GLOSSARY: Which stories should we tell about climate change?

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garbage bins overflowing with copper, platinum, gold, and other precious metals

"Mining for rare-earth metals in the garbage bin." Generated using Microsoft Image Creator and Adobe Photoshop.

Are we telling the wrong story about climate change?

Which stories we tell about the climate crisis are just as important as the data and language we use to tell them. And Chika Okafor, a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and Harvard Law School as well as a PhD candidate in Harvard's Department of Economics, worries we may be telling the wrong ones. Okafor has been researching the comparative utility of "deficit-based" and "asset-based" approaches to communicating about climate change—that is, whether we should frame the story in terms of its negatives or its positives. Sam Zuniga-Levy summarizes the stakes in a write-up about Okafor's work for the Harvard Radcliffe Institute:

Following [Okafor's] line of reasoning, we must question our approaches to talking and writing about climate change if we want to maximize the impact of our words. What if we were to shift the focus of our climate-related reporting toward a more solution-oriented perspective? What implications would this shift in communication strategy have as far as motivating public action?

Importantly, deploying an asset-based approach does not necessitate minimizing hardship. The point is not to gloss over or obscure challenges but, rather, to acknowledge them and figure out how to address them. . . .

. . .The key is to emphasize opportunities for progress, to avoid painting a picture of such doom that our audience simply gives up and tunes out.

Okafor's research isn't yet complete, but it seems likely that an approach focused on potential remedies will get us farther than an accounting of the harms being dealt. We need to remain hopeful in the face of the obstacles we face. Telling the right stories can help cultivate the optimism we'll need to prevail against the challenges ahead.

+ From Foreign Affairs: "Climate Policy Is Working—Double Down on What's Succeeding Instead of Despairing Over What's Not."

+ Getting the message wrong could be ruinous for climate goals. From the Washington Post: "How Car Bans and Heat Pump Rules Drive Voters to the Far Right."

Plastic recycling is a tale in need of revision

We should also periodically reassess the tales we've long been told. Take plastic recycling. A recent study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory examined the climate impact of plastics and found that "by the middle of the century, global emissions from plastic production could triple to account for one-fifth of the Earth's remaining carbon budget," per reporting from The Guardian's Dharna Noor. Another study in Science Advances found that only "56 companies were responsible for more than 50 percent of branded plastic waste globally." For decades, these companies have pushed recycling and the "circular" economy as the solution to the problem of plastic. But the reality is that " plastic recycling is not technically or economically viable at scale." We have to end our reliance on plastics, and governments from 170 countries are trying to hammer out a global treaty to do just that. A handful of the biggest oil and gas producers—including the United States—are standing in the way . Still, members of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee are optimistic an agreement can be reached at their final session this November.

+ Bloomberg offers some additional context on the negotiation process.

+ From CNN: "The World Dumps 2,000 Truckloads of Plastic into the Ocean Each Day. Here's Where a Lot of It Ends Up."

+ From the Washington Post: "The Plastics Industry Would Like a Word with Your Kids."

But recycling rare-earth metals could be a game changer

Rare earth metals and minerals are critical for the transition to clean energy—especially in the construction of batteries. And current supplies are limited, resulting in production slowdowns and sky-high prices. (Last month, copper hit a two-year high of $10,000 a ton, although as Bloomberg notes, right now the market appears to be "very comfortably supplied.") But as Maddie Stone points out in Grist, " Staggering quantities of energy transition metals are winding up in the garbage bin." Recovering a fraction of them would lighten demand for new mining operations and could lower the temperature on the global contest for new sources of these elements. To make it possible, we'll need new and improved recycling processes. As Stone reports, the US Department of Energy has announced a $4 million Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize. And Redwood Materials, a company founded by Tesla cofounder JB Straubel, hopes to use its innovative battery-recycling processes to to recapture key ingredients for use in new batteries, making EVs an even greener technology.

+ Semafor calls battery recycling "the next big green industry" and finds that China may be leading the way.

+ From the Wall Street Journal: "Why the World Has Gone Cuckoo for Copper"

+ From WIRED: "The World's E-Waste Has Reached a Crisis Point."

+ From the Associated Press: "E-waste Is Overflowing Landfills. At One Sprawling Vietnam Market, Workers Recycle Some of It."

+ Could AI help improve recycling rates?

Which story will we tell about EVs?

At the moment, there are two competing narratives about EVs in the United States. We know that EV adoption will lower emissions. And as we've mentioned before, countries across the world are reaching the 5% tipping point that signals the start of mass EV adoption. So far, so good. However, demand has slowed in recent months, reflecting car shoppers' jitters about high sticker prices, range, and charging infrastructure. Manufacturers have taken note, pulling back on their production plans while bemoaning huge financial losses. But as Bloomberg's David Fickling argues in a very interesting thread on X , if we consider the story car companies are telling from another angle, those losses don't seem so calamitous:

A thing people really do not understand about US companies fretting about their per-car EV losses stories is that this is almost entirely a spurious issue about the unique way US accountants treat certain types of R&D spending.

Fickling maintains that rather than treat the huge costs inherent to the EV transition as a recurring expense, carmakers should count them as one-off capital expenditures. But framing these costs as expenses allows US car companies to "suggest that the switch to EVs is not challenging but devastatingly, dauntingly impossible"—a calculated move that helps insulate them from competition (particularly from China). Rather than slow-walking the EV transition while relying on protectionary measures to safeguard their profits, Fickling contends, US carmakers need to tap into the innovative spirit of the early auto industry:

If America actually chooses to compete it can have a very competitive and clean EV sector that will survive and prosper from the Chinese invasion just as it survived and prospered from the Japanese and Korean ones in previous decades.

+ Here's the column that prompted Fickling's X thread: "Tariffs and Timidity Are Driving US Carmakers into a Ditch."

+ From The Verge: "Biden Really, Really Doesn't Want China to Flood the US With Cheap EVs."

+ From InsideEVs: "I Went To China And Drove A Dozen Electric Cars. Western Automakers Are Cooked."