Writing the future of our planet one small deed at a time

A climate storyteller offers a bridge between what is and what could be

Imagine, the year is 2100. You’re strolling through a redwood grove teeming with birdsong and wildlife. The forest is spacious, swimming in sunlight. It’s hard to believe this place used to be a “pseudo forest”—all new trees, all the same height, with no elbow room or biodiversity. It couldn’t thrive but could so easily burn. Now some of those same redwoods stand over 100 feet tall, part of a vibrant green tapestry that covers a huge swath of Northern California.

You cross a footbridge and stop to watch the salmon below, swimming up a stream where there was once an abandoned logging road. You think about how close we came to climate collapse only decades ago. But after a lot of mistakes and delays, communities and governments finally came together to do the necessary hard work. It took decades of collective effort, every person doing their part.

Drought, heat domes, and the ensuing megafires still occur, and it will take many more decades for extreme temperatures to stabilize. But the now-healthy redwood forests are rapidly sucking up carbon, filtering the water, and acting as a wildfire buffer for nearby cities. Not only that, but the revival of these giant trees has become an inspiration—a positive tipping point, replicated around the globe.

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This imagination exercise is what I do as a storyteller at the intersection of Hollywood and climate. Working with the nonprofit story consultancy Good Energy, I have the lucky job of helping other screenwriters integrate the climate crisis into any and every kind of storyline, from a detective pursuing fossil fuel criminals to a rom-com at the North Pole to vampires lamenting human folly and ecological collapse. I believe storytelling is one of our most vital climate solutions. We can’t live in the future we want if we can’t imagine how we get there. Storytellers are the bridge between what is and what could be.

But for many years I led two lives: Climate activist in one, writer in the other. They merged when I spent a month in the Arctic on an artist residency—30 artists and a couple scientists aboard a replica 19th-century sailing vessel. It was the hottest summer on record—as every summer has been since—and we embarked the same day the United States pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement (for the first time). Seeing my first glacier calving, learning about climate science amidst the diminishing ice, I knew my two lives could no longer be separate.

Back in Los Angeles, I started talking about climate change to anyone who would listen, and writing climate into all my scripts, from the television show Undone to the audio drama The Last City. I joined Good Energy in 2021, helping to develop tools for creatives, including the Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change—an open-source, nonpartisan resource that helps scriptwriters incorporate climate into their stories.

Despite its pervasive impact on our lives, climate change has remained eerily absent from entertainment. Good Energy’s first major study, conducted with the University of Southern California, analyzed TV and film scripts from 2016 to 2020—and found that only 2.8 percent mentioned anything related to the climate crisis. Less than 1 percent of scripts used the actual words “climate change.” And as we found in a recent study of the 250 most popular films of the last decade, the storylines that do touch on climate are often apocalyptic or superhero narratives.

We need fewer “end of the world” stories and more stories about the many small changes that lead toward the future we want.

We don’t know what our climate future holds, but we certainly can’t expect a caped crusader to save the day. There is no silver bullet, no single hero who can solve this infinitely complex challenge. We need fewer “end of the world” stories and more stories about the many small changes that lead toward the future we want. Tales about everyday people caring for each other after wildfires. About neighborhoods building independent solar grids. About organizations demonstrating forest restoration and Indigenous stewardship as solutions.

In my writing, I often explore protopias: Not dystopias or utopias, but pragmatically better futures that we can actually imagine inhabiting. I choose to imagine a future rooted in compassion for each other and nature, where climate action is ubiquitous, as is the connection and community we find within it. A future where we take a cue from our redwood family—each tree unique, yet with roots intertwining underground to support one another.

Climate activist and author Bill McKibben is often asked to name the most important thing an individual can do to help the planet. His answer: “The most important thing an individual can do is not be an individual.”

Individualism is the erroneous perspective that got us into this mess to begin with. The path to protopia involves dropping the delusion of separation and linking arms across cultures and generations to change broken systems and heal the land. It means we stop seeing our interconnection as an aspirational metaphor and start using it as a blueprint—one that can take us from this precarious moment to a livable, sustainable tomorrow.

We are each storytellers, writing the future of our planet. It may not be a perfect happily ever after—this isn’t a movie after all—but it doesn’t have to be a doom-and-gloom apocalypse either. Our story can contain all of life, with its ups and downs, absurdities, love, laughter. It doesn’t involve a lone hero appearing on the horizon. It’s the story of a million small, joyful, impactful actions that we take together.