds of people and the pros and cons and you could debate it in an entertaining way that no politician could ever get across in a soundbite.
(31:46):
So we may not be ready for them now, but at some point we might be. So let's start preparing the earth. I kind of think of these ideas as seeds. First you need to prepare the earth, create awareness. Then if it comes to the point where you think, actually, we're ready to make this work. Because there was a proposal, I think back in 2008 in the UK, a serious proposal by some of our politicians, but we didn't yet have the carbon footprinting software. I think we weren't yet scared enough. It was an idea ahead of its time. Now I think its time is coming, so these stories have really nice ways to address systemic aspects, legal aspects. So we had a few stories that imagined, what if you gave nation status to the ocean? What might that look like? And legal protection of nature is something that really has succeeded where other things have failed. And obviously it's a fun one to explore in speculative fiction as well, what it might look like.
Cody Simms (32:39):
And the compilation overall is called No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet.
Dr. Denise Baden (32:45):
Looking back, it's a nightmare title because people can spell fairy tales as one word, as two, but yes, it's a great anthology and we are gathering data now on how it's affecting people and so on.
Cody Simms (32:57):
You made a conscious choice in the title to position it as a climate change or environmental-oriented collection of stories as opposed to, "Here's a bunch of good stories that just happen to hit on this theme necessarily." I'm curious your thought on psychology of readers of who is going to choose that versus, I think of a work, for example this is not a work of story collections, but a film, again, something like Princess Mononoke, which is this anime movie. It's not positioned as a climate change movie, but it's all about fighting against humans plundering the earth's natural resources. That's what the movie's about and it's a classic anime film. They didn't specifically come out and say, "This is an environmental movie," but it clearly is. I'm curious what you've learned in terms of positioning something as climate change focused or environmental focused versus not, and what the audience reception tends to be accordingly.
Dr. Denise Baden (34:00):
My inclination is to agree with you. I think you can have most impact, from where we are now, not to position things by playing the green card so you can reach a wide audience. And that's why Habitat Man is positioned as a rom-com rather than as climate fiction.
(34:18):
No More Fairy Tales, I think we did just want to provide a tool for people who are promoting these solutions to perhaps engage people. So we used it at COP27, COP28, and it has been a useful tool to get people reading and engaging in discussions because if you see a character who's done something you might like to do, then that can inspire you. But you are right. It's not going to get such a wide readership perhaps as something that's aimed at the mainstream.
Cody Simms (34:45):
That's such an interesting way to frame it, which is you can position a work to be mainstream work and to subconsciously make people aware of climate solutions and help them adapt behavior. Or you can position a work trying to specifically go after the echo chamber of people in climate with a new point of view. And your point of view from this collection of stories was, fiction can be a lever. Here are examples of things all of you in the climate community could think about and ways you can leverage this tool to help people understand the kinds of policies that you're already working on or thinking about. So it was an intentional choice to speak to the echo chamber, but with a different voice.
Dr. Denise Baden (35:31):
Exactly. And I also think we take almost a systems theory approach. A lot of people who have control over the information do have vested interests. So, for example, there's a lot of people in the carbon credit markets who run platforms and you listen and you think, "Oh my God, what a wonderful thing. We've solved all our problems. We have carbon credits feeding into this and carbon drawdown projects taking money. Wonderful." But when I went to COP28, that wasn't what I heard from people wanting to get funds for their carbon removal projects. It wasn't quite so. It's a bit of a wild west, quite frankly.
Cody Simms (36:08):
What were you hearing?
Dr. Denise Baden (36:09):
Well, one, that small projects get nowhere because of the due diligence and the disclosure agreements, and maybe I'm not saying you should do away with them, but also business will seek out the cheapest means to tick a carbon offset box. So if that's a $7 a ton monoculture forest, they'll do that. They won't necessarily do the ones with a host of benefits that have consulted Indigenous communities and that are really high quality ones that are sequestration that lasts. In a marketplace, you seek out short-term gains that enable you to tick that box for your ESG credentials and that commercial consumerist attitude, it's not leading to the best outcomes really.
(36:52):
So when you write stories, you can look at things from everyone's point of view through different characters and you can get a better bird's-eye picture. And the author, if they have no particular vested interest, can interrogate every point of view and give you a more systems-based approach. And I think this is where I've turned what has been a weakness as an academic into a strength is having been in so many different sectors leading up to now, I do have quite a good grasp of politics, culture, psychology, business, and get a better sense of how these things interlink.
Cody Simms (37:29):
How do you balance not trying to push too hard toward one solution, toward the solution that you think is the right one? If I've learned one thing of working in climate, it's there's no magic bullet, for lack of a better term. We need lots of solutions and we don't know how many of them are going to play out necessarily. How do you balance that?
Dr. Denise Baden (37:50):
Well, that was very interesting. I learned so much doing that anthology about the divisions between everyone who's all on the same side. So the engineers, the more difficult and challenging, the more they love it. "Oh, there's too much sun, put up a giant mirror." Fun. And the more social scientists are thinking, well, what about power? What about who gets control of that? That could be a weapon. The nature people are all like, "Well, you want to plant a load of mangroves here to create seawalls and so on, but what about the local ecology?" And so they're very much into the nature-based solutions.
(38:24):
So I had to become a little bit of a diplomat and I definitely learned that it's not a one size fits all and I think there's a jigsaw and a lot of the engineering ones missed out the social science elements of it, the systemic aspects like, why aren't your projects getting funded? Because there's no government regulation requiring it. Okay, well then you can look at citizen's juries, because there's no incentives. Now you can look at green taxes, subsidies, personal carbon trading. You can look at these things, because no one cares. Now you can look at the metric of success. No one's aware. Now you can set up the Green Storage Project. There you go, full circle.
(39:00):
So I really did, exactly as you say, get insight into so many perspectives. And in terms of my writing, so the anthology includes all perspectives. I think they're pretty well representative, but in terms of my writing, I've looked at what is getting the least attention. And for me, the issue of consumption is getting the least attention. Governments want to better say to everyone, "Consume as much as you want. Nothing we're going to do will in any way reduce your freedom to consume as much as you want." Businesses, "Yep, we're on for that." But the fact is that every solution, quite often and one thing I learned, many solutions that look great solve one problem by creating another, or they don't actually work at scale as much as you think they will, or they're never going to get the funding necessary to make them effective enough to stop us going over tipping points in time.
(39:50):
So where we've got to is amazing, but it's just not amazing enough. The chemical realities of when an iceberg will melt have to trump political realities in my view. And the only thing that will consistently work will be finding ways where we can have as much of a great quality of life by consuming less. And I've done a number of projects that have shown me how easy that is. So one of my other projects is sustainable hairdressing, and guys often don't get this.
Cody Simms (40:20):
I unfortunately don't have much on the top myself.
Dr. Denise Baden (40:24):
But yeah, some people will wash their hair every day. They'll shampoo, rinse, repeat, condition, straighten, blow dry. Some people will wash their clothes every single day. None of that is good for the skin. Hot showers under a power shower open up the pores, they strip all your friendly bacteria, age the skin. Over washing hair will dry it, put it in bad condition. Actually everyone is better off. Your purse, the money you save, your bills, the climate, your time if you just wash at a lower temperature and less.
(40:56):
So you can save, the difference between a high resource shampoo routine and a low resource, isn't just 10% or 20%, it's several thousand percent because all the carbon footprint really is in the hot water. So there's so many win-wins there, but business is not going to be telling you, shampoo less. So a lot of the stories I do focus on ways where you can have just as great a life. I look at things like the sharing economy, for example, by using less consumption. And that's because that is underserved. It's not because it's the only solution, but it's the one that other groups, governments and businesses will find it hard to talk about. Whereas me as a storyteller, I can.
Cody Simms (41:39):
Yeah, almost no one wants to be told, "We're going to take this thing away from you." And no one wants to tell that to anybody. But if you can inspire someone to understand there's this character or this person that I admire and they're doing this, maybe I'll try to model myself after them, perhaps that's a good way to affect change in that regard.
Dr. Denise Baden (41:59):
And tap into existing movements like the minimalist movement and so on. What's that Japanese lady who's done really good stuff on Netflix about how to live a minimalist lifestyle? So there's other things going on that are trendy that you can tap into as well.
Cody Simms (42:14):
Yep. Now I'm blanking on her name, but I know exactly who you're talking about. It's a very popular ideal in my house, actually.
(42:19):
Okay. The last question I have for you is you spend your day working with students. What are you hearing from students and what have you seen change in the things they're concerned about or the things they're aware of in your time as a professor?
Dr. Denise Baden (42:37):
I first started talking about corporate social responsibility maybe 15 years ago. The students and I were all quite bright-eyed about it. It's a win-win, enlightened self-interest, and so on. But over time, I think it became clear that it was being used more as a marketing exercise. That if it was worth businesses doing, they'd be doing it anyway. It's very much tied into the tick-box mentality. And actually, really what we need to look at is the core purpose of business. Should we still be talking about business being all about shareholder value? And I think France now have changed their laws. Businesses now legally obligated to consider the environment and society, and I think this moves in the UK and even, I think the business roundtable in the U.S. is shifting more towards that perspective. I don't know if it'll ever get there in time, but I guess a loss of this bright-eyed, "Yeah, CSR, corporate social responsibility will save us."
(43:33):
I think a lot of people came in thinking business is going to be part of the solution. And I think more and more people think now it's part of the problem. So there's a greater cynicism on business. I used to have to sell the idea of sustainable business. Now I don't. Students, they're scared. It's generation dread. It's all about their values. So a lot of them really do want to be working towards their values. And it's not just the undergrads, the 20-year-olds. I've got adult PhD students and who do a DBA, where you're still in work but you work on it, and there's really interesting projects of people working with managers now who really want to bring their sustainability values into the business, but the need for business to prioritize profit, to be competitive, everyone's in the system having to work towards that goal, while fewer and fewer people believe that it's the right goal to be working towards.
(44:25):
But can we get off that treadmill? It's like we've become subroutines in the algorithm. And more and more, I'm hearing anti-capitalist sentiments from the last places you'd expect to hear it, but I don't think we can find a new way now. It's why I'm interested in exploring things like personal carbon allowances that are bridging that gap perhaps, can we make the market work for us in a slightly more effective way than the carbon credit market? Which has been disappointing. Maybe one day it'll stop being the wild west, but at the moment it still seems to be not quite living up to its promise.
Cody Simms (44:59):
It's interesting hearing this shift in sentiment. My initial reaction was, "Oh, but are these people who've just opted into this given the nature of what you teach in the first place?" But no, you've been teaching this all along and you've noticed this shift in sentiment.
Dr. Denise Baden (45:12):
Well, I also teach a first year course, which is compulsory, so it's not just those who've chosen to take sustainable business. And I've noticed there a shift from seeing business as the solution to seeing business as the problem. So that's interesting and they come to a business school, for goodness's sake.
Cody Simms (45:27):
And they're in the course, presumably, looking for ways to then find solutions I would guess, if that's back to the whole notion of let's not just highlight the problems, let's highlight the hope and aspiration. Hopefully they're finding pathways through your work that they can apply in their lives.
Dr. Denise Baden (45:42):
I hope so. I guess 15 years ago you were trying to say, "Why would businesses choose to be socially responsible?" Now it's how, let's just assume that they do. Now, let's look at how, because that's where we are now. I think we don't have time to waste on, should we? Shouldn't we? I think most people would like to be socially responsible if they can find a way to make it work.
Cody Simms (46:04):
Well, Dr. Denise Baden, so happy that you've joined us today. Hopefully folks listening will go check out Habitat Man. Hopefully they will check out No More Fairy Tales. Are there other areas that folks should subscribe to or follow along with if they want to follow your journey and your work?
Dr. Denise Baden (46:21):
Sure. Yeah. The website greenstories.org.uk, there's the play, Murder in a Citizen's Jury, which is a really nice way to engage people in climate solutions and can be adapted for different solutions as well. There's my own website, dabaden.com, where I talk about my upcoming writing projects. Yeah. Well, I hope people have found something of interest.
Cody Simms (46:45):
And hopefully any aspiring writers or established writers who are listening to this, go check out the Green Stories competition and figure out a way to participate in the work that you're doing.
Dr. Denise Baden (46:55):
Yeah. There's one more thing. We've been running a novel competition for the last four years, but we've just lost a sponsor, so if anyone is keen enough to sponsor our next novel competition so we can continue keeping these writing competitions free, please ask them to get in touch.
Cody Simms (47:10):
That's a good call to action to end on, ending on solutions, right? Well thank you so much for your time today, really, really enjoyed the conversation, and please continue all the work you're doing.
Dr. Denise Baden (47:21):
Thank you, Cody. Thanks for having me.
Jason Jacobs (47:22):
Thanks again for joining us on the My Climate Journey Podcast.
Cody Simms (47:27):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem-solving capacity.
Jason Jacobs (47:36):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at mcjcollective.com. And if you have a guest suggestion, let us know that via Twitter, @MCJPod.
Yin Lu (47:49):
For weekly climate op-eds, jobs, community events, and investment announcements from our MCJ Venture Funds, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
Cody Simms (47:58):
Thanks and see you next episode.
