If you care about climate change, stop being a superhero

Many of us are climate heroes. But wanting to see ourselves as heroes can raise barriers that block the change we need to see, writes Awa Ndiaye. It’s time to tell different, more truthful stories. Original artwork by Maya Adams

Awa Ndiaye (pictured left), Maya Adams (pictured right)

My best friend knows exactly which buttons to push to trigger my long, impassioned monologues on issues I care about. She loves to push those buttons. It’s probably why we are best friends.

Years later, I remember a monologue I launched at her one day. Doing my duty as a good global citizen, I gave her the full lecture on plastic pollution, with a bonus section on climate change. I reminded her of our role as individuals and why we must act responsibly.

It’s only now, dusting off memories of that conversation, that I see beneath the frustration. I was acting out the role of climate hero. It’s something many of us do. We present ourselves as climate heroes in our conversations with loved ones. It’s a stance we see in organisations, in countries and internationally.

(Artwork by Maya Adams)

Climate heroism is everywhere

I had to look no further than inside my own mouth…

Beneath the monologue lay the comforting belief that I knew better and cared more than my friend. How attractive, how soothing to reiterate that I was not one of those people who use plastic bags without an afterthought.

I suspect something similar lies below the surface when we lament:

If only people were more educated
If only people cared
If only people were responsible

Sound familiar?

What we really mean is:

If only people were as educated as I am
If only people cared as much as I do
If only people were as responsible as I am

We are all in different places in our journeys to facing up to climate change. But many of us see ourselves as the destination everyone else needs to reach. Secretly, often subconsciously, we believe others are the problem and that we are the solution.

But if every single one of us is already the solution, who or what is the problem? And why is there a problem in the first place?

These are the questions that struck me recently, at an event looking at the road to decarbonisation. Everyone agreed that the collective trajectory did not align to climate commitments. Yet every organisation presented itself as irreproachable, even heroic, citing its own real progress and meaningful climate action.

That mismatch between the reality of the problem and the absence of responsibility puzzled me at first. But it’s the pattern of climate heroism that I see in myself and those around me.

So many of us are frustrated by the lack of substance behind countries’ grand claims and bold promises about fighting climate change. On paper, most countries recognise the urgency of climate change. All say they are pioneers, rolling out actions to fight the climate crisis.

But we have yet to reverse the global rise in greenhouse-gas emissions.

All that climate heroism has failed to tackle climate change.

Climate heroism is dangerous

You might ask:

Is there anything wrong with wanting to save the world?

Our unconscious commitment to being climate heroes comes at a cost. It polarises us more. It makes us incapable of facing up to climate change.

We all know now what an echo chamber is. Climate change is especially good at spreading the spill of polarisation. Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to talk about climate change to some people?

In these conversations, we position ourselves on an invisible pedestal of righteousness. Subconsciously, we cast ourselves as the hero, judging others as the problem. And that’s where our conversations get stuck.

Worse, climate heroism prevents us looking at climate change in its entirety. When we – individually and collectively – fail to see ourselves as part of the problem, we miss the chance to talk critically about our past, present and future.

I witnessed first-hand how vehemently our hero narratives can shut down critical conversations.

It started when a friend – someone in every way sweet-natured – described Thanksgiving as their favourite holiday. Another friend challenged that view; Thanksgiving is an event that few Indigenous Americans celebrate.

Things quickly descended into fury – the sweet friend hit back that it was offensive and untrue to link her ancestors to America’s dark history. Was it horrifying to her to challenge the textbook version of history that casts her people as the heroes – to find the role she claimed for herself snatched away?

People’s reactions are usually more subtle – but how many of us try to end conservations when others question our narratives about ourselves?

Our need to be heroes is why we recraft history into beautiful artifacts. Why we sculpt extractivism into gifts of civilisation, melt and remould genocide into peaceful coexistence and cover exploitation with the dazzling colours of independence.

The hero narrative explains why some people react so badly when others point out the links between climate change and colonialism. We wear blinkers that show us only part of the picture of climate change. The parts that don’t implicate us personally.

Climate heroism prevents us understanding and addressing the connections between climate change and the systems of oppression, extraction and erasure within which we still operate.

Climate heroism is dangerous because it exacerbates polarisation, sabotaging the conversations we urgently need to have. Worse, it narrows our understanding of climate change and so perpetuates the structures and dynamics that brought us to this point of crisis.

We need new stories not grounded in heroism

Climate heroism makes ostriches of us. It prevents us facing up to the system that created – that still fuels – climate change. It makes us believe the illusion that we can dig ourselves out of trouble with technical solutions.

Meaningful climate action means understanding the bigger picture. If we focus only on the parts of climate change that do not challenge our hero status we will fail to understand it – let alone address it.

More people are starting to realise this, are talking about climate justice. Talk of a just transition is now familiar in discussions of climate change.

But how do we recognise justice until we look injustice in the face? Stories in which we are – and always have been – heroes prevent us acknowledging what has created climate change, stop us recognising and so tackling climate injustice.

Confronting climate change means being brave enough to drop the act – to understand our place in the system that made the dysfunctions we need to address.

When we stop being heroes, we can start to have those crucial, difficult conversations about our complicity in these dysfunctions. We can start to make space for other people’s voices and to invite them in to create the solutions. This allows us to create new stories that have nuance. Stories not rooted in being all good or all bad.

Facing up to our histories and legacies does not require us to take on the guilt, responsibility or pain of those who lived decades and centuries before us. It does not absolve us from our links to the past. These new stories do not turn hero into villain or victim.

Instead, letting go of climate heroism allows us to acknowledge our past and present – no matter how painful or hideous – to see how they connect and to take full responsibility where we are complicit. It allows us to reinvent ourselves, to work towards a different future, grounded in a different model.

Addressing climate change requires a new kind of courage. It goes beyond lifestyle changes, corporate targets, national pledges, and even international climate deals – the courage to examine and reinvent the stories we tell ourselves and about ourselves.

That courage enables us to see climate change as something more than a technical problem, to stop perpetuating the system that fuels it. We need new stories as a medicine for our times.

These can be stories of heroism – but a different kind of heroism, based on reciprocity and responsibility. The kind of heroism that allows us to fetch our past, hold our present and reclaim our imagination for the future.

Awa Ndiaye, 24, weaves the threads of her formal education and work in climate change with her lived experience,facilitation skills and spoken-word poetry, which reflects her interests including climate justice. Her words are her gift to the world; www.humanitei.art

Maya Adams, 27, is a multimedia artist who explores different modes of being in a world whose physical and social climate is rapidly changing, our possible futures and how they intersect with ecological grief, climate justice, and liminality; www.mayaadamsart.com