Solitaire Townsend's Blog

Every great story begins with an ‘inciting incident’.

That’s the moment when the ordinary world cracks, when the hero is shaken awake. The ring is left on a hobbit’s mantelpiece. The message flickers from Princess Leia. The sky burns, the monster rises, the truth is revealed. It’s the moment the story really starts.

In my new novel Godstorm, it’s when a child is abducted during a climate-induced hurricane.

But reality rarely fits the strictures of excellent storytelling. We need to make it do so.

For climate, that’s going to mean moving on from the inciting incident we’ve been stuck in for literally decades, our story stalling, and action waiting for us to move on.

For too long, climate communicators have treated science as our inciting incident.
We’ve believed that if we simply presented the charts, the models, the melting ice, then people would leap from their sofas, grab their cloaks and swords, and set out to save the world.

That worked for some. The bold, the believers, the already-converted set off at once. But for everyone else, the call to adventure has been… ignored. Or worse, politely declined.

Because we’ve forgotten a crucial rule of storytelling: the inciting incident only matters if the audience knows they’re the protagonist.

The Call We Keep Refusing

Every good story has a moment of refusal. Luke doesn’t want to leave Tatooine. Frodo says, “I’m not made for adventures.” Katniss just wants to keep her sister safe. The refusal is human; it’s the trembling before transformation. As an author, that’s juicy material full of human turmoil, and excellent fodder for emotion-tugging prose.

That can only last a page or two before the reader gets bored.

But the climate story has been looping in that scene for thirty years.

We keep sounding the alarm, waving the graphs, replaying the warnings. We’ve become the anxious mentor in the hut, shouting “the world is ending!” while the potential heroes stare into their phones, waiting for someone else to pick up the quest.

It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that we never truly invited them into the story.

We’ve told them what’s happening to the planet, not excited them with the adventure.
We’ve shown them villains, but not given them agency.
We’ve cast them as audience members, extras, or at best “conscious consumers.”
In gamer lingo, they’re non-playable characters: moving through the climate world, affected by every update, but never handed the controller.

NPCs Don’t Save The World

Climate doom has been a powerful narcotic. It numbs guilt and pain, and it flatters the ego, because if the world is doomed, then our inaction is no longer cowardice, it’s resignation. And that’s so much easier to live with.

But NPCs don’t write myths. They don’t plant forests or overthrow empires.
They simply watch the game unfold until the credits roll.

And yet, look at what we’re surrounded by: real, breathing, feeling human beings capable of astonishing courage. People raising children in a burning world, inventing cleaner ways to live, making art that touches the soul of the crisis. We are the main character already in motion, we just haven’t realised it yet.

Why Science Can’t Start The Story

Science is essential. But science doesn’t make us move. Story does.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can describe the dragon; it can’t make us pick up the sword.

In storytelling terms, the climate movement has mastered world-building but forgotten character-building. We’ve mapped the terrain of catastrophe, but not the internal journeys of the people within it. The plot twist we need is a shift in identity, not another data set.

Because when people see themselves as protagonists, everything changes. The same flood becomes a challenge to overcome. The same solar panel becomes a symbol of defiance. The same act of hope becomes contagious.

The real transformation happens not when we say “the planet is dying,” but when we whisper, “You can change this story.”

The New Chapter Begins Here

That’s why I’ve helped launch the Fuck Doom campaign.

Because our cultural story has stalled in Act One. Because the doom narrative has eaten our imagination. Because we deserve more than tragedy.
Fuck Doom is a call to reclaim agency, creativity, and courage from the jaws of fatalism.

This campaign isn’t about denying danger. It’s about rejecting despair. And finally stepping into the adventure we were always meant to live.

So here’s your invitation:
You’re not an NPC.

You’re not an extra in the apocalypse
You are not background noise in the great story of survival.
You are the main character. The one holding the controller. The one who can change the ending.

It’s time to move past our inciting incident.

Because the climate story isn’t over. It’s barely begun.

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Godstorm is now available to pre-order in the UK (link goes to Waterstones).

These pre-orders are vitally important! So important in fact, that in the next few weeks I’ll send a free, beautifully designed bookplate, hand-signed and dedicated to you, to anyone with proof they’ve pre-ordered! So please get your copy, and send the receipt/email confirmation of your order to hello@solitairetownsend.com

Remember to tell me the name you’d like the bookplate dedicated to!

⭐THANK YOU⭐

I must ask my father where the box is now. As a child, he would sometimes bring out his collection of treasures for my sisters and I to gawk at. Old coins, clay pipes and even interesting stones.

Each little trinket and treasure found between two giant slabs of stone laid down centuries ago.

Dad was a stonemason, a job that occasionally involves removing a worn or damaged stone from one of England’s many churches, cathedrals and ancient buildings. Most of these long-standing constructions have an inner and outer ‘face’ of stone with a rubble and mortar core.

It makes them incredibly stable, and also leaves a secret ‘gap’ where stonemasons who constructed them could leave a message, or a little gift, to the generations hence.

Your average time capsule has nothing on this. Dad would find 500-year-old graffiti on the back of the stones, the mason’s children’s names or often just shapes (unsurprising considering literacy rates at the time). Plus little offerings, often of a pipe.

These people knew they were building for the long-term. A cathedral would often take generations to build, with the expectation that it would then stand forevermore.

What an incredible mindset to hold. That with luck (and the effort of future stonemasons), your works would last long after your name was forgotten.

At least, forgotten until a future mason found it carved on a clay pipe you’d hidden, just for him to find.

A short-term world

We live in a culture fevered by immediacy. The next quarter’s growth, the news alert, the scrolling feed. That conditioning warps our sense of agency and scale.

Psychologists call this temporal discounting, the bias by which people prefer smaller, sooner rewards over larger, later ones. Our brains are wired to devalue what lies in the dimmer future. This helps explain why we struggle to save, to plan, to act on climate or justice beyond our own lifetimes.

And it’s making us sad.

A 2023 systematic review of future-oriented thinking found that people who focus more on the long-term future show higher well-being, stronger goal persistence and more satisfaction with their lives.

Yet short-termism is not only psychological, it’s institutional. Richard Slaughter wrote as far back as 1996 that modern systems “reinforce the minimal present,” turning long-term vision into an act of rebellion.

We live inside a runaway present, where choice shrinks to the next minute. This narrowing empties out meaning, isolates us from continuity and robs life of the depth that a 16th-century stonemason enjoyed.

When we stretch time

Research shows that reaching beyond today is the ultimate act of self-care. Studies in temporal expansion reveal that imagining distant futures can reshape our identity, decrease stress, and strengthen our sense of purpose. One 2022 experiment found that asking participants to picture their lives from future vantage points made their goals more ambitious, compassionate and vivid.

The emotion of awe has similar effects. Dacher Keltner’s research at Berkeley shows that awe slows our perception of time, expands our sense of self and makes us more generous. Standing beneath an ancient oak or gazing at a mountain not only makes us feel small, but it also connects us to a timeline that transcends the self.

As a stonemason's daughter, I feel this deep connection to time when contemplating the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, Göbekli Tepe, and Mohenjo-daro. Even walking my commute past the White Tower in London (constructed by William the Conqueror) can flip me into a deep time contemplation. I think about the builders who worked through generations on these monuments, for the sake of generations to come.

Moral philosophers have long understood the benefit of this ‘cathedral thinking’. Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill, in The Moral Case for Long-Term Thinking (2021), argue that the ethical weight of our choices does not decline with time. Distance in years should not lessen our responsibility to those who come after us.

Considering the selfish and short-termist obsession of much tech-culture, I love that computational models of cooperation show that societies which retain historical memory behave more altruistically than those that live only in the instant.

The longer our view, the kinder our behaviour.

The literature of long time

Storytellers have always understood what scientists are proving. In Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, the Anarresti build tunnels and institutions that outlast any lifetime so that each generation speaks in chorus with the past and future. Aldo Leopold’s essay Thinking Like a Mountain invites us to take the mountain’s view of time, to see human events as flickers within a vast ecology.

Roman Krznaric’s The Good Ancestor argues that every decision should be weighed by how it will be remembered, not how it will be rewarded. “Our descendants,” he writes, “depend on our ability to look beyond the immediate.”

Literature, philosophy and ecology all converge on the same truth: the long view is the human view.

Joy in the long now

People often assume that thinking far ahead must be gloomy. Too many people now envision apocalyptic timelines of melting ice and societal collapse.

But I am a stonemason’s daughter. I know that humans can build things of beauty and utility that will long outlast the names of those doing the building.

When we see ourselves as part of a long continuum, joy appears almost inevitably. Knowing that our actions ripple through generations grants meaning to the smallest gesture. Turning off a light becomes a love letter to the future. Writing a book or planting a tree becomes an act of devotion to people we will never meet.

Long-term thinking is also an antidote to anxiety.

When we place our lives within centuries rather than seasons, the petty urgency of the moment loses its grip. The inbox still fills, but it no longer defines existence. Purpose crystallises. Our days acquire an axis, and we join a human chain that stretches across time.

How to live the long now

You do not need to build a clock that ticks for ten thousand years to practise this.

Try writing a letter to someone who will be alive in the year 2300. Describe their sky, their challenges and their hopes. Do not predict, simply imagine with affection.

Spend time with something older than you: a tree, a cathedral, a fossil. Let it teach you patience. Read diaries from centuries past and feel the continuity of human worries and joys. Set a goal that must long outlive you. Speak about the future as though it is listening.

The pitfalls of the far view

Of course, long-term thinking isn’t entirely free from danger. Michelle Bastian warns of chronowashing, where invoking “future generations” becomes a way to justify delay or disguise inequality.

Also, beware of paralysis by scale, when the immensity of time overwhelms your ability to act. Not all futures are equally imagined; we must be alert to whose centuries are being centred. It’s not lost on me how many of the grand monuments of the past were also symbols of hierarchy and imperialism.

Some of the messages my dad found on the back of those stones aren’t of joy, but of grief. Because the long arc of history contains everything.

The long arc as a home

Living within the long now is not an escape from urgency. It is an embrace of continuity. It’s also why I still love the term' sustainability,' because it embodies that sense of long-termism within it.

When we expand our sense of time, we rediscover our place in the great unfolding of life. We become cathedral builders.

Does the world (metaphorically) smell faintly fetid right now? You’re trying to go about life, find joy, do the right thing. But that scent persists, like something, somewhere is rotten. You look around the world and the wrong things are growing.

It’s called the death flowering.

Years ago, the arborist and environmentalist Sir Tim Smit told me about epicormic growth.

When a tree is dying, hollowed by disease or stress, it can respond with an explosion of mismatched blossoms and confused fruit. For a moment, it appears more alive than ever. But this is not resurgence, it’s the last convulsion of life before death. The tree, sensing its end, throws all remaining energy into reproduction, hoping to pass on its genetic code before collapse.

This phenomenon has an unsettling parallel in human society.

I believe we are witnessing the cultural equivalent of a death flowering. Old political, economic, and social systems based on domination, extraction, and hierarchy are entering terminal decline. But before they collapse, they are erupting into spectacular excess.

History teaches us that systems rarely go quietly. The Roman Empire, in its twilight centuries, did not shrink with dignity. It indulged in ever more lavish spectacles and increasingly brutal crackdowns. The French monarchy before 1789 clung to court rituals of decadence while famine spread. In every case, the dominant class believed they were asserting control, when in fact they were exhausting their last reserves.

Which brings us back to today. The rise of authoritarian nostalgia, the hysterical backlash against feminism, the belligerent denial of ecological limits, these are symptoms of decay.

The fossil fuel economy is a death flower. It’s not embarking on a bold new chapter, it’s desperately attempting to outlive its relevance. Fundamentalist, misogynistic, and ethnonationalist ideologies are death flowers.

We should not mistake this for a renaissance. The flowers are blooming, but only because the rot beneath them has reached the core.

What happens next depends on whether humanity understands this moment not as a regressive resurgence, but as a requiem.

As Tim Smit told me: sometimes you’ve got to fetch your axe.

The falling limbs and infectious spores of a diseased tree threaten the surrounding life of the forest. To preserve the ecosystem, foresters must remove the tree before it falls.

We must become cultural foresters.

This does not mean violent revolution. It means recognising when a structure no longer serves its function. It means choosing conscious transformation over catastrophic collapse.

The tree will fall. The question is whether we will be crushed beneath it or guide it to the ground.

The ancient mythologies of humankind contain a deep awareness of this cycle. From the Egyptian Osiris to the Hindu Kali to the Mayan Popol Vuh, death is not only an end, it is a clearing for the new. Many belief systems treat destruction as the necessary precondition for creation.

In ecological terms, the fall of a large tree is a moment of opportunity. It opens the canopy, releases nutrients into the soil, and allows young saplings access to light.

Rather than clinging to the decaying giants of the 20th century of endless growth, fossil capitalism, and patriarchal dominance, we can nourish the new shoots of cooperation, regeneration, and ecological sanity. These shoots are already growing: in circular economies, in feminist leadership, in Indigenous knowledge systems, in renewable technologies.

We must clear the death flowers for the green shoots to grow.

That requires not only political and economic change, but a transformation in our cultural narrative. As long as humans see the death flowers as signs of vitality, they will remain entranced by spectacle and oblivious to decay. But if we learn to read the forest correctly, we will see what the flowers are really telling us: this world is ending.

This is an evolutionary moment.

History is a forest.

Ever so often, someone will thank me for being so open or honest about my work, my feelings, my observations.

And I freeze in abject terror.

It’s always said with gratitude and even a little vulnerability (giving compliments is never easy). The person thanking me is doing so for a reason, and because they wish more people would be vulnerable and ‘real’ about their journey. Perhaps it’s something I wrote about sustainability, or autism, or storytelling They resonated with whatever I said because I shared my truth, even if that sometimes puts me in an unflattering light (as truths are wont to do).

That openness allowed them to connect, to feel relief at not being alone, to feel seen themselves. Sounds pretty good, eh? Clearly, I should bask in the warm glow of the connection and impact I’ve made.

But in that moment, I usually want to hide under the table. Sometimes, if more than one person tells me the same thing at a single event, I DO go and hide in the loos until I gather myself.

Why?

Because being seen, truly seen, is bloody terrifying.

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I only manage to do it because even if I’m standing in front of an audience, or sharing with thousands of followers, I convince myself no one is listening.

We’re told that vulnerability is brave, that authenticity is magnetic, that our raw truths are what the world needs. And that’s all… correct. But it can be almost unbearable.

Psychologists call it the ‘exposure effect’, but not the kind that makes people like something more the more they encounter it. I mean the visceral sense of exposure that comes with saying something that matters, posting something personal, or publishing something that came from deep inside your soul.

It’s the moment after clicking ‘publish’ or saying something more open than intended on stage - when your heart manages to go quantum by dropping into your stomach and soaring into the air at the same time. You feel it when a friend says ‘I loved what you wrote about…’ and you immediately want to deflect or diminish. You feel it when the thing that’s most you is out there, and suddenly you wish you’d worn armour instead.

Neuroscientist Brené Brown has called this a ‘vulnerability hangover.’ That raw, post-reveal shame spiral that screams: Why did I do that? What if they misunderstand me? What if they don’t like me? What if they do?

In our age of curated perfection and algorithmic outrage, being honest feels dangerous. Not just because of trolls or judgment (though they’re real, I have a few), but because it asks us to sit with the truth that we are uncertain, unfinished, and a little messy.

…and yet.

I’ve come to believe that this terror of being seen is the gateway to genuine connection, and in our climate of confusion, it may be the only compass worth following.

The people who have helped me most in life were not the ones who had the slick answers or polished personas. They were the ones who said ‘I don’t know either,’ or ‘Yep, I suck at that too’.

Especially in sustainability, literally NO ONE has the definitive answer. We are all seeking spots of light in the growing darkness.

I write posts like Fighting Monsters When You’re Tired not because I want to be inspirational, but because I was bloody exhausted, and didn’t want to pretend otherwise. And the responses I received made it clear: we are all walking through fire in our own way, and honesty doesn’t add to the flames. It lights a path.

It amuses me now that I thought fiction would be easier, because I’m making it up. When I started writing Godstorm, my upcoming novel, I thought I was building a mythic world about petrol-worship, doomed empires, and climate change.

But the real storm was inside the characters.

One of my protagonists, a governess forced to protect a child in a collapsing regime, spends much of the story hiding how she really feels. She believes her strength lies in secrecy and strength. But the turning point comes not when she defeats her enemies, but when she lets someone see her.

It’s that act of being seen, truly seen, that saves her.

Because fiction lets us live vicariously through vulnerability. It lets us love people we’d never meet and feel things we’d never admit.

There is power in telling your story before it's wrapped up with a bow. Before you’ve succeeded or survived. While you’re still in the middle, confused and healing.

That kind of truth gives others permission. Even if that’s the permission to say thank you (because of course, deep down, those people who thank me are the ones who actually keep me going!)

And if there's one lesson I hope Godstorm carries, and one I try to live in these essays, it's this:

The world doesn’t need our perfection. It needs our perseverance.

Especially now, when everything around us urges cynicism and silence.

Yes, I will probably still internally flinch the next time someone thanks me for being honest. But I will also smile, and maybe even hug. Because maybe my panic attack helped someone else breathe a little easier.

So if you are wondering whether to say the thing, write the thing, share the thing that truly matters to you, know this:

You might want to hide. But someone else out there is holding their breath, waiting for someone (anyone) to go first.

Let them see you.

Because that’s how the good stories start.

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I’m recruiting a ‘launch team’ of volunteers to help promote my debut novel Godstorm. Join us, and you’ll get a free e-book copy of the novel to review (before anyone else), as well as all the gossip and goodies. To sign up, click here (UK only)

When I started writing my novel Godstorm, I assumed villains would be the easy part. Especially when writing climate fiction, the bad guys would be easy: they are literally destroying the world!

Give them a haughty sense of entitlement or venial obsession with their own selfish desires, and send them off to do their worst.

I was wrong…for a fascinating (and helpful) reason.

Writing believable ‘antagonists’ is one of the greatest challenges in fiction. Because the only way to make a bad guy or girl work on the page is to make them think they’re the good guy.

Villains, the compelling ones at least, never think of themselves as evil, or even misguided. They believe they’re principled, justified, visionary, and at worst, misunderstood. They must truly believe that they’re fixing the world, not breaking it. They’re not trying to be the problem. In fact, they’re certain they’re the solution.

Sound familiar?

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In fiction, this is a necessary technique. In the real world, it’s a trap. And when it comes to climate change, it’s one we fall into again and again.

When I wrote Godstorm, I found myself drawn into the back story of my antagonist. He is ruthless, yes. Manipulative, certainly. But he isn’t wrong in the head. He has a very clear logic, deep values, and a burning sense of purpose.

To write him convincingly, I had to believe him. I had to put down my moral high ground and step inside his motivations.

It was a little unsettling. And strangely familiar.

Because quite a lot of my career has been an attempt to communicate with people who are making terrible choices (for our health and our planet). And I learnt a long time ago that I wouldn’t get far telling them they’re terrible. Try that and they’ll stop listening. Because they know they’re not.

This is especially true in climate communications. The oil executive, the consumer flying first class, the policymaker kicking the carbon can down the road, they all have a mental construct in which they are the hero. Maybe they’re providing energy security. Maybe they’re keeping their family safe. Maybe they’re boosting GDP, or preserving jobs, or saving up for their child’s future.

They don’t see themselves as the villain. And if you tell them they are, you don’t make them rethink. You make yourself the villain in their story.

There’s a cognitive truth at play here. Humans have a powerful bias toward moral self-coherence. We need to see ourselves as good, even when our actions suggest otherwise. This is supported by work in moral psychology: researchers like Jonathan Haidt (author of the excellent book The Righteous Mind) show that people intuitively justify their behaviour and then rationalise it after the fact, especially when their identity is at stake.

If something threatens that self-perception, we defend, deflect, or disbelieve. Psychologists call this identity-protective cognition: a bias where people reject information that threatens their group or personal identity, even if it’s factual.

Our brains literally won’t let you accept that we’re the bad guy.

That’s why shame-based messaging almost always fails in climate action. A study by Feinberg and Willer found that messages focused on doom and guilt reduced support for environmental policies. Another by Moser and Dilling confirmed that fear-based climate communication often leads to denial or disengagement unless paired with hope and efficacy.

Accusations trigger our mental armour. Labels of ‘climate criminal’ or ‘denier’ might feel cathartic, but they rarely change minds and can instead entrench identities.

Fiction follows the psychological rule that everyone looks in the mirror and sees a hero.

So what do we do instead?

We write better stories. We expand the narrative frame so that people can see themselves as climate heroes, without having to change their entire identity or admit their sins. We give them the role of the problem-solver, the innovator, the protector, or the wise ancestor. We don’t make them the enemy. We make them the main character in a different story where climate action is aligned with who they already believe they are.

The great lesson of writing villains is that empathy is the ultimate tool of understanding. When you walk in your antagonist’s shoes, you learn what moves them. And once you know that, you can write the moment they choose redemption, or refuse it.

In climate storytelling, that turning point matters more than anything. Because the story isn’t over yet. We’re still in the rising action. The climax is coming, and every character matters. Even the ones you think are on the wrong side.

So next time you sit down to write, speak, or campaign, ask yourself this: who do they believe they are? What’s their story?

Because until you can answer that, you’ll never be able to change the ending.

…………………………………………….

I’m recruiting a ‘launch team’ of volunteers to help promote my debut novel Godstorm. Sign up, and you’ll get a free e-book copy of the novel to review (before anyone else), as well as all the gossip and goodies. To sign up, click here.

I’m an upbeat and positive person. So, the first iteration of this list was my personal top 26 ways to tell a GREAT sustainability story.

But I feel like I’ve written that list soooooo many times. For my own sanity, I decided to have some fun this time.

If you hate the future, despise your fellow humans and want sustainability to remain a sidelined and toothless endeavour, here’s my guaranteed tactics to lose any audience:

Start With Apocalypse
Make sure your audience feels completely doomed before they’ve even finished their oat milk latte.

Play The Guilt Card
Really lean into that ‘you’re personally responsible for the collapse of civilisation’ vibe.

Be Morally Superior

If everyone held the same values as you, everything would be fine, right? So ignore or disparage what other people value. Show them how shallow and selfish they are, so they will gratefully follow your lead.

Make It All About You
Position yourself or your brand as the saviour, stuffing your sustainability comms with ‘claims’ about your performance.

List Problems, Then Walk Away
Nothing inspires like a long list of global catastrophes… with no solutions offered whatsoever. We’re fucked, mic drop (why is no one applauding?)

Drown Them In Data
Remember: nothing touches the soul like a 47-slide PowerPoint deck on carbon intensity and ESG metrics.

Use Arcane Scientific Terms
Confuse and bamboozle your audience into silence with terms like ‘externalities’ and ‘anthropogenic forcings’. Imply that if they don’t understand, then they clearly should go away and inform themselves (because it’s not YOUR job)

Assume Everyone’s An Activist
Speak only in slogans. Use a megaphone if possible. Eye contact optional.

Demand Moral Perfection Or Else
If someone uses a plastic straw, shame them immediately. Cancel culture for climate crimes!

Remember: You’re The First Person To Try Communicating This!

You don’t need to research what works, learn from Indigenous communicators or review previous campaigns. You just had a GREAT idea, go raise some funding!

Say ‘We’re All Going to Die’ a Lot
It’s motivational, really. Like an existential alarm clock no one asked for.

Make Clear Sustainability Means SACRIFICE
Eliminate all evidence that sustainability means more jobs, healthier lives, less stress etc. Double down on taking things away. If people aren’t convinced that sustainability means sacrifice, then why would they support it?

Pretend Culture Doesn’t Matter
Forget movies, music, art or memes. Ignore the need for a new narrative altogether. Just keep yelling about policy frameworks.

Copy-Paste Global Messaging Without Context
One message to rule them all! Who needs local relevance or cultural nuance? All audiences are exactly the same and will respond to the same message. (For extra points, develop everything in English, then just translate it).

Only Talk to People Who Already Agree With You
Echo chambers are warm, safe, and filled with recycled tote bags. The people who are just like you agree with you, so everyone else will right?

Ignore Feelings, Just Facts Please
Emotion is for rom-coms. This is science, dammit. The science just needs to be BIGGER and LOUDER, and it will eventually prevail, right?

Be Mean, Cruel And Cynical

People LOVE that stuff and won’t run away at all. Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em sustainable.

Play It So Safe You Send People To Sleep
Beige slides, cautious tone, zero personality. Let’s keep it bland, abstract and emotionally sterile. Just the way humans don’t think. Sustainability, but make it beige.

Avoid Anyone Who Thinks Differently
Diversity of opinion is terrifying. Stick to your tribe. Unfollow all relatives.

Write Reports No One Can Read
Preferably 80 pages long. With acronyms. In PDF. Behind a paywall.

Forget That Design Matters
Use Comic Sans. Clip art if possible. Make your PowerPoint feel like a punishment.

Tell People THEY Should Care, Rather Than Why YOU care

You care about climate because you’ve swum in the ocean since childhood, and it breaks your heart to think of those whales, plankton, corals and starfish being lost. But never tell that story of course, instead share stats on the sixth mass extinction and parts-per-million of CO2

Pretend the Whole Thing Is Simple
Say things like ‘we just need to change capitalism’ and hope no one asks questions like ‘HOW????’

Talk At People, Not With Them
Conversations are overrated. Monologue is the real path to global transformation.

Confuse Going Viral With Changing Minds
If your YouTube video or paid advertising got views, the job is done. Right?

Give Up On Hope
Tell everyone it’s too late. Then sit back and enjoy the slow, smug unravelling.

I hope these rules for totally failing in your sustainability communications serve you well!

Seriously though, all of these are such easy traps to fall into. I’ve done so myself countless times over the decades! I hope by poking a bit of fun as these mistakes I help us all (me included) remember to avoid them.

…………………………………………….

I’m recruiting a ‘street team’ of volunteers to help promote my debut novel Godstorm between now and launch. Sign up, and you’ll get a free e-book copy of the novel to review (before anyone else), as well as all the gossip and goodies. To sign up, click here.

What is life without a little romance? And just maybe…a little romance could save life itself.

Climate storytelling has long suffered from a fatal flaw: we keep trying to terrify people into changing. Climate is a literal horror story, one in which we all die in the end.

But what if instead of warning only about what we stand to lose, stories showed everyone everything we could gain?

Enter the most popular, most underestimated story genre in the world: romance.

Romance novels outsell almost every other genre combined. This week, the BBC has a trending news story on how the genre is revitalising the UK publishing industry. Over 70 million Americans read at least one love story a year. Globally, romance fuels streaming hits, Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters, TikTok trends, and airport bookstores. But more than that, romance is the genre of hope. It’s about navigating barriers, finding connection, and building a better ending than anyone thought possible.

A story doesn’t even technically count as romance unless it has a HEA (Happily Ever After).

That’s why romance might be the secret weapon for climate storytelling. Not because we need more love stories set on a melting planet (though I’d read those), but because the core tropes of romance map perfectly onto the emotional and practical journey of climate solutions;

Enemies To Lovers

They’re on opposite sides of a feud, a courtroom, a battlefield. But over time, they realise they’re fighting the same thing. The tension turns electric. Enemies to lovers is one of the most popular, and versatile, tropes in romance. And it feels purpose built for climate storytelling.

Climate hack: Think of business vs. activists, or oil companies vs. clean tech innovators. For decades, they’ve been pitched as enemies. But we’re starting to see surprising pairings: unlikely alliances for nature, collaborations on carbon removal, farmers and environmentalists planting side-by-side.

Let’s tell an arc where the enemies discover a shared purpose, and change everything.

The Big Misunderstanding

They were so close, but then something drives them apart. A secret. A mistake. A failure to communicate. Cue heartbreak… and growth.

Climate hack: So much of our climate delay has come from miscommunication, between global north and south, science and public, government and people. But great romances resolve the misunderstanding not with blame, but vulnerability. One character finally says: I was wrong. And I still care.

That’s what we need in our diplomacy and policy. Not just deals, but declarations of intent. Humility. Honesty. And a willingness to try again.

The Grumpy/Sunshine Dynamic

One partner is cynical, guarded, scarred by past experiences. The other is optimistic, persistent, a walking beam of light. Sparks fly. Many of the most popular romances (and buddy movies) play on the stormy grump falling for the happiest person in the world.

Climate hack: This could be the tension between the doomers and the solutionists. One side says ‘it’s too late.’ The other replies, ‘We’re just getting started’. Or the front-line activist and the techno-optimist. Or the depressed scientist and upbeat regenerative farmer.
A good romance doesn’t resolve this by one person giving up; it finds synthesis between the two. A grumpy realist learns to believe again. A sunny dreamer learns to fight smart. The climate movement needs this arc: gritty optimism, forged in the fire of realism.

Slow Burn

No instant fireworks. Just a long, simmering connection. Trust builds. Foundations form. Then…finally…it catches fire.

Climate Parallel: Renewable energy. Regenerative farming. Community resilience. These solutions aren’t flashy or overnight. But they’re the ones that last. The slow burn of decarbonisation may not make headlines, but it’s what makes transformation real.

Let’s honour that story, of the long-haul love of people who plant trees they’ll never sit under.

Found Family

The lovers may be central in most romances but around them forms a constellation of connection. Friends, allies, elders, outsiders: a patchwork support system.

Climate Parallel: No one solves climate alone. The future will be a mosaic of movements, communities, generations, and perspectives. Like found families, climate action works best when it’s built with care, acceptance, and chosen solidarity.

Let’s tell stories where the victory isn’t just falling in love with someone but falling in love with a new way of living together.

The Grand Gesture

The lover running to catch their paramour at the airport. The heartfelt declaration under pouring rain. The risk taken because love is worth it.

Climate Parallel: The grand gestures of climate action are happening now: countries committing to loss and damage funds, corporations transforming supply chains, youth-led protests rewriting the public imagination.

But we need more. We need grand gestures that say: I choose the future, no matter how scary. Because that’s what love is: a commitment in the face of uncertainty. And when we take those big actions, remind people they are an act of LOVE.

Let’s Write Ourselves A Happy Ending

Too often, climate storytelling feels like a breakup note to humanity.

But the best romances remind us that happy endings aren’t given, they’re earned. Through friction, courage, growth, and a refusal to give up on each other.

Romance isn’t fluff. It’s emotional architecture. It tells us we’re worthy of love and change. That redemption is possible and something better still out there.

So go ahead: put some green romance into your life. Turn your heat pump installation in a meet-cute. Bond over retrofitting your village hall. Let the grand gesture be a citizen’s assembly. Let the first kiss taste like clean air.

Because if we want the world to fall in love with the future, we need to make the future lovable.

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I’m recruiting a ‘street team’ of volunteers to help promote my debut novel Godstorm, between now and launch. Sign up, and you’ll get a free e-book copy of the novel to review (before anyone else), as well as all the book gossip and goodies. As part of the street team, I’ll ask you to share promotional content on social media, review and generally help raise some noise about Godstorm! To sign up, click here.

“Do you think we’re going to make it?”

I’m often asked this in earnest, in doubt, in despair. Sometimes, it’s asked with quiet hope, because the person asking wants to borrow a little of mine.

Climate change, war, genocide, pandemics, AI taking jobs, riots, brutality, extinctions, pollution, tariffs, recessions, etc, etc, etc.

The world can feel like it’s teetering on the brink. And for so many people, the world has already fallen.

How do you stay so optimistic?

Sometimes this is asked with incredulity, exasperation or even condemnation. As if my belief in the future is a personal attack on those who have lost theirs.

Will we make it? I have no idea, no one does. Despite millions of words written and careers built on being ‘futurists’, no one can say with certainty what will happen next.

And this is the important part: you don’t need to know.

You don’t have to be sure the world will get better.
You don’t have to have faith that your work will ‘succeed’.
You don’t need to measure your contribution in final outcomes or global milestones.

Because the value of working to make the world better doesn’t come after.
It’s not dependent on applause, proof, or legacy.
The worth is in the doing.

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Of course, I want to make an impact. I’ve spent my adult life in sustainability, social impact and working to make a difference. This is literally my life’s work.

So many people are trying, in small and big ways, to do the same. Working in disaster relief, giving money or time, planning new laws, supporting cleaner tech, building safer homes, smarter businesses, and stronger communities.

But all too often, the difference we make won’t be visible immediately, or even in our lifetimes.
Your efforts might take decades to unfold, while the problems persist.
Or you might spark something in someone else, somewhere else, that you never find out about.
Or your ideas and work might be absorbed into a movement so wide and deep that no one person can ever claim credit.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t matter.

So many of the people who changed the world never lived to see that change.
The abolitionists, the suffragettes, the early climate scientists, the frontline organisers; they didn’t wait to feel certain. They didn’t wait to be celebrated. And they didn’t stop just because things got worse before they got better.

They acted because it was the right thing to do.

It’s easy to feel like the bad news cancels out the good work.

The rise in emissions. The brutality of war. The election of climate-denying governments. The rollback of rights or the loss of public trust. It can all feel like a wave that keeps knocking you down, just as you’re learning to stand.

That arc of history which bends towards justice? It moves so slowly that it can look like it’s bending backwards.

But you don’t need an ever-perfecting world to do meaningful work. In fact, the messier the context, the more your work matters.

Meaning isn’t dependent on momentum. You can do the right thing, even in the wrong era.

You don’t need to be the person who saves the world; you just need to be one of the many people who show up for it.

That means leading even when you’re tired. Creating even when you’re unsure.
Telling the story of hope, even when you wonder who’s listening.

We may not live to see the ending we want.
But we can still write the chapters we’re proud of.

Which is why it’s all going to be ok.

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I’m recruiting a ‘street team’ of volunteers to help promote my debut novel Godstorm between now and launch. Sign up, and you’ll get a free e-book copy of the novel to review (before anyone else), as well as all the book gossip and goodies. As part of the street team, I’ll ask you to share promotional content on social media, review and generally help raise some noise about Godstorm! To sign up, click here.

Godstorm is available for pre-orders from this week! Please do order your copy from Waterstones, Bookshop.org, Amazon or even better, pre-order a copy in your local bookshop (you can say you know the author).

If you order a copy, please photograph your receipt. I’ll be sending out beautifully illustrated, signed bookplates as a totally exclusive and free gift only for subscribers to this newsletter (later this year).

I’m so excited the book is now public. Today I can finally share a bit more about the story, and its climate theme. Although, in Godstorm’s blurb, you might notice something…

'Mothers who have come before. Daughters who have died in blood. Sons lost to the dark. Hear me'

In a petrol-fuelled Roman Empire which never fell, Arrow, a gladiatrix turned governess must rescue the child she has loved as her own, a girl who could tear down the world.

When Livy is abducted during a devastating Godstorm, Arrow must unleash years of the gladiator training she’d sworn to forget, to save her. Defying her owner, a heartless Consul, Arrow turns to her ex-lover and the illegal druid underworld in a desperate attempt to rescue the girl she has come to think of as her own.

Her search will take her across Londinium, a city of petrol-powered chariots, to the pagan Old Town, then across the seas to the Amazon – all underneath the increasingly violent storms raging above.

Facing battle and betrayal, Arrow must confront her past to ensure her future and help Livy discover her true destiny.

She is the Sword.

Did you spot it?

‘Climate change’ isn’t mentioned.

What is mentioned…gladiators, ex-lovers, illegal druids, battle, betrayal and SWORDS.

When I started planning Godstorm, I knew I wanted to write climate fiction. But I also know I wanted my book to be FUN.

More stabbing and snogging, less science and targets.

Because if climate storytelling is going to shape the future, it needs to stop trying so hard to sound serious and start trying a little harder to be enjoyable.

The dominant genre of climate communication is ‘apocalyptic realism’. The reports and information from places like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are grim, graph-heavy and guilt-laden. We need the science of course, but the tone filters through to everything else we say about climate change, and how to solve it.

The world is ending, we are told, and if you aren’t panicking, you’re part of the problem.

But decades of cognitive science tell us that while this might work for scientists, it doesn’t for almost everyone else. Fear-based messaging, especially without a pathway to agency, often triggers defensive avoidance. A meta-analysis published in Nature Climate Change found that while fear can increase concern about climate change, it “does not consistently motivate behavioural engagement” unless paired with hope and efficacy.

Bluntly put: doom only works if we can imagine how to escape it.

For Godstorm, I’ve imagined a world without our advantages; no climate science or renewables in a Roman Empire that never fell. The leaders in this world blame worsening weather not on burning petrol in their combustion-engined-fuelled chariots, but on a lack of piety, hence naming hurricanes as ‘godstorms’.

So far, so dystopic. But unending doom has never been my thing, so Godstorm plots a way out of even these circumstances. Because if they can do it, then so can we.

The human brain is wired for narrative, not spreadsheets. Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson argues that we “live our lives as stories” and understand our place in the world through metaphors, characters, and conflict. Narratives are at least 22 times more memorable than facts alone.

Yet climate communication still leans heavily on abstraction. Global average temperature. Parts per million. Negative externalities. These are desperately important, but they just aren’t sticky. They don’t lodge in the heart.

That’s why Godstorm leans into mythology, because we need sagas, not just sermons. Climate change is a planetary drama. It deserves protagonists, antagonists, plot twists and peril. It deserves storylines you feel, not just understand.

From the Mesopotamian flood myths to the wrath of Poseidon, humans have long used weather gods and elemental chaos to reflect our fears and hubris. Writing Godstorm helped me realise that these ancient instincts offer us archetypes through which we can process our current reality.

It’s time we stopped treating entertainment as frivolous. In reality, it’s one of the most effective tools of ideological transmission available.

Stories don’t just reflect culture; they create it. Consider how science fiction shaped public imagination about space exploration. Or how shows like Will & Grace and Modern Family influenced attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights. As Harvard’s Project Zero notes, “stories provide the mental scaffolding for moral reasoning.”

In the context of climate, we need wonder, not just warnings.

I landed a wonderful literary agent and then a two-book fiction deal because Godstorm is a fun read. Honestly, for the publishing world, the ‘climate fiction’ part is an interesting angle, but it doesn’t open any doors unless your book is a bloody good adventure.

Emotion is essential for decision-making. Without it, even the most rational person can become paralysed. If climate storytelling bypasses emotion in the pursuit of gravitas, it risks irrelevance.

Entertainment is a prerequisite for impact.

Fiction is a bridge to emotion. When my early critique readers of Godstorm told me it made them feel brave instead of guilty, I knew the story worked.

Here’s an inconvenient truth for climate advocates: the people who most need to engage with these issues won’t read white papers. They never attend climate conferences. They don’t watch documentaries or read impassionate op-eds. But they will stream a show. They will read a thriller. They will cry over a character’s loss…and maybe, just maybe, see their own future in that reflection.

This is why fiction is so dangerous. And so powerful.

A single compelling character can do what a thousand scientific citations can’t. A single moment of catharsis can plant the seed of responsibility, or rebellion, or reinvention.

Because I’ve come to realise that the opposite of climate doom isn’t optimism, it’s imagination.

That’s why creative people are more optimistic about our future.

Because in the end, facts inform, but stories transform.

So, please read Godstorm to enjoy some fun, adventurous, escapist thrills. I hope that’s the main reason that people do so.

⭐ Please pre-order Godstorm…you will personally be making the biggest difference to the book’s life! That’s why I’ll post beautifully designed, signed and exclusive bookplates to everyone who shares a pic of their pre-order receipt. These links take you directly to your copy:

Waterstones

Bookshop.org

Amazon

Or pre-order from your local bookshop - and tell them you’re friends with the author!. ⭐

Humanity has deep and ever-present mythologies of weather. From storm gods and sun spirits, flood myths and harvest rites, sacred rains and wrathful winds. Weather has shaped not only our farming calendars but also our collective imagination. Weather wasn’t just forecasted; it was feared, worshipped, and wooed. Weather was a mythological narrative.

It still is in most agrarian communities, and echoes reverberate whenever an urban child sings ‘the cold never bothered me anyway’.

But the climate itself? Climate has no Zeus or Thor. No Tlaloc or Tāwhirimātea.

Climate, unlike weather, is slow, statistical, and strangely characterless. It unfolds not in dramatic tempests but in drifting scientific baselines, melting margins, and probability curves. It is a mythological scale threat without the accompanying stories, songs, beliefs, rituals, lessons and icons. That lack, perhaps, is why we struggle so much to care.

This is the great paradox of climate change: it is both the most scientifically documented crisis in human history and the most poorly narrated.

We have an abundance of evidence, and a deficit of meaning.

If we are to rise to the challenge of climate change technologically, psychologically and spiritually, we need more than data and deadlines. We need a mythology. A way of feeling this crisis in our bones, of placing it in story, of seeing ourselves not just as culprits or victims, but as protagonists.

Because myths don’t just explain the world. They shape who we believe we are. In the absence of a shared climate mythos, we risk casting ourselves in the wrong roles: the powerless witness, the indifferent bystander, or the cynical realist. We need instead the healer, the magician, the warrior.

As I’ve often said, climate isn’t just a crisis of chemistry, but of culture. And to meet the moment, we must not only communicate better, but also craft a modern mythology fit for planetary survival.

Mythology As Survival Technology

Myth is not a luxury. Or fluff for children and those easily deceived. If we think of mythology merely as a relic of pre-scientific ignorance, then we neglect one of humaniti’s main coping strategies and drivers of action.

It is, as scholar Karen Armstrong writes in her brilliant book A Short History of Myth, myths are "a system that helps us make sense of our place in the world." Myths shape our moral frameworks, our cultural cohesion, and our capacity to endure suffering and uncertainty.

Anthropologists have shown how myths evolved in human societies as tools for transmitting values, encoding knowledge, and psychologically preparing for hardship. Myths are a survival technology, which are desperately needed when facing a survival crisis like climate change.

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One of my favourite books, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, maps the common structure of myth across time and culture. He sets out the steps: the call to adventure, the descent into the unknown, the return with a gift. These archetypes echo across epics from Gilgamesh to Star Wars, and across religious traditions from Buddhism to Christianity. They are, as Carl Jung suggested, rooted in our collective unconscious, the deep structure of human emotional and symbolic life.

In moments of civilizational stress, it is mythology, not raw data, that enables societies to find coherence and hope. It is what binds individual grief into communal meaning.

The Enlightenment Gave Us Facts, But Took Our Fire.

Since the Enlightenment, modernity has increasingly privileged reason over myth. Science became the dominant epistemology of the West, and myth was relegated to fiction, folklore, or faith.

I’ve considered myself a dedicated empiricist since I first discovered critical thinking as a practice. But the evidence has led me to conclude that when it comes to climate change, science has a blind spot. In the age of empiricism, we lost the cultural muscle for making meaning from complexity.

Climate discourse reflects this deficit. Our most urgent public narratives are almost entirely framed by scientific facts, probabilistic models, and economic forecasts. We talk of 1.5°C, of CO₂ parts per million, of gigatonnes, transition pathways, and net-zero targets.

These are vitally important, but they do not sing to the soul.

We are attempting to fight a dragon with spreadsheets.

Climate Change As Mythic Battle

If climate change is a mythic-scale challenge, then mythic frameworks are required to confront it.

As I look around a field I know all too well, I can’t find the coherent collective mythology for this moment.

The unwilling heroes, the villains to name without abstraction, rituals to help us process grief, rage, and love, symbols that transcend language and culture and above all, narratives that tell us who we are, where we are going, and why we must go together.

This cultural vacuum is too often filled by either despair or denial.

Ingenious and traditional cultures, many of whom have lived through exploitation and collapse, hold a mythology, a belief, that signposts a solution. It’s been my privilege to sit at the feet of storytellers from the Navajo Nation, be transported by Aboriginal Dreamtime, the Mother of the Sea of Greenland is a lesson that will never leave me, I fear the Amazon Boitatá serpant.

These stories uplift me, scare me, teach me.

And I learn that every story was born from somewhere.

Modern Mythology For Climate

What would a modern climate mythology look like? I don’t know yet. But it could be the greatest story ever told.

I do know it would not be a single narrative or a ‘one ring’ market-researched message. Instead, we need an ecosystem of stories: culturally diverse, emotionally resonant, and spiritually compelling.

We will need archetypes. The Fire Bringer, who carries dangerous but necessary power. The Trickster, who exposes corruption with wit and mischief. The Child of Tomorrow, who embodies hope and future memory.

These archetypes must not be just fantasies. They are ways of emotional identification with roles we might play in the real world.

And we’ll need to frame the science in story. Climate not as scientific emergency, but as a threshold. The crisis is a passage, not an end.

The Story That Can Save Us

Myth is not the opposite of truth, it’s how truth travels across generations.

To give ourselves the best chance, we must resurrect what humans have always turned to in times of peril: story, symbol, and myth.

Even an empiricist can see that.

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You might enjoy other articles from my archives:

Thankfully, Everything Is A Story

Fighting Monsters When You’re Tired

Creative People Are More Optimistic About Our Future, Apparently