Good News

Unsplash+ In collaboration with Andrej Lišakov May 12, 2023

Compelling climate narratives in television shows and movies can help shift attitudes on climate change, a new study finds! Over a thousand participants were recruited, and researchers divided them into two groups. Half watched a climate-focused episode of Madam Secretary about a super typhoon menacing the Pacific Island nation of Nauru. The other half watched another episode of the same show about U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

People who watched the climate episode experienced “a substantial increase” in their level of concern about climate change and their support for government action. Researchers found this change persisted even two weeks after people watched the episode.

Good Energy (started by my friend Anna Jane Joyner) has a simple test for movies and TV shows to see if they’re talking about climate change. First, does climate change exist in the story world? And second, is a character aware of it? 

For a long time, the answer was usually “no” – but that’s changing now. The fifth-annual Hollywood Climate Summit wrapped up this week, where creators of all stripes came together to talk about how to best include climate in their plot lines. Just like climate change touches everything in our world, I’m convinced every story can have a climate element to it – and it’s good news to see that this is becoming more common and that it …

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