Episode 9: Alisa Petrosova on weaving climate threads into mainstream stories
For Episode 9 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer talks to climate story consultant Alisa Petrosova.
This episode explores how the film and TV industry is doing on climate messaging. According to research from Good Energy and The Media Impact Project that analyzed 37, 453 scripted television episodes and films released from 2016 through 2020, less than 3% acknowledge climate change. Alisa works at Good Energy, which supports TV and film creators in telling stories that honestly reflect the world we live in now—a world that’s in a climate crisis. They have worked on the recent climate-focused Extrapolations, on Apple TV, and are focused on intersectional elements of climate stories, committed to showing how historically marginalized people are harmed “first and worst”. Alisa talks about how stories help us connect, process, and learn, and how we need our stories to reflect the realities of the world and the future we want to move towards.
See trailers and clips for shows mentioned by Alisa below. The podcast transcript is also available below.
HW from Alisa: “I run a supper club in Brooklyn called Big Love Supper Club. And a big part of it is talking about the many layers of storytelling around climate and food. The meal itself being a story, the locality being a story, the seasonality being a story prompting people to tell their own climate stories. It’s about shedding light on this full spectrum of what it takes to eat, which we do three times a day, if we're lucky. There's also something about the community that forms around the table that is a story, and I think that the more that you can find spaces to create community where you can have these conversations, the more like-minded people you find, the less alone it feels, and the more it feels like we could do something about this.
And so, my threefold homework assignment for the listener is: 1) Really think about the communities that you're a part of, think about how you can form communities within the spaces that you inhabit, especially in this kind of awkward post-COVID world. 2) Find your “and”. You can be an artist and a climate advocate, for example. 3) If you end up having a supper club, I love posing the question of, “what is your climate story?” And I preface that with it could be you being sweaty on the bus on the way over here and how it's March and 90 degrees in New York right now. That could be your climate story. So it's really lowering the bar for what it means to talk about climate.”
Some favorite artists: Cecilia Vicuña & Rebecca Solnit.
Writing mentioned by Alisa: Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark; Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell; David Wallace-Wells, Uninhabitable Earth.
Connect with us: Alisa: @minipetro, LinkedIn, & Rebeka: this website, @rebekaryvola.
Thank you Samuel Cunningham for podcast editing.
Thank you Cosmo Sheldrake for use of his song Pelicans We.
Podcast art by Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer w/ the drive-in photo from Boston Globe archives.
Alisa’s climate story tour:
Some of the climate stories in film and TV discussed by Alisa:
#1: Extrapolations, 2023:
Alisa: “I worked on Extrapolations as my entry point into this [space]. When I was in undergrad, I was a researcher in the writers’ room. We took the IPCC report, we took various models, and mapped out everything, from the future of government, to the future of sex, to the future of the Pinot Noir grape. Within that, the writers’ approach was of “story first”. They were really interested in, “what are the stories that are part of this messy middle [of climate change]?”.
This morning, I heard [Extrapolations creator] Scott Z. Burns say that they were trying to put warnings on the front of the episodes, and he was like, “why do I have to have a warning for my show if my show is based in reality?” He made a very fair point: the person watching the show could flip the channel and the next thing is a school shooting or something else horrible.
Scott said he and co-writer and executive producer Dorothy Fortenberry would have these conversations about, “how sad is sad enough? Is it too sad?”. I think Scott really reframed this conversation about hope to be a conversation about courage. The courage that we have to take on the climate crisis.
We don't want to use Extrapolations as a roadmap, as the only way to write about climate. And Scott himself said, “I hope that I'm not the spokesperson for this … this is just something that I've been developing for many years. I want other people to go and write better shows, different shows”. I think that's the main takeaway for me: this is a way of doing climate stories, a vision of one particular writer, or group of writers. We should just take this as the door opening into the amount of climate content that we can have.”
#2: How to Blow Up a Pipeline, 2023:
Alisa: “A recent example of a really deep climate story that I've seen is How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which just came out. It’s an insane climate film. Just kudos to them for getting it made, because it's insane that a film like this was financed, especially in this media landscape around climate.
Every single character in How to Blow Up a Pipeline has a backstory as to why they want to blow up a pipeline. And there is such deep work done there and it's in a heist film-like arc. So it has that speed, it has that violence, it has relationships, and it has all the things that a Hollywood movie has. One of my professors, Sam Anderson, recently wrote an article in New York Times Magazine about how Hollywood is about explosive explosions explosively exploding… How to Blow Up a Pipeline is that. But at the same time it really digs deep into why does each of these characters in this ensemble cast takes on this mission.
The writer, Ariela Barer, she talked about how she was looking at the revolutions in Warsaw during World War II. She says that even though the people knew they were going to lose against the Nazis, they needed to show their revolt, they needed to show their power, even if it was the last thing they did. I think a lot of getting through climate is that need to do everything you can within the time that we have, otherwise, how do we forgive ourselves for that?”
#3: Station Eleven, 2021:
Alisa: “Another really good example [of climate storytelling] is Station Eleven. It's a lot more nuanced, and it is post-apocalyptic, but I think it's a beautiful show about the power of story and the power of art and the power of humanity. About how we kind of keep going.”
#4: Big Little Lies climate anxiety scene, 2017:
Alisa: “Then a deeper climate story that is still a small mention is a [in the show] Big Little Lies. Laura Dern's daughter comes home from school with a panic attack. And I think that truly started probably thousands of conversations, at least in parents' minds, about, “oh, what is my child going through”, right? Or like, “does my child have awareness of this issue? Do they have anxiety?” And it's okay to have anxiety around the climate. It's actually probably an issue if you don't have anxiety around climate. And so to have conversations like that on screen where this was a very small moment in the entire arc of the show, but it was still very powerful. And so it's possible to do it in a way that is succinct, but can still have a large impact.”
Transcript:
Please note: Transcript is automatically generated.
[music]
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Heart Gallery podcast with me, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer.
Rebeka:
Throughout previous episodes we’ve talked a lot about art that resides in gallery, museum, and other formal spaces.We’ve also discussed some of the ways that elitism is woven into the histories of these spaces, heard how these histories are being challenged, how these spaces are being opened up
As exciting as those efforts are, there continues to be large swaths of the population who can’t, won’t, don’t want to go to those types of spaces. That’s where the conversation about mainstream art comes in. Film and TV are the vehicle for a lot of education and awarenes, for better or or worse…For example, over time, LGBTQI characters have increase, has increased coinciding with change in public perception of the acceptability of these identities.
There are a number of organizations advocating for the inclusion of specific story lines. Color of Change advocates for Black representations, Illuminative for Indigenous representation &, Define American for that of immigrants. Today’s we will be talking about how film and TV is doing with messaging around climate and environmental issues. How do you think its doing? According to research from Good Energy & The Media Impact Project that analyzed 37,453 scripted television episodes and films released from 2016 through 2020 less than 3% of scripted TV and film acknowledges climate change.
Good Energy supports TV and film creators in telling stories that honestly reflect the world we live in now—a world that’s in a climate crisis. They have worked on the recent climate-focused Extrapolations show on apple tv and are focused on intersectional elements of climate stories: committed to showing how historically marginalized people are harmed “first and worst”. The idea is not that we need climate to be central to all stories, butt hat by ncreasingly brringing in threads of climate our mainstream stories more accuratewlrry reprresnet people’s lived experiences.
In this episode of The Heart Gallery I talk to Alisa Petrosova is Associate Director Of Climate Research & Consulting Programs, Story Consultant at Good Energy. Alisa shares about how stories are how we connect, process, learn, and we need our stories to reflect the realities of the world and the future we want to move towards, i hope you enjoy!
[music]
Rebeka:
Hi Alisa, welcome to The Heart Gallery.
Alisa Petrosova:
Hello, hello, hello.
Rebeka:
How are you doing?
Alisa Petrosova:
I'm good. I got here to like center myself so I feel really ready to jump into this conversation.
Rebeka:
Ooh, how do you center yourself?
Alisa Petrosova:
I just really actually dove into looking at your questions and going through them and making sure that I'm in that headspace to really present, you know, what this is all about.
Rebeka:
Oh, lovely. And LA is treating you well. You're in LA right now.
Alisa Petrosova:
It's sunny but not very warm. But I think the sun is good for me because the constant gray in New York is really not doing me justice.
Rebeka:
Yeah, yeah, I think it's warming up for you. Hopefully by the time you get back to our coast it'll be nice. Alisa, to start, how did you get connected to environmental and climate issues?
Alisa Petrosova:
Yeah, so I grew up in LA and what was interesting about it is that I understood the climate crisis as something that was around me through wildfires, through drought, but it wasn't anything that was ever highly top of mind. It was more a part of my life. You know, you would come home and your clothes would smell like smoke when there's wildfires. You throw them in the wash. You wipe off the ash from your car, but... wasn't anything more than that. And then within my schooling, really the only way we talked about it was about individual action, taking five minute showers, but nothing more than that. And I feel always like I'm a little bit older than the youth climate generation. And so it's interesting to see how almost like I think on a global scale, our journey is aligned at the same within the same years. if that makes sense. And when I came to Cooper Union in 2017 for art, I was interested in being a curator. from an institutional perspective, like really high key, like art with a capital A, like I was interested in working for the MoMA or the Whitney or something like that. And in my second year, I was in a class called Intradisciplinary Seminar, and the professors mainly brought in BIPOC artists, architects, engineers, lawyers, economists, people from all walks of life, and almost unprompted. they all said that the world was going to look very different very soon. This is at the same time as the 2018 IPCC report came out and the Brett Kavanaugh trials, and although that may seem like a slow news cycle for 2023, that was really overwhelming and daunting for me, and I decided that I wasn't going to be able to really go into the art world as I initially wanted to, and I would really have to rethink, so what I did was I removed myself. from school for around a week, and I really deeply thought as to like, what is my path forward, and how do I get involved in climate, and how do I get involved in the movement without necessarily leaving what I'm interested and passionate about. So that was how I got started.
Rebeka:
What did you come up with during that week? Like, did you come back, continue the same classes, business as usual, and just start to reframe your mindset? Or what was your thought process?
Alisa Petrosova:
So I just started reading as much as I could about climate, and in the first three months of that process, I was...I got really depressed, you know, as one does when you start reading about, you know, the uninhabitable earth just came. And like, if you had ever read that, it was like, David Wallace-Walls does a really great and also horrible job painting exactly how the world is going to look like. Horrible in the sense that, like, it makes you feel insane to see that past. for the world and the certainty that he draws it out in. And as you are aware, I've read Rebecca Solnit. When I came into this place where I was like, like, who am I? Like, I got to a point in my in my journey and reading as to, like, why would I be the person to take this on? Like, who am I? You know, and I started reading Hope in the Dark. I remember this distinctly, I was on a beach in Mexico for the holidays
Rebeka:
Hahaha
Alisa Petrosova:
and my mom was like, this is your beach read? Hope in the dark? Are you okay? Right. And
Rebeka:
No.
Alisa Petrosova:
so, and from that, I think one of my favorite quotes, and I quote her often, is, you know, the French couldn't see beyond the monarchy, they would still live under a monarchy. And
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
that scale, that sense of scale of like when you think of kingdoms, deities, people who are, you know, endowed by God to rule, that is in this way a story that is similar to the climate crisis and how we've designed it. And so something about that where I was like, these people did it. All right, that means we can do it too. I don't know, something clicked for me in that moment.
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
Fast forward a couple of months, I partnered with a mechanical engineering student and a chemical engineering professor and we got funding from our school and we started a coalition and we invited speakers from around the world. You know, I was cold emailing Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben and former vice president of Ireland, you know, and all of these people came to Cooper and spoke to us and spoke to the community and we really were able to. um, unite the, the programs being our architecture and engineering at Cooper around climate, which was, you know, the first time the school had ever even taken on the subject.
Rebeka:
That's fantastic. Speaking of hope in the dark, I think my favorite quote from that, paraphrasing, is that despair is a failure of the imagination. And that one I think I feel like I repeat on a weekly basis. It's like a good, that's a good centering one for me. It's like,
Alisa Petrosova:
Good mantra.
Rebeka:
okay, let's bring this back. Where are we, where is the imagination failing us? And imagination is a word that I actually, it's like on my notes, it's at the top. because you and I connected around imagination and also around storytelling. And so, okay, so you organized this convening of people talking about climate from different perspectives. And fast forward to, I guess, I don't know, a year later, or sorry, a year ago, you started to work pretty seriously in the climate storytelling space. Can you share what you do there?
Alisa Petrosova:
Yeah, I'll fill in a few gaps there, but I think
Rebeka:
Yeah,
Alisa Petrosova:
over
Rebeka:
anything.
Alisa Petrosova:
my three years at Cooper, I really quickly went from being a climate curious person to a person that people came to as a climate leader with questions. And I was like, okay, like I've
Rebeka:
Hahaha!
Alisa Petrosova:
done a lot of self-learning in this, but I need to really dive into the science. I think when I looked at communicators that were coming to climate from the art space, I understood that I wanted to be slightly different in the sense that I would have the scientific literacy in order
Rebeka:
Yeah
Alisa Petrosova:
to make more nuanced arguments around climate. And clearly the messaging in the climate movement, which we can get into later, but hadn't been working for 50 years. So how was I going to be different? For 50 years what we've done is we've used facts to try to convince people of climate change. But like one of my mentors at Columbia, where I was going to next in my journey, Kate Marvel, says that her success will not be the Nobel Prize, but actually when her job becomes obsolete. And I think we're slowly approaching the end of the need for climate science as we know it. Just this morning when I was at the TV Academy event. It was called Representing Climate Change on Screen. The moderator asked the audience how many people watched Extrapolations, the new Apple TV show that centers climate change, which I worked on and randomly started my career in this, versus how many people had read the latest IPCC report. And a lot more people
Rebeka:
Hehehe
Alisa Petrosova:
had watched Extrapolations than read the report. And you know, our brain, that just proves to me that our brains are story machines, right? They aren't logic machines. But you know, our messaging and the movement has relied on facts which are depressing, dry, that no one wants to listen to, but what we really need to tap into is that story piece.
Rebeka:
Yeah, so much. So you're at Columbia.
Alisa Petrosova:
went to Columbia, Columbia started the climate school, it was the inaugural year and I thought it aligned really well with my graduation from undergrad and you know usually people don't recommend that path but I felt like really if I wanted to move forward I needed
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
to rip this band-aid off of like diving deep into math and physics and science and all of these really daunting topics that I, you know. hadn't had a background or even foundation.
Rebeka:
Right.
Alisa Petrosova:
And then from there, I got really lost by doing that. I put myself in a really outside of my comfort zone. And... I also had to reconsider. I think that when you're trying to really figure out what you're doing, those breaking points are the key moments of when you actually figure it out. And I realized after my first semester that I hadn't been listening to the advice that I had stood on a soapbox giving my peers, which is you can still do what you love. You know, you can still be an artist, you can still be an architect, you can still be a filmmaker. and do something for the climate movement. But we've also messaged, for whatever reason, that in order to be in climate you have to be a scientist, a policy wonk, or an activist. That's just not true. There's so many roles in the climate crisis. There's so much expertise needed, and there's so much interdisciplinary thinking needed. So
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
yeah.
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
I, from, I guess, where did I, how did I get here?
Rebeka:
Yeah, no, so you're connecting it all into storytelling and into this conversation is very much, I mean, this is the climate, the mainstream climate storytelling episode, and I'm so excited for it, and you're doing some super cool things in this space. Can you just share what it is that you're
Alisa Petrosova:
Right.
Rebeka:
doing in that space?
Alisa Petrosova:
So I, since I graduated from Columbia, I co-designed and developed the consulting program at Good Energy, which is a nonprofit that helps writers incorporate and acknowledge climate in their stories. This means a lot of things. It can really mean anything from one incorporation and one scene. Or it could mean a through line. for a character throughout an entire season, or in the case of extrapolations, it could mean the entire story world. And so we really want to talk about it as a spectrum, that you don't have to write a show that is all about climate, because some of our lives aren't all about climate, and that's okay. You know, some of our lives are about having dinner, but sometimes during dinner we talk about climate, you know? Like... And so being able to show the human experience, like what we have done at Good Energy is last year we released an academic research study where we found that only 2.8% of any scripted film or television, which means we looked at 38,000 TV and
Rebeka:
Wow.
Alisa Petrosova:
film scripts, and took 38 key terms, which included things like save the world, you know. oceans and only 38 key terms around climate change like actually showed like 2.8 percent only showed up which is insane and then climate
Rebeka:
It's crazy
Alisa Petrosova:
change
Rebeka:
and
Alisa Petrosova:
itself...
Rebeka:
And dog comes up, I saw on your website like 20% or something, right?
Alisa Petrosova:
climate change itself only showed up 0.5 percent so it's
Rebeka:
Gosh.
Alisa Petrosova:
we see we have like a baseline dearth of climate And so I guess at Good Energy, our goal is twofold. From one side it's frequency, and from the other side it is quality, right? And good climate stories, more deep climate stories, more well-rounded climate stories. But a lot of it, like, you know, I'm super happy when I see a show like Industry, which is a mainstream show about trading, and there's a trader on the floor that says, I think about you less than I think about climate change. And
Rebeka:
Mm-hmm.
Alisa Petrosova:
just that mention, like, and it fits into the world, it's not forced,
Rebeka:
yeah
Alisa Petrosova:
you know? And like, I believe that a trader on a floor would say something like that. And like
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
that's helpful too, because their world is acknowledging that our world is a world of warming, of global change. Yeah.
Rebeka:
Can you talk about those two different types of climate mentions? You said first it's just the frequency, right? And I saw a Good Energy interview, I think it was the LA Times article, which was a great article about this issue. And the piece there was about how, just like just this frequency piece, right? Like just like having LGBTQ characters like dispersed throughout TV and film. spaces, like just having that like raises the cultural consciousness. Can you talk more about first that one and then we can talk about the other piece you mentioned which is like the like really good deep storytelling?
Alisa Petrosova:
Yeah, I think with the frequency piece, it's really, for me, it's about the fact that this show in one way or another acknowledges that. climate change is happening and some character in the show knows it, you know? And like, basically taking this idea that... It doesn't, in a way that we all live in this world that is surrounded by climate change, whether it's in our backyard or whether it's, you know, a state over from us, whether we view it as something that's happening in the global South, like, across partisan lines too, climate change doesn't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, doesn't care where you are, doesn't discriminate in that way. I guess what I'm trying to say is that when we see... our world accurately reflected on screen that can mean a spectrum of things. And by bringing climate change just as a frequency thing over and over again, we're expanding people's understandings that this is happening and this is not only happening to you, it's happening in the stories that you're watching and you don't have to feel alone in this. And, you know, we now have data from Yale that shows that 70% of Americans are concerned or alarmed about climate change, right? And it's like, how do we connect all those things and make it known to people via the screen that this is a real issue, it's happening, it's coming to you in a plethora of different ways, but one of those ways could be through your entertainment.
Rebeka:
And why do you think that that, like you said 2.8, I had three, like I had rounded it up to 3% of scripted TV and film acknowledging climate change. Like why is that so small? Is there this piece, so I think you're talking about the research from the Yale Project on climate change communication, just
Alisa Petrosova:
Right.
Rebeka:
like they're just so great. And I know part of what they look at is how people feel, you know, like not only are people concerned about climate change, but like what are the specific emotions that people are feeling? And like my sense is that perhaps, I'm sure you know, but like perhaps people just like don't want to be thinking about it. They perhaps want to be burying their heads in the sand and maybe not all the time, but maybe like when they're going on Netflix at night, but what is good energy? Like how do you and how does good energy square this when you're advocating for these mentions for this, for bringing climate into these scripts?
Alisa Petrosova:
I guess the best way for me to answer this question is to just quote Dorothy Fortenberry who wrote on extrapolations, which is one of my favorite quotes, which is, if climate change isn't in your script, it's science fiction. If the show is set in today or the future and you're not acknowledging the world as it is, it's not our world. And so the good energy argument is with every day that passes where climate change becomes worse and worse. And with every day that there aren't these mentions or deep climate stories on screen, the screen is becoming more divorced from reality. It would be
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
as if we had flip phones in a TV show that's set in 2023, right? It doesn't
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
make sense. And so there's a cognitive dissonance between what we're being shown on screen and our realities and Part of what makes film and television so captivating and what makes people spend so much of their time in their evenings, you know, or on the weekends watching film and television is because it is relatable content that allow
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
them to transport themselves somewhere outside of their lives. But if it's completely divorced from their reality, then there's limits to that connection.
Rebeka:
Yeah, that makes sense. Like when you first started answering, I thought you were making a moral imperative argument, which I think you partly are, and which I think makes sense. But I feel like it's not a very compelling argument to people in Hollywood and other spaces. But I think your flip phone example is a really good one to drive that home. That it's just, if people are looking for those representations, like sci-fi is great, but it's not all of what people are looking for. Yeah. And I'm wondering, so to talk about the deeper climate storytelling, you mentioned extrapolations. I know you're in LA right now around that partly. Can you talk about what kind of climate stories, like the sort of like, not like the climate mentioned, but like the deeper climate stories, like what have we seen in that space? What has that landscape been like over the last few years?
Alisa Petrosova:
I think a recent example of a really deep climate story that I've seen is How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which just came out, which I think is an insane climate film. Just kudos to them for getting it made, because it's insane that a film like this, to me, was financed, especially in this media landscape around climate. But every single character in How to Blow Up a Pipeline has a backstory as to why they want to blow up a pipeline. And there is such deep work done there and it's in a heist film like arc. So it has that speed, it has that like violence, it has relationships and it has all the things that like a Hollywood movie has. One of my professors recently wrote an article, Sam Anderson in New York Times Magazine where it says like Hollywood, something about Hollywood, but it's about explosive. explosions explosively exploding, right? And like, how to blow up a pipeline is that. And so I think that's a really... but at the same time it really digs deep into like, why does each of these characters in this ensemble cast... take on this mission and the writer, Ariella, she talked about how she was looking at the revolutions in Warsaw during World War II and saying that, you know, even though the people knew they were going to lose against the Nazis, it was like they needed to show their revolt, they needed to show their power, even if it was the last thing they did. And I think... a lot of getting through climate is that need to do everything you can within the time that we have, otherwise, how do we forgive ourselves for that? Another really good example, I think, is Station Eleven.
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
It's a lot more nuanced, and it is a post-apocalyptic film, but I think it's a beautiful film about the power of story and the power of art and the power of humanity. and how we kind of keep going.
Rebeka:
Hope in the dark. Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
Right, exactly. And then a deeper climate story that is still a small mention is a television example is Big Little Lies, where Laura Derm's daughter comes home from school with a panic attack. And I think that truly started probably thousands of conversations, at least in parents' minds, about, oh, what is my child going through, right?
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
Or like, is my child, does my child have awareness of this issue? Do they have anxiety? And it's okay to have anxiety around the climate. It's actually probably an issue if you don't have anxiety around climate. And so to have conversations like that on screen where this was a very small moment in the entire arc of the show, but it was very powerful. And so it's possible to do it in a way that is succinct, but... still could have a large impact.
Rebeka:
Yeah, I'm thinking about the, so the great examples, I'm thinking about the station 11 example, like where there's this world that is shown, like post-apocalyptic, I think like, I can't remember what percentage of the population, human population survives. It was like, it's very small, I think like less than 10% in their story. I feel like that's a good example of, like it's funny because it's so catastrophic and apocalyptic, but it's almost like a non-apocalyptic climate story. because there's this society that is born and you see how they're reimagining tools and functions of society and so forth. And I'm wondering, like Don't Look Up is like one of these stories that people just talk about a lot. You know, it's this asteroid coming to Earth and everyone's in denial story and it's often cited as just like incredibly depressing climate story. And And I agree, I think I felt this definite sense of sadness and gloom after seeing it. And I wanted to ask you what you think, what you're most excited about, if there's one particular type of climate story that you're more drawn to. And I wonder if you have some other examples of stories that draw on this hope and imagination and beauty and try to take our minds there because it's so easy to stay in this space of of grimness when it comes to climate stories.
Alisa Petrosova:
Wait, so your question was twofold. Could you give me the first part of your
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
question again? Sorry.
Rebeka:
Okay, yes, twofold. I need to stop with that. The first part was
Alisa Petrosova:
Hehehehe
Rebeka:
whether you're drawn to a specific type of climate storytelling, like if there if you have like something that you're particularly advocating for in the climate storytelling space. And then the, the second one was whether there are examples other examples you have for sort of like more hopeful like more imaginative and drawing out like the beauty of, of what what is in the world that we can be fighting for kind of story.
Alisa Petrosova:
I guess from a good energy perspective, like we're here to support writer, like any writer that wants to tell any type of story.
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
But also from a good energy but personal place as well, I'm really here for all of the stories that show all the various intersections of the climate crisis. I think that stories that think about climate not just as natural disaster, but think about racial justice, gender justice, food security, the future of our built environment. There's so many places that you could take climate, and so I think it's within that climate and that I'm really interested in. Climate and what, right? And yeah, I think that's really how we tell stories that are character-driven and are more personal and more specific than just tackling... climate change as this huge issue that faces us. In terms of... Beauty. I don't know if I know any examples that necessarily specifically focus on beauty. I think there's something beautiful about the gray area, the messy middle of climate change that we're currently in. And so I think the more humanity we can add to conversations or storytelling around climate, the more beauty there is. I don't know if it's talking about beauty, if that's talking about beauty in the same way that you are. But. I think that there is a lot of beauty in the connection and in the community, the collective that can be shown as a solution for climate. I think that's how I'm interested in beauty.
Rebeka:
I appreciate that. And the point you made about the climate and peace, it makes me think, reflect back on what you were sharing when you were first learning about climate, which I think is like for a lot of us, I remember in college, I'm older than you, learning about, it was global warming, I think was still the most used term at that point. And it was very much like driving different cars or not driving, bicycling, you know, light bulbs, water. conservation, like very much focused on these individual level actions. And the movement towards this climate and narrative has been incredibly hopeful in recent years. Maybe just like in very recent years, throughout the pandemic, I feel like that's become more mainstream to see more of those climate and conversations. And I'm wondering how you and good energy, like what is, how do you advise on telling those stories? I don't know if I should share more information, just like leave it as the question, but it seems like it's such an art to bring climate into a story that's not yet about climate.
Alisa Petrosova:
I think we, our biggest advice is to really have the writers start with what they're interested in and, you know, what their climate story is. Because I think whether or not people hold space for it, every person today most likely has at least one climate story, one entry point into climate, right? It doesn't even have to be a lived experience, but there is some lived entry point. you know, oftentimes the reason people don't take on climate stories is they think that they need to tell the entire story of climate change, which is like, what? You can argue that it's from the first time man made fire, or you can argue that it starts at industrialization, or it starts somewhere within, you know, the plantation scene. But, you know, it's no one's responsibility to take on that entire story, just as when we talk about you know, queerness on screen. We don't have to tell the entire story of being gay and what that experience is like. If we want to take on race, we also don't have to take on the entire history of colonization. But somehow as an issue area, the climate crisis lands in the space in which people are daunted by the kind of, I don't know if massivity is a world.
Alisa Petrosova:
you know, how massive the issue itself is. But it's no one's role to take that entire thing on, and so I think we really recommend coming at it through a personal lens. Through the lens of their characters, really.
Rebeka:
Yeah, and can you share more about the process of that? So it really does seem quite artistic, especially hearing you describe it more. You're probably trying to get a sense of who they're communicating to, what the level of understanding might already be, what is the good entry point for a given audience? What are some of the considerations you have when you're thinking about what would be appropriate for a given story?
Alisa Petrosova:
I mean, I think we approach like how we... come to our clients or to the writers on a bespoke way with each project, right? We have a process for it, we have different services and they're outlined in a specific way but I think what is unique about us is we're really thinking about this as a story first thing as opposed to here's a research brief, here's a dry presentation of facts, you know, go off with that. And so we really think about where we can pull from people with lived experience. We pull from character inspirations, from stories. I'm researching blog posts. A really beautiful example is I was doing a research brief on Hurricane Sandy. And we found this moment in which somebody was writing a blog about how his community in New York would all get together at the corner bar and they would all, you know, play on the piano and sing songs together through, you know, the dark, the literal darkness, the power outages, the floods.
Rebeka:
Yeah
Alisa Petrosova:
And that's such a specific, like the more specific you can get and the more rooted in how people actually, I think something that Rebecca Solnit does well is illustrate that people don't, you know, isolate in crisis. People come together in crisis. in ways that are very unexpected. Maybe neighbors even who have never said hi to each other don't know each other. Like, you know, how we exist in New York oftentimes is very outside of being neighborly. But crisis brings people together in communities in ways that are very unexpected. And so, you know. What I'm trying to say is just the more specificity, the possible, I think, is how we approach things. And really taking things from the plethora of people that are experiencing climate, not taking things, but using them as inspiration, talking to them, and being able to really pull from real life there.
Rebeka:
And you mentioned extrapolations. I have yet to see it, mostly because last time I had Apple TV, it was to watch one show and then it took me multiple months to cancel it. I always like, I'd never wanna have these memberships ongoing and I feel like Apple is like especially devious with like not letting you ever leave.
Alisa Petrosova:
Hahaha!
Rebeka:
So I haven't seen extrapolations yet. I mentioned to you that I had read a number of reviews and... They're saucy, like the reviews for Extrapolations. Like people are impassioned and I feel like there is some anger around this show. I'm curious what you think about the reception of Extrapolations. I know that Good Energy worked on it.
Alisa Petrosova:
Um, yeah, I worked on it as my first kind of entry point into this. Actually, when I was in undergrad, I was a researcher in the writer's room and where we took, you know, the IPCC report, we took various models, uh, and chose a pathway and kind of mapped out everything from the future of government to the future of sex, to the future of the Pinot Noir grape, um, and Within that, the writers were trying to find, you know, they were, they too took the approach. This is kind of almost proto-good energy, but the approach of story first, they were really interested in, you know, what is, what are the stories that are part of this messy middle. And so I think that I heard Scott this morning say that they were trying to put on, like, warnings for the episode and he was like, why do I have to have a warning for my show, like, if my show is based in reality? Like, you know, and he made a very fair point where, like, the person watching the show could flip the channel and the next, the next thing is, like, a school shooting or something else horrible. Like, why, why
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
when we talk about fiction? And like, why are we so scared of the darkness? And he said him and the co-showrunner Dorothy Fortenberry, they would have these conversations of like, how sad is sad enough? Like, is it too sad? And like, those were considerations of what they were thinking. And I think like Scott really reframed this conversation about hope to be a conversation about courage, right? And it's really like the courage that we have to depict climate. And I think that like, not to depict climate, the courage that we have to take on the climate crisis. You know, I think that we don't want to use extrapolations as a roadmap, as the only way to write about climate. And Scott himself said, you know, I hope that I'm not the spokesperson for this. You know, this is just something that I've been developing for many years and I want other people to go and write better shows, write, you know, different shows. And so I think that's just the main takeaway for me is that this is a way of doing it, a vision of one particular writer, but you know, or group of writers, but you know, we should just take this as like the door opening into the amount of climate content that we can have instead of the roadmap or the recipe for one.
Rebeka:
Isn't there something to take from this, like this very strong reaction that we have seen with that? And like, is that telling us something? Also maybe connecting this back to this like 2.8% of scripts containing any mention of anything vaguely climate. And also go in, and also like linking in this warning that was being put at the beginning of episodes. Like what's going on?
Alisa Petrosova:
I think if you, you know, haven't read an uninhabitable earth or haven't read the IPCC reports and don't live your life in this climate science world, you may be unaware because we do not have the visual imagery, the visual language, or the oral language to really even describe what is to come in the mainstream. And I think that a lot of the strong feelings around extrapolations come from a cognitive dissonance between understanding that the world that they're depicting is a world that is already mapped out in a way, right? I'm not saying that that is the biggest x-factor, like I want to make clear that the biggest x-factor, the biggest variable in climate modeling is human action. and there's so much space for different pathways. But the pathway we chose wasn't a worst case scenario in extrapolations, right? It was something that was. pretty like a business as usual, maybe a little bit more amplified. But I think people find it hard to believe that in 2038, where the show starts, that is what the baseline will look like, or in 2070, where the show ends, that's what 2070 will look like. But what Scott mentioned today was that there's the same amount of difference between the hangover and now, as there is between now and 2038. So, you know, the hangover doesn't seem like a period piece, and so that's why 2038 doesn't seem super futuristic in how they begin to depict it. It is a world that looks like our world. It's a world on fire, it's a world that's melting, it's a world where there's still drought, there's all these climate issues that we're currently facing, and that's the baseline in which we move on from. But I think the lack of visual language that we've had and the lack of... mainstream content around climate has allowed us to see extrapolations as perhaps too amplified in what is to come.
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
Where it might actually, you know, I don't want it to be a prophecy, but right, like
Rebeka:
Yeah.
Alisa Petrosova:
it is actually based in the science.
Rebeka:
Yeah, is your sense that this is just a beautiful illustration of what you're saying? Well, what happens when we just don't have these stories? I hear you when you say that extrapolations isn't a road map for all of climate storytelling going forward. But the reaction might just be that people just are not used. That frequency of climate mentions just isn't at that level yet, where people wouldn't be freaking out.
Alisa Petrosova:
Are you saying if there was more leading up to this, there would land… it would land differently?
Rebeka:
just saying, yeah, like that extrapolations is causing such a stir because people are just so I guess it's just like maybe like knock them sideways in a lot of ways. But like
Alisa Petrosova:
Great.
Rebeka:
if if good energy does what good energy is doing, that that that won't be the case.
Alisa Petrosova:
Right.
Alisa Petrosova:
I think we're going to get way more used to seeing climate depicted on screen. And we all, it's already happening.
Rebeka:
Yeah, and I'm curious though, so you talk about how like there isn't one right way to story tell, like there's different kinds of ways to weave in climate into all different kinds of stories and you can never tell like the full, there's not one story to tell. Do you think that there's such thing as bad climate storytelling?
Alisa Petrosova:
I think bad storytelling is no storytelling. I think the absence is what is really... hurting us right now, as opposed to like, what a bad climate. Like I'm less worried about what a bad climate story is. Does that make sense?
Rebeka:
Yeah. Can you expand on that?
Alisa Petrosova:
I guess I think like from... From a personal perspective, I think maybe a bad climate story is something that... I guess like... how I would think of a bad climate story is one that is very like two dimensional and very prescriptive. But aside from that, I think there's so many ways of depicting climate. I think there's a lot of ways of, you know, talking about climate from so many different perspectives. And I think that we need to incur at this point, like we need to encourage people to be able to take ownership of the subject, talk to experts, talk to us, get information and incorporate into their scripts. And I think we need to kind of get rid of this taboo around the storytelling. And that's why I'm hesitant to say that bad climate, I mean, bad storytelling exists all over the place, but like, you know, I'm kind of less interested in warning against bad climate storytelling, as opposed to really encouraging people to take ownership of their own climate stories and the world that we currently live in.
Rebeka:
Do you think that climate change is the biggest story of our time.
Alisa Petrosova:
I do think that climate change is the biggest story of our time, but it's because of that and that I previously mentioned. I think that there is no kind of future without this conversation around climate change. And climate change touches every single part of our lives, whether we know it or not yet. And that's why I think that we cannot tell the story of the present or the future without talking about climate.
Rebeka:
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good answer. Alisa, I want to ask you just a couple more questions. I
Alisa Petrosova:
Go for it.
Rebeka:
What do you hope to be seeing going forward with climate storytelling?
Alisa Petrosova:
Um, I think a question, the question around like what I hope to be seeing is really like more visibility of climate. I love this quote of, I don't know who it's supposed to be, but like that you cannot be what you cannot see. And I think the more people we see that are invested in climate in so many different ways will allow people to have aha moments around. their own entry point into climate. I think a beautiful story of this is, or a very simple story of this, is the career counselor at the climate school. They were just a career counselor in the engineering school, and one day they were reading a New York Times article where climate came up. We looked back at it. It was a very dry article, nothing special, but in that moment there was an aha moment that happened for them where they realized there's going to be a lot more jobs and a lot more need for students to understand how to go into climate and this is what I do, but I can just do what I do but and climate, right? And I think that the more people have see content, have this enter their conscious or subconscious and are able to connect, you know, I do this and climate, the better and so that's... that is my hope is for us to be able to inspire and create situations for those aha moments to happen. And then I think in terms of imagining new worlds, as I said earlier, the biggest kind of X-factor variable in climate modeling is human action. And so, you know, in the words of Solnit, you can't see past the monarchy if you don't try, right? And so we have to stop with this Western obsession with one apocalyptic ending, this like biblical end. Climate is like a slow burn. It's the difference between like, you know, the frog that jumps out of the hot water pot versus the frog that's sitting in it. We have to like know that another world is possible and so we have to start telling those stories in order for us to see that.
Rebeka:
Thank you so much.
Alisa Petrosova:
There’s a lot of badass people doing a lot of badass things and I like hate when people say oh like sucks that nobody's doing anything about climate change and I'm like there's so many people that are doing things about climate change.
Rebeka:
That's the failure of the imagination, right? It's so easy to stay in that space. It's so easy to be, to just like let go of being informed and just dwell in the darkness. But that's, I appreciate that. And I'm wondering, I had asked you to share three artists working on climate in some kind of way who have had an impact on you. Maybe you wanna share some of those in the group. that you just were talking about, people who are doing inspiring things.
Alisa Petrosova:
I love the work of Cecilia Vicuña. She's a Chilean poet and artist and the way that she talks about staying both in the darkness as much as you stay in the light and kind of not being afraid of the combination of those things and just how she talks about like... the complicated nature of her indigenism and climate currently as this kind of denouement of human history has been very powerful and inspirational to me. I don't know if I have three climate artists. I think that like I don't- Other than Cecilia, obviously Rebecca Solnit, to me as an artist, as a person, and then the work that she's done has inspired my and impacted my art immensely. But I'm not sure if I have a third one. I'm sorry, I don't have good answers.
Rebeka:
It's okay, it's okay, you still get 100%, great. I appreciate those. And finally, Alisa, I wanted to ask you about your piece of homework. We're all about taking action here. And I wanted to ask you if there was one thing that you would recommend the audience do see, think about. I also love when we first met you were sharing that you have a practice of conducting. dinner parties. And I wondered if maybe you want to share about that here, but also it could be something else.
Alisa Petrosova:
I mean, I'm not gonna assign coming to my dinner party, but I run a supper club in Brooklyn called Big Love Supper Club. And a big part of it is talking about the many layers of storytelling around climate and food. The meal itself being a story, the locality being a story, the seasonality being a story prompting people to tell their own climate stories. you know, and really shedding light on this kind of the full spectrum of what it takes to eat, which we do three times a day, you know, if we're lucky. And so I think that... And that for me came as a practice, I think. there's something about the community also that forms around the table that is a story, and I think that the more that you can find spaces to create community where you can have these conversations, the more like-minded people you find, the less alone it feels and the more productive it feels and the more it feels like we could do something about this. And so I think... My twofold homework assignment for the listener is A, really think about the communities that you're a part of, think about how you can form communities within the spaces that you inhabit, especially in this kind of awkward post-COVID world. And then the second thing is to find your and, right? Like, you can be an artist and a climate advocate, you could be an artist and being able to really find what your entry point is into the climate movement is really important and you can't really force that. I think it has to happen in this movement between the intellectual understanding which I'm sure that most people carry into this emotional that I often talk about.
Rebeka:
And if someone wanted to conduct a supper club, what would be like one good starting prompt?
Alisa Petrosova:
conduct their own supper club.
Rebeka:
Yeah, yeah, and have a conversation about food and climate. What would be like one good question to pose to there?
Alisa Petrosova:
Well, I just, I love posing the question of like, what is your climate story? And I preface that with it could be you being sweaty on the bus on the way over here and how it's March and 90 degrees in New York right now, and that could be your climate story. So it's really lowering the bar for what it means to talk about climate.
Rebeka:
I love that. Alisa, thank you so much. This has been such a joy
Alisa Petrosova:
Thank you, Rebeka.
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That is it for this episode. Thanks for spending this time with us. It would be lovely to hear from you about what you thought of the ideas and perspectives shared. Find links for connecting in the show description, along with ways to find John’s work, and also to see the accompanying blog post.
Thank you to Samuel Cunningham for the podcast editing and to Cosmo Sheldrake for the podcast music, which comes from his song, Pelicans We. The podcast art is created by me.
Until next time!
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