Image credit: Lela Brown
Although climate change has become an increasingly prominent and important issue, finding ways to persuade people about the catastrophic dangers of further environmental degradation has proven to be challenging.
Students in Professor 鈥檚 freshman writing seminar 鈥淐ommunicating Climate Change鈥 spent last semester writing scripts, analytical essays, op-eds, children鈥檚 stories, and proposals for public campaigns about different aspects of climate change. Levine is the David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of Humanities in the Department of English.
鈥淚 think communication is the biggest challenge for action on climate change,鈥 Levine said. 鈥淭he science is clear, and there鈥檚 strong consensus among scientists about the coming dangers. But now it鈥檚 crucial to persuade people to take seriously a set of catastrophes that haven鈥檛 happened yet.
鈥淪tudies show that people are more likely to respond after disasters have come close to home, and by that time it will be too late,鈥 she said. 鈥淏ut too much fear-mongering, and people stop listening too. So: what kinds of communication will prompt large-scale action to prevent the worst disasters from happening?鈥
Levine鈥檚 idea for the class stemmed from some of her past research on the ways that different forms of media are used to represent and understand climate change.
鈥淚 wanted to use that research as a jumping off point for a writing class, prompting students to think not just about good sentences, but about which forms are best for which arguments. So, for example, charts are great for showing large-scale patterns over time, but they鈥檙e not good at helping us to think about what it might be like to live through environmental devastation鈥攆or that we need stories.鈥
For one project, students in the class wrote op-ed鈥檚 about climate change, some of which were published in their local newspapers.
Kiki Lo 鈥22 wrote an op-ed published in the about how the fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters due to the quantity of water, energy and resources needed to produce clothes. She discussed how textiles pollute bodies of water because dyes are not properly disposed of, and most clothes end up in landfills. She suggested two main solutions to the problem: turning old items into items of higher value, such as turning five old t-shirts into a dress, orpurchasing from companies that reuse old fabrics.
Several of the students also wrote scripts about aspects of climate change as class projects. The scripts were then sent to students in a visual effects class at Towson University taught by Lynn Tomlinson 鈥88, assistant professor of electronic media and film, who produced animated videos for the scripts as part of their final projects. These 鈥渆xplainer videos鈥 are short films using animation and motion graphics that explain complicated ideas.
Levine and Tomlinson, friends for many years, came up with the idea for the collaboration in October when Tomlinson came to Cornell to screen her new animated film 鈥淭he Elephant鈥檚 Song鈥 at Cornell Cinema.
鈥淲e thought it would be an interesting collaboration for her students to write scripts and share them with my students,鈥 Tomlinson said. 鈥淢y students could choose one of the Cornell students' scripts, record it as a voice-over narration and create imagery through motion graphics and animation to make a complete short film.鈥
Lo wrote one of the scripts ,about the negative consequences of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide levels on marine life as ocean water is becoming more acidic.
鈥淚 realized how hard it is to communicate such a broad issue to an audience with ranging levels of education, 鈥 she said. 鈥淥ften, the science is difficult to communicate because it is too technical and sometimes causes people to lose interest.
鈥淚 think the arts can be used to portray the physical effects of climate change on our planet in order to get at people's emotions, but I think they are less effective at conveying the science and facts behind climate change.鈥
Levine said the arts can be a uniquely powerful medium for communicating important issues like climate change.
鈥淸The arts] can help us to imagine the future,鈥 she said. 鈥淔act-based forms have to describe the world as it is, but fiction can help us to think about the world to come鈥攂oth the best possibilities and the most frightening. The arts can also unsettle our usual habits, including the carbon-intensive patterns of everyday life that we鈥檙e used to; they can push us to stop and think rather than just keep going as we have been.
鈥淚n my course, students ended up agreeing that we will need all of these different forms together to address a problem as huge and complex as climate change. They experimented with writing in different forms and then I encouraged them to invent their own forms.鈥
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