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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]

This article explores the concepts of understanding and teaching climate change, with a focus on climate justice and storytelling. It discusses the science of climate change, including feedback loops and the scales of climate change. The article highlights the disproportionate impact of climate change on marginalized communities and provides case studies from Bangladesh and Alaska. It emphasizes the importance of connecting climate change to students' own experiences and provides strategies for teaching climate change through storytelling, writing, and creative activities. The author acknowledges the contributions of students and other teachers and expresses a desire to learn from their experiences. [Extracted from the article]

Because contemporary climate change is driven by anthropogenic forcings, it is necessary to factor humanity's impact into climate models. Given that not all humans are responsible for current climate change, and that many people are already unequally impacted by climate change, it is necessary to develop a more nuanced understanding of the human in climate modeling. Without this nuance, future climate policy, as determined by climate modeling, will potentially replicate historic inequalities that are already present in attributions to and impacts from a rapidly changing climate. This paper begins by briefly outlining how climate models are built, and the ways they are used in climate politics. Then, borrowing methods from climate modelers, this paper turns towards Sylvia Wynter's work to model the human. The ultimate aim of this paper is to think more expansively and creatively about how genres of humanity can better be represented in climate science and policy with an eye towards more just futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An awareness of positionality, an attention to accountability, and a commitment to reflexivity are increasingly key elements to conducting geographical fieldwork. As such, the 'field' is not only a place where we go to conduct research. The 'field' is a place where people live, where histories are present, and where our actions are never objective. This short article discusses my experiences as an early career researcher as I came to terms with these realities during preliminary dissertation research in Nepal. As a result of several formative moments - including surviving a landslide - I slowly began to realize that issues of reflexivity and positionality are not only critical for more ethical research, but also these concepts result in more generative projects. Here, I discuss why I came to these conclusions and explain how my experiences led me to the work I am doing today. [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]

China is positioning itself as a global leader in both renewable energy research, development, and deployment, and fossil fuel investment, exploration, and consumption. The newly merged mega-company, China Energy Investment Corp., has agreed to invest an unprecedented $83.7 billion into shale gas, power, and chemical projects in West Virginia. This decision comes after a visit to China by the United States' President Trump, during which he secured professed commitments for over $250 billion in energy investments across the United States. While investment and dispossession in Appalachia have long been international in scope, the scale of this investment, as well as its particular political-historical context, makes this case unique. This paper analyzes two key processes central to this conjuncture in West Virginia's recent history. First, building on recent scholarship, it argues that the ways in which the social and environmental costs of meeting China's energy needs are increasingly being externalized into global "sacrifice zones" at global scales, even as China is making massive domestic investments in renewable energy, may constitute a sort of regional "socioecological fix" to the environmental effects of capitalist development. Second, via a consideration of Gaventa's classic and more recent analyses of power and powerlessness in an Appalachian coal community, it explores why and how political assent to such development—which seems to reprise so many historical patterns that local critics decry—is secured in West Virginia. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the ways in which these familiar processes are playing out in a distinctive contemporary context, one characterized by a combination of populist and authoritarian politics that, in the United States, have touted false promises to "bring back coal" and rejuvenate a struggling local economy, and in China have led an authoritarian state to maintain economic growth for the nation at all costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen many calls for climate scientists to become better storytellers. Storytelling has intuitive appeal: In a world made increasingly nonsensical by climate change, storytelling helps make sense of the world, as it always has. Yet, despite calls for climate scientists to be better storytellers, there is no consensus about what counts as a story or about how scientists should tell stories. This article responds to calls for climate scientists to become better storytellers. Specifically, it relates three lessons drawn from extensive interviews and fieldwork with storytellers in Appalachia and Alaska, in which they responded to questions regarding what advice they would give to scientists struggling to communicate their research. The three lessons center on the importance of context and connection, the utility of ambiguity, and the importance of listening, as well as speaking, to intended audiences. Key Words: applied geography, climate change communication, public outreach, science communication, storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]