Be the Change’s climate storytelling workshops for high school students start with two simple questions:
-What comes to mind when you think about climate change?
-Thinking about climate change, what emotions and feelings come up?
I’ve delivered this workshop dozens of times, but I’m always struck by students' responses:
“Drastic temperature changes, environmental disasters....I feel hopeless.”
“Ice melting, forest fires...I feel angry, disappointed, sad.”
“End of the world… I feel fear and impending doom.”
But this storytelling workshop, which we organize and deliver in collaboration with the UBC Climate Hub, isn’t about reinforcing the severity of the climate crisis or students’ feelings of despair and grief.