--- title: We Have a Climate Imagination Problem description: We’re missing an emotional architecture for change: how it feels to want a different future and believe we can reach it, writes Solitaire Townsend. canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/09/21/we-have-a-climate-imagination-problem/ author: Solitaire Townsend article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-09-21T10:00:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-09-21T10:00:07.011Z article:section: Ideas og:title: We Have a Climate Imagination Problem og:description: We’re missing an emotional architecture for change: how it feels to want a different future and believe we can reach it, writes Solitaire Townsend. og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/09/21/we-have-a-climate-imagination-problem/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd0f000bd6c1669e/6aa2fe90ce760a1633495eec/climate-imagination.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2058 og:image:height: 1158 og:image:alt: climate-imagination.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: We Have a Climate Imagination Problem twitter:description: We’re missing an emotional architecture for change: how it feels to want a different future and believe we can reach it, writes Solitaire Townsend. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd0f000bd6c1669e/6aa2fe90ce760a1633495eec/climate-imagination.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  IDEAS Time ideas # We Have a Climate Imagination Problem > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=2a18f7f9-55c9-4a47-9e9b-8f6b987c08a2&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) by [Solitaire Townsend](https://time.com/author/solitaire-townsend/) ## Solitaire Townsend Solitaire Townsend is a climate entrepreneur, author, and solutionist. Sep 21, 2026 10:00 AM UTC  Megane Adam—Getty Images by [Solitaire Townsend](https://time.com/author/solitaire-townsend/) ## Solitaire Townsend Solitaire Townsend is a climate entrepreneur, author, and solutionist. Sep 21, 2026 10:00 AM UTC Earlier this year I stood in a draughty sports hall, facing rows of 10-year-olds sitting cross-legged on the scuffed floor. I asked them a question: “What does climate change mean?” Small hands shot up: “The sea rises and floods everything,” one child said. “Fires are gonna burn all the forests,” another added. “We all die.” The litany of apocalypse continued until I interrupted with a second question. “And what can we do about it?” Silence. After some shuffling, one girl tentatively offered: “Solar panels?” Then a louder boy called out, “Recycle!” His classmates nodded. And that was pretty much it. I've worked in climate communication for nearly 30 years, interspersing sessions with CEOs, activists, and politicians with talks to school kids. Over those decades, I’ve watched the average 10-year-old acquire an increasingly sophisticated picture of the climate crisis they will inherit. They can imagine burning forests, flooded cities, dying species, and an uninhabitable planet. Many of them seem to understand climate science better than some CEOs. But ask these children to picture what we do about it, and suddenly their extraordinary imaginations contract to a recycling bin. To be clear, I am enthusiastically in favour of recycling—just not as our answer to a planetary emergency. But I understand why I’m still hearing that [inadequate response](https://www.weforum.org/stories/climate-action/climate-action-change-behaviour-impact-survey/). Since the greenhouse effect and global warming first entered [mainstream](https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1975813%5F1975844%5F1976439,00.html) public consciousness [in the 1980s](https://theconversation.com/30-years-ago-global-warming-became-front-page-news-and-both-republicans-and-democrats-took-it-seriously-97658), we’ve offered people ever more detailed maps of the apocalypse with barely a sketch of the way out. The climate movement, of which I’m a proud member, has been complicit in this communications crisis. Most messages shared by progressive forces are merely an ad nauseam echo of: climate change is real, humans are to blame, and the consequences are catastrophic. I call this framing the [earned dystopia](https://futerra-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/StoriesToSaveTheWorld%5Ff3cmn4j.pdf), and it’s so ubiquitous most pre-teens can parrot it. After so many years, can we not imagine a different story? One reason for this imagination deficit is that storytelling has been treated as merely the spoonful of sugar to help the scientific medicine go down. Storytellers are asked to act as the marketing department for climate science. But if that subservient role for storytellers was ever needed, it’s increasingly futile now that climate change has started communicating itself. Our growing count of [horrifying floods](https://time.com/article/2026/09/01/flood-deaths-trishuli-tibet-himalayas-china-nepal/), [fires](https://time.com/article/2026/08/08/what-happens-when-the-world-is-on-fire/), [storms](https://time.com/7268239/how-to-prepare-for-a-storm/), and [droughts](https://time.com/7381402/water-rights-colorado-river-drought/) capture headlines without my help. We have clear science and brutal direct experience of climate change, so why haven’t politicians and populations sprung into action? The logic of the climate crisis is clear. What we’re missing is the magic. Long before humans measured atmospheric carbon, we whispered tales of flood and fire. Stories have always helped us understand who we are and what we might become. Increasingly, [researchers are proving](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392115690%5FThe%5FPower%5Fof%5FStorytelling) this singular power of stories to spark ideas, possibilities, and acts of imagination. I believe part of this magic comes from stories’ purpose in curating emotions rather than evidence. Today, we don’t particularly lack information about [heat pumps](https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2025/7318347/jetson-air/), [electric vehicles](https://time.com/article/2026/04/08/how-the-iran-war-is-pushing-more-people-to-buy-evs/), or [regenerative agriculture](https://time.com/collections/earth-inc/6166190/climate-better-way-to-farm/). More details than you could ever want are just a click away. What we’re missing is an emotional architecture for change; how it feels to want a different future and to believe we can reach it. That’s where great storytelling could change everything. Our ability to enter a story and temporarily experience the character's world as our own is called [narrative transportation](https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/positively-media/202506/when-fiction-feels-like-fact-why-stories-shape-our-beliefs). Studies prove that this experience of emoting along with fictional people can directly influence real people’s attitudes, intentions, and even our [behaviors](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/abs/pii/S0065260124000145). Few other mechanisms can achieve the same effect. Climate politics has sensed this power, but translated it into the narrower language of “public narrative.” Politicians now plot narratives for electrification and renewables. Campaigners construct counter-narratives to fossil fuels. Brand teams test sustainability narratives against each other. In climate circles, everyone is searching for the breakthrough narrative that will finally unlock action. But too often the term is simply a cypher for messaging. And messaging is not the same thing as mythology. A political narrative tells us how to understand an issue while mythology helps us understand ourselves. And climate change is mythological in scale. It contains terrifying monsters, underdog heroes, unexpected allies, destruction and rebirth. Or at least it should. My problem is with the enormous cultural library of apocalyptic narratives compared to a surprisingly small shelf of fables that foreshadow a better ending. We need a plot twist in climate storytelling, moving beyond the threat and into the thrilling adventure of solving it. Tales of the messy decades in which billions of people change how they power homes, grow food, travel, build cities, and protect one another from a climate that has already changed That’s a job for storytellers. Culture makers are beginning to catch on. I’ve been invited by television and film writers, social-media creators, and brands to help climate solutions appear in comedy, drama, adventure, and everyday life. Ever [more box-office hits](https://greentitles.sustainableentertainmentalliance.org/), like [_The Wild Robot_](https://time.com/7015187/most-anticipated-movies-fall-2024/), [_Avatar_](https://time.com/7341098/avatar-fire-and-ash-review/), and the upcoming [_Digger_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=job8V254NAE), reflect our fight against climate and nature crises. _Sesame Street_ is [helping kids cope](https://time.com/article/2026/08/05/sesame-street-extreme-weather-climate-experts/) with extreme weather. New [climate fiction novels](https://www.forbes.com/sites/solitairetownsend/2026/08/17/stories-to-save-the-world-5-novels-of-climate-solutions/) weave answers into stirring worldbuilding. These all work because they are compelling and moving stories above all, not climate science lectures dressed in a thin veil of narrative. Many other scriptwriters, novelists, social media creators, musicians and artists must add to this list. I passionately believe that climate solutions are the most important story of this century. When I return to that classroom over the coming years and ask the same two questions, the first answers will remain frightening. But when I ask what we can do about it, I hope every hand will shoot up, because we’ll have filled kids' imaginations with enough possibilities that they can start inventing answers we haven’t thought of yet. That will be a good day. 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