by Heather Phelps
Heather is a UN Climate Observer at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai and a participant in the Christian Climate Observers Program (CCOP2023). The views expressed in this article are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of CCOP2023 or any of our partners and partner organizations.
We love fairy tales. There’s a version of Cinderella dating back around two thousand years and we've been telling them ever since.
There are those Disney popularized, of course: Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty. There are those nearly as famous even if they've never quite made the line-up of the Disney Princesses: Hansel & Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, Jack & the Beanstalk. Then there are the hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of far more obscure ones: The White Cat, The Six Swans, Finist the Bright Falcon. There are arguments about why so many fairy tales contain so much violence, and whether they're truly suitable for children - or, on the other hand, complaints that Disney did a terrible disservice by bowdlerizing the true, original, bloody versions of the tales (though if we’re being pedantic, the French version of Cinderella which Disney based their movie on actually predates the toe-chopping Brothers Grimm version by over a hundred years).
So why do these stories keep sticking with us?
There's a great quote by G.K. Chesterton: "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
And that brings us back to climate change.
The science of climate change is not a fairy tale - it's very real. And to anyone paying attention, who thinks through the future implications, it's very scary.
Fairy tales are filled with terrifying villains - evil witches and wizards, kings and queens, trolls and monsters and, yes, dragons.
And right now we have a dragon ravaging our Kingdom. It's burning our forests, ruining our crops, and consuming our people with its voracious appetite. And it will only grow bigger and stronger and deadlier as time goes on. People are huddled in their homes, terrified, but not sure what to do.
And that's why we need stories. It's so easy to lose hope and fall into despair. It's so easy to think it's someone else's problem - someone who's older, stronger, and wiser. It's easy to get discouraged by the vast forces arrayed against us, both those who have actively worked to ruin the world for their own profit for decades, and those who simply stand on the sidelines and heckle any possible plan of action.
But this is what fairy tales teach us: dragons can be fought - and defeated. And it's not the expected heroes who save the day, either. It's the third son, youngest and least important, whose kindness and humility prevail when his older brothers fall prey to their own pride. It's the sister who works in silence for years to sew nettle shirts to break the curse on her siblings, persevering in the face of scorn and disbelief. It's the ones who offer food and a kind word to strangers, and have the wisdom to accept advice in return.
And against all odds, they prevail, where everyone else had assumed all hope was lost.
This is what we need, in the climate fight: the courage and hope to be part of a story. To use that story to bolster our courage when it starts to weaken, because despair is the one thing the hero of a fairy tale cannot, at any cost, allow to consume them. The only sure way to fail the quest is turning around and going home - even sitting down and having a good cry will sometimes succeed in summoning the most unexpected people to our side to help. And then, we pick ourselves up and keep going.
Unlike fairy-tale dragons, climate change cannot be slain in a single mighty blow. Even reaching net zero new emissions will leave enough CO2 in the atmosphere to prevent our climate from simply going back to normal. But isn't that the way of stories - we can't go home again? And the climate dragon does have a useful feature fairy tale dragons don't: any improvement is a good improvement.
We may not keep warming below 1.5°C, but even so, 1.6°C warming is better than 1.7, which is still an improvement over 1.8.
Maybe the better analogy isn't that of a dragon, but a curse – one the fossil fuel companies have cast on the whole world. It won't break all at once, but if our efforts prevent a single flooded village here or a single plague-stricken town there, it'll be worth it.
Whether you're the youngest son or oldest daughter, Puss in Boots or a mischievous fairy, you have a spot in this story we're all writing together. And fifty years from now, as we're telling this story to the generations coming after us, what part do you want to have played?
Fighting dragons and breaking curses are hard. Scary. Adventures always are. But they need to be done and someone has to step up and do them. And boy, do they make good stories afterwards.