Storytelling Will Save the EarthEmotional resonance, not cold statistics, will bring home the scale of the climate crisis—and the need for action.

We know the information. But information is not changing our minds. Most people make decisions on the basis of feelings, including the most important decisions in life – what football team you support, who you marry, which house you live in. That is how we make choices.”  “Thought is at the basis of our feelings, and before we have ideas we have feelings that lead to those ideas. So how do we change minds? A change in feelings changes minds.”

Now picture Timothy, who lives with his grandchildren in Walande Island, a small dot of land off the east coast of South Malaita Island, part of the Solomon Islands. Since 2002, the 1,200 inhabitants of Walande have abandoned their homes and moved away from the island. Only one house remains: Timothy’s. When his former neighbors are asked about Timothy’s motives they shrug indifferently. “He’s stubborn,” one says. “He won’t listen to us,” says another. Every morning his four young grandchildren take the canoe to the mainland, where they go to school, while Timothy spends the day adding rocks to the wall around his house, trying to hold off the water for a bit longer. “If I move to the mainland, I can’t see anything through the trees. I won’t even see the water. I want to have this spot where I can look around me. Because I’m part of this place,” he says. His is a story that powerfully conveys the loneliness and loss that 1.1 degrees of anthropogenic warming is already causing.