'...just as we need to understand the physical changes that are sweeping the planet, we also need to understand climate change as a cultural and psychological phenomenon...
[we need to] rethink our discourses about climate change in terms of four enduring myths. I use "myths" not to imply falsehoods but in the anthropological sense - stories we tell that embody deeper assumptions about the world around us.
First is the Edenic myth, which talks about climate change using the language of lament and nostalgia, revealing our desire to return to some simpler, more innocent era. In this myth, climate is cast as part of a fragile natural world that needs to be protected. It shows that we are uneasy with the unsought powers we now have to change the global climate.
Next, the Apocalyptic myth talks about climate in the language of fear and disaster. This myth reveals our endemic worry about the future, but also acts as a call to action.
Then there is the Promethean myth, named after the Greek deity who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to the mortals. This talks about climate as something we must control, revealing our desire for dominance and mastery over nature but also that we lack the wisdom and humility to exercise it.
Finally, the Themisian myth, named after the Greek goddess of natural law and order, talks about climate change using the language of justice and equity. Climate change becomes an idea around which calls for environmental justice are announced, revealing the human urge to right wrongs.
The value in identifying these mythical stories in our discourses about climate change is that they allow us to see climate change not as simply an environmental problem to be solved, but as an idea that is being mobilised in various ways around the world. If we continue to naively understand the climate system as something to be mastered and controlled, then we will have missed the main opportunities offered us by climate change.
From a practical perspective, that means rethinking our responses to climate change. Rather than placing ourselves in a "fight against climate change" we should use the idea of climate change to rethink and renegotiate our wider social and political goals.'
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