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In a time of multiple, competing, and nested crises, the draw to storytelling is intuitive. Stories help us make sense of the world around us. People are drawn to stories because of their emphasis on community, and the way they create possibilities when it feels like there are none. This paper builds upon geographic research on storytelling, articulating how stories are critical for creating meaning in light of crises. Based on 14 months of fieldwork with storytellers in Appalachia and Alaska, two regions facing profound social, climatic, and economic change and with culturally rich storytelling traditions, research for this paper discusses the practice of storytelling, as told by storytellers, and how different approaches to storytelling help address the climate crisis specifically with notes for crises more broadly. Further, considering calls to use storytelling to address climate change, this paper examines and critiques the stories that are currently being told and valued. Finally, this paper outlines the kinds of stories that could be told to address crises, noting specifically how stories are sites of cultural and political struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Political ecology has largely been reactive. • Political ecology should be more proactive. • Experimentation helps political ecology address ongoing and future issues. • Storytelling is a useful method for engaging climate knowledge. • This paper includes lessons for doing experimental political ecology scholarship. Political ecology emphasizes critique, and, through critique, its ability to better understand nature-society relations. Recently, calls have been made from within the sub-discipline to move beyond critique, and towards engaging nature-society relations more experimentally. This paper asks: is it possible for political ecology to be less reactive and more proactive? Rather than studying events that have already happened, is it possible to study events currently happening or that have not yet happened? This paper is an attempt to do political ecology more experimentally by staging an intervention and studying its outcomes. Given the abstract nature of climate change, and given storytelling's capacity for helping people make sense of the world around them, this project combined political ecology analysis and storytelling, resulting in an experimental process of collaborative climate knowledge production in regions, and with people, central to the changing climate. Research for this paper took place over fourteen months in Appalachia and Alaska, climate-vulnerable regions with economies tied to fossil fuel industries and with culturally rich storytelling traditions. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, I will examine political ecology scholarship that already engages with experimentation as a way of making the case for a more experimental political ecology. Second, I will discuss the process and outcomes from my experimental research, namely that storytelling is a meaningful way of building climate knowledge. Finally, by outlining the challenges of doing this research, this paper ends with lessons for future iterations of more experimental research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]