Humanizing Victims of Climate Change

Humanizing Victims of Climate Change

By Annie Nguyen

Let’s talk about stories. Gen Z is sometimes referred to as having “Peter PanSyndrome'', or the inability to just grow up. Well, OK Boomer - we were born to die. The crisis climate looms upon us as impending doom, so my most sincere apologies if I didn’t exactly plan to live as long as you. I must say, however, “Peter Pan Syndrome” certainly sticks out as a phrase and well, I think it illustrates one important factor I don’t think we’re discussing enough when it comes to climate change - the importance of incorporating narratives.

Conversations surrounding climate are currently victim to psychological and emotional disconnect. Emotions are a crucial factor in risk perception, but unfortunately they are generally not included in conversations around climate change. Climate change has historically been difficult to connect to due to the abstract, large scale of the concept. Humans are able to comprehend relatively “small” concepts, such as the difference between the value of $5 versus the value of $500. However, we can’t really imagine or visualize the difference between $5,000,000 (five million) and $5,000,000,000 (five billion). Likewise, we can intellectually acknowledge the massive expansiveness of outer space, but we are unable to truly understand its size in relation to our own Earth. The difficulty to grasp large concepts is applicable to climate change. We understand what to do if tomorrow’s weather is 78 degrees Fahrenheit and partly cloudy, but we can’t visualize what a 3 degree overall increase in atmospheric temperature will do to our daily lives. We tend to emotionally disengage with things we do not comprehend.

Nicole Klein

However, emotional disconnect on climate change is unacceptable. If we don’t ever truly comprehend outer space or what five billion dollars will buy, life will go on. On the other hand, inaction on climate change would come at the risk of the consequences of environmental destruction, environmental racial discrimination, and political turmoil. But climate change is scientific, why add emotion? Because science is human. Eco anxiety is rocketing, and some climate scientists are even developing a new form of PTSD. Including emotion and narratives will not diverge from intellectual credibility; it will simply humanize data and allow the scientific discussion to be more inviting. Pathos partnered with logos in language will allow more people to form a heightened intellectual mindset on climate change and make climate change more three-dimensional. Incorporating stories is not encouraging the eradication of factual information, it’s simply proposing ways in which adding emotions will maximize the impactfulness of carefully researched data.

The earth will be fine. It is and always will be a ball of matter floating in space. We won’t be. Sure, the polar bears dying are tragic. Perhaps it’s a little selfish, I don’t really care. I mean, I care, but I care about humans a little more so I’m just a little confused as to why I keep getting shown footage of fuzzy white bears when I could be shown actual people. I’m concerned about how people are starving. How marginalized low income communities are, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, the first victims of environmental racism. How everyone can be affected mentally and economically on an individualized but systematic scale. Yes, the earth is being destroyed but more importantly, homes are.

Want to help solve climate change? Start with focusing on humans. Humanize victims. Incorporating more human-revolved linguistics makes the conversation more personal, intersectional, and ultimately productive. Climate hits hardest for those in disadvantaged communities, such as those in North Carolina homed around overflowed pig waste lagoons following Hurricane Florence. A friend from my hometown told me about people from her home in the African country of Eritrea have had to migrate because the heat waves have gotten so hot that agriculture failed and water has become scarce. She’s worried about her relatives, and so am I. Let’s talk about how indigenous Inuit people are losing their traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle because of melting ice.

Here’s what humanizing victims of climate change may look like. Take from the example of photographer Gideon Mendel, whose series “Submerged Portraits" successfully illustrates individual faces to the victims of climatestrengthened natural disasters, such as the 2011 Thailand flood. One of his portraits highlights a Thailand citizen shoulder deep in flood water carrying a grocery bag above him as he walks. The image is simple, but powerfully emotional. Into lo-fi music? Check out Samsa’s ‘Anthropocene’, a love song set in a climate dying world. A couple lyrics go as follows: “And melt each other’s hearts on thawing glaciers in the cyrosphere // The worst part is this wasn’t always something we couldn’t stop” and “Maybe we’ll hold hands as we get swallowed into Earth’s core // Or we could sing a Christmas carol like a little chorus choir // By a thousand Christmas trees lit up from a forest fire”. It’s unique, socially critical but also romantic (and also a bop). These are models for holistic engagement in climate conversations.

It’s funny to me: climate change is perhaps one of the only political topics urged to be left to the “experts”. However, a warming atmosphere and increasingly extreme natural disasters will not exclusively affect those with environmental PhD's or climate researchers. Changing climate mindset should be like changing other political conversations, such as those surrounding race, class, gender, etc, and should be approached in a similar manner since it is intersectional with such topics.

These topics demographical discussions are still obviously talked about on a fairly daily basis, reiterating their urgency and prevalence. Climate change is not similarly embedded into casual conversation enough to be deemed as urgent. Currently, conversations around climate change seem to be reserved for the educated elite, who make use of standard academic linguistics and generally indicate comfortable socioeconomic success. Unfortunately, the consequences of climate will not be reserved for those who can author long academic paragraphs. The longer the academic community fails to concede their inability to move towards persuasive discourse, the longer the threat of climate change will be able to brew, enabling our population to become more tolerant of worse circumstances. We should all be talking about climate change through narrative lens in casual settings. Be specific, and speak human. If not, future generations will not awe or applaud our academic titles or publications; rather, they will frown in disappointment.