The climate crisis is (March) madness

And we are a 16-seed.

Question for the guys: Have you started the new season of Reacher yet?

Question for the ladies: Have you left the room while your guy was watching Reacher yet?

The current third season is the best one yet, imho. Thing is, I can’t exactly tell you why. I mean, it’s better than season 2—which was definitively terrible—but beyond that? It’s actually pretty damn hard to articulate why I like this show. Let’s say you’ve never watched but are curious enough to ask me the following questions:

Will the plot keep me guessing?

Not for one second.

Will it make me laugh?

All humor is 110% unintentional.

Is it packed with sweet action?

Most of the fights are over in one or two punches.

Is the acting inspired?

It’s flat as an ironing board.

Is the dialogue real and relatable?

Characters either speak in the literary equivalent of grunts or give speeches nobody asked for.

But sometimes—rarely, but sometimes—there’s a nugget tucked away in those speeches. Take the fifth episode of the current season, which is ostensibly about Reacher going undercover to rescue a girl that wealthy gunrunners have kidnapped for reasons that don’t matter. After getting shot at by the bad guys, the detective played by Sonya Cassidy gets handed a beer by her partner, who mistakenly thinks that not getting shot warrants taking a beer-length break from searching for the missing girl. Cue speech time: Cassidy spins on her heel, cranks up her wildly inconsistent Boston accent, and lets him have it—eventually landing here:

“All I’m saying is that good shit can still happen. So either stay on board and believe some of the good is coming our way—believe that odds get beat—or shut up about it.”

“Believe that odds get beat.” Perfectly suited for March Madness, no? But it’s equally well-suited as a call to join the climate fight. If you have a sufficient grasp of the severity of the climate crisis but don’t think odds get beat—if you don’t believe some of the good is coming our way—then there’s no point in checking into the game.

The cold hard facts of this sports metaphor (which will be concluding shortly, promise) are that we may be 16-seeds going against the 1-seed, but it’s not like we’re still pregaming in the locker room. We’re already into the second half. Deep into the second half. There’s no time to chip away at the lead. As Bill McKibben memorably put it eight (!) years ago, winning slowly is the same as losing. We are Monmouth, down 43 points to Duke. We are Prairie View A&M, down 58 to Kansas.

Which takes me to what I think of as one of the central conundrums of climate messaging: How are we supposed to accurately convey how screwed we are (and by “we” I mean “humans” but also “biological life”) while simultaneously inspiring action? How do we convince folks we have a chance to be 16-seed Farleigh Dickinson over 1-seed Purdue? How in the hell do we effectively communicate the utter fuckedness of our situation while also bringing home the belief that odds—even odds as long as these—get beat?

“You don’t have to be a scientist to see how our climate has changed.

Extreme weather events, like extreme heat waves, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and drought, are becoming more frequent and more severe. The last eight years were the hottest ever recorded in human history.

Our overheating planet is already putting lives and livelihoods at risk. It’s hurting our farmers, over-polluting our cities, reducing our water supply, and costing us billions in damage from extreme weather.

Most importantly, it’s putting our children’s futures at risk. It’s our responsibility to leave behind a safe, livable world for future generations.

We need immediate action on climate change, because later is too late.”

That’s from a study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication that examined how messaging can promote support for climate action among global audiences. It tested three global climate messages:

• Urgency & Generational

• Polluter Accountability

• Climate Progress

The urgency/generational framing emphasized “here and now” threats and resonated most strongly on average. Part of what’s interesting to me about the findings is that urgency by itself doesn’t get the job done. You can’t just say “we need to act now!” and call it good. The message of urgency just sets the timer. It’s the generational angle that sets the oven to broil: when that timer goes off, your children (and grandchildren) will be cooked.

Polluter accountability came in second to urgency/generational, primarily due to poor performance in regions with “high climate skepticism”—eg, Australia and the good ole USA. Which makes solid conspiracy theory sense: since global warming is a global hoax, why hold polluters accountable for fake pollution?

My thought is this: why split the difference between those two message sets? After all, urgency/generational is already a mashup of two messages. So why not add a third?

Accountability & Urgency & Generational

But before we do, let’s sharpen the language on “polluter accountability,” shall we? Accountability is weak. Youth pastors and guidance counselors talk about accountability. The global fossil fuel giants are our oppressors. We are their customers, but not by choice. There’s no way for the royal we not to buy their products. We are trapped in the system of consumption they’ve created, and they pull every available lever to make sure we stay trapped while lady mercury creeps ever higher. What about this:

Fight & Urgency & Generational

When the final seconds are ticking down and you need the fans on their feet, you don’t grab your megaphone and scream about holding the other team to account in the handshake line; you scream about beating them. You don’t send a memo to the advancing Nazi forces saying, we’ll see you in (Nuremburg) court! That part comes later. First we fight.

And if we are to fight, we must hold on to the belief that odds get beat.

Top secret climate song of the week

Refs

• Climate change messages can promote support for climate action internationally

• WINNING SLOWLY IS THE SAME AS LOSING

• Research finds that the oil and gas industry has used a playbook of narratives and arguments to systematically oppose, weaken, and delay the energy transition since at least 1967

• American Petroleum Institute recycled same arguments for decades lobbying on climate policy

• Unmasking Dark Money: How Fossil Fuel Interests Can Undermine Clean Energy Progress

• These Fossil Fuel Industry Tactics Are Fueling Democratic Backsliding