Project 2

For this project, I wanted to explore how climate communication can be reimagined to be more inclusive, accessible, and impactful. The driving question that shaped my piece was: How can we reimagine climate communication in a way that bridges systemic critiques with everyday realities so that everyone can be part of the solution? To explore this, I put four authors in conversation, Rebecca Henderson, Hans Baer, Vershawn Ashanti Young, and Sophia Kianni, while also reflecting on my own experiences growing up in a multilingual family that wasn't always part of the mainstream environmental discourse.

Henderson and Baer offer two opposing critiques of capitalism’s relationship to climate change, but I noticed that both often speak to elite audiences using academic, inaccessible language. Drawing from Vershawn Ashanti Young, I argue that language is not neutral, it often excludes voices that don’t conform to institutional norms. Sophia Kianni’s work through Climate Cardinals gave me a real-world model of how inclusive storytelling and translation can help make climate conversations more accessible, especially to marginalized communities. I weave in personal stories, like translating for my grandmother, to show how the climate crisis feels different depending on who you are and how you're spoken to.

My goal with this project was to move beyond doom or idealism and instead call for climate communication that is rooted in storytelling, multilingualism, and emotional connection. I hope it encourages readers to think differently about who gets to speak in the climate movement, and who gets left out.