How to Tell Strategic Stories that Clarify Climate Crisis - Megan Mayhew-Bergman | Rapid Response #12

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My guest today is Megan Mayhew-Bergman

Megan Mayhew-Bergman is the author of three books, most recently How Strange a Season. Her essays and journalism have been featured in The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the Atlantic. She is the Director of Creative Writing at Middlebury College and the Director of the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She serves on the board of The Thoreau Prize and Conservation Law Foundation, and co-founded GreenStory, a narrative consulting firm for clean energy organizations and NGOs.

You can find her on Substack at:

Climate change is an issue that already impacts everyone, and is poised to further disrupt everything about life as we understand it. And yet it still so often manages to be presented as a niche issue, and we’re not taking anywhere near the action we’ll need to to mitigate (or even adapt to) catastrophe. What gives? Why can’t we get it together?

Insert all requisite frustrations about capitalism and billionaires, but glossing the issue that way doesn’t address the broader dynamic in which people—whether as individuals or in communities—are not approaching the scale of the disaster with appropriate urgency and care. Climate change, among other things, is a coordination and communications problem. If we can start to address the underlying assumptions, narratives, and ideas that are perpetuating status quo, I think we’d be surprised how much of a difference that would make in building solidarity and cooperation, to encourage everyday folks to fight for ...