Resource Library

The environmental movement must find ways of representing the hopes and aspirations not only of our traditional base, not only of our actual, quite diverse electoral base, but also of Indigenous and Black diaspora communities and communities of color already on our side, whom we have so far been unable to serve effectively.  In this spirit, the Green Leadership Trust offers the following guidance to align the performance of our leader towards equity and inclusion aimed at building the power we need to win.

Use emotionally positive images of climate change solutions to grab people’s attention. Using experiments with undergraduate students that measure individuals’ reaction time, researchers found that positive images of climate change, like windmills and solar panels, were better at grabbing participants’ attention than negative images of causes (smokestacks, air pollution) and effects (glaciers melting) of climate change. In fact, using negative images of climate change was no more attention grabbing than images irrelevant to climate change. The use of positive images may be even more important for grabbing the attention of those who are least disposed to care about the environment and climate change. So, when developing media and communication information, consider using positive images of climate change solutions.             

As the founding Director of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (a non-profit) transitions out of leadership, he shares reflections and resources related to cultural strategy and responding to the question, how might we build creative people-power to respond to the social and ecological crises of our times and to advance practices, narratives, and policies for a more liberatory world?

This issue of The Forge explores the role of narrative in shifting the balance of power and building a more equitable society. Authors talked to thirteen organizers across the progressive movement about how the current moment has created an opening to challenge the dominant neoliberal narrative and introduce transformative ways of seeing the world. Two of these interviews are with climate movement leaders: Miya Yoshitani, Executive Director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, talked about her work with low-income Asian immigrants and the possibility of replacing the extractive economy with a regenerative one, and Annie Leonard, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA and founder of the Story of Stuff, discussed the ways capitalism and an ideology of exploitation lead to climate change — and how environmentalists are changing their strategies to build power.