Shifting the Narrative to Shift Power
In this Dispatch from the Frontlines, Jamie Henn reflects on his journey from student climate activist to Director of Fossil Free Media, and the importance of changing the narrative, and spotlighting different storytellers, in mobilizing movements strong enough to take on the fossil fuel industry.
Jamie Henn in front of the White House prior to his arrest in August 2011. (Credit: Tar Sands Action)
Earlier this year, our movement to end fossil fuels took an important step forward. After years of pressure led by frontline communities along the Gulf Coast, we succeeded in convincing the Biden administration to pause the permitting for new liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities until there can be a full evaluation of their impact on our climate, communities, and consumers. The decision not only calls into question one of the largest fossil fuel buildouts in the world, but it sets up an important new “climate test” that we should extend to every fossil fuel project – a test those projects will surely fail.
It also signifies a major shift in the political discourse around endless fossil fuel development. Despite the billions of dollars the fossil fuel industry spends on propaganda designed to make it seem irreplaceable, a new story is breaking through.
A tipping point was last September, when over 50,000 people took to the streets for the “March to End Fossil Fuels” in New York City. Our team at Fossil Free Media worked to support communications outreach for the march, and when I saw those words “End Fossil Fuels” above the fold in the New York Times, I knew something had shifted. We were finally countering the lies of industry, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on lobbying, public relations, and advertising. The vast majority of this spending isn’t designed to sell us a product but rather to sell us a story: Fossil fuels are an inescapable part of our lives. We can’t live without them. There are no viable alternatives. And there’s nothing we can do about it.
But now, finally, another story was taking root, spreading from the streets of the city to the halls of power. At the United Nations, Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded an “end to the fossil fuel era.” In California, the seventh-largest economy in the world, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state would be suing Big Oil for lying to the public and blocking climate action. Two months later, at COP28, the momentum continued. There was widespread outrage that the United Arab Emirates had appointed an oil CEO to run the climate talks, and this helped drive conversations about the need to “phase out fossil fuels” – language that made it into the final agreement.
Tens of thousands of people from across the country joined youth and frontline activists gathering at the 2023 Climate March in New York City to demand an end to fossil fuels. (Credit: Jamie Henn)
As the director of Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit media lab that supports the movement to end fossil fuels, I’ve dedicated my career to telling the fossil fuels story differently – and more accurately. A story about how the industry knew as early as the 1970s about the damage its products were causing but covered up the truth. About how we can replace coal, oil, and gas with solar, wind, and other renewable energies. About the incredible people and communities who are resisting new fossil fuel projects and fighting for a better future.
I had been raised on the power of stories. My dad filled my head with his own version of the “Lord of the Rings,” or the plots from operas he loved, on long hikes through the White Mountains in New Hampshire. My mom worked for the Boston Globe; when I was a kid I would wander down to the basement to watch reels of paper whipping through the printing presses with tomorrow’s news.
My first introduction to the climate crisis, too, had a heavy emphasis on storytelling. At Middlebury College in Vermont, I took a one-month course called “Building a New Climate Change Movement,” during which our professor, Jon Isham, introduced us to the concept of “narrative strategy,” giving us readings about climate science along with books about the civil rights movement and social movement organizing. Back in 2005, the climate crisis still felt somewhat distant and abstract, but what hooked me was the challenge of how we could build a movement capable of taking on such a massive and complex issue by telling the story differently.
And so along with a group of similarly inspired friends, I got to work. At first, the story we set out to tell was a simple one: Lots of people cared about climate change, therefore governments should act. In 2007, we organized Step It Up, the first big national day of action on climate change in the United States, with over 1,400 events in all 50 states. Two years later, we launched 350.org and organized the first-ever International Day of Climate Action, with over 5,400 events in 182 countries. Both days succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations. Our story of people demanding climate action made the front pages of newspapers around the world, dominated the nightly newscasts, and ricocheted around the internet (we even temporarily crashed the website Flickr because so many people were uploading photos of climate actions across the planet).
Students like those at UWI-Madison are leading the way in demands to invest in their future, not in fossil fuels. (Credit: Joe Brusky; c/o 350.org)
And yet, it wasn’t enough. Despite the outpouring of public support for a global climate treaty, when world leaders gathered in Copenhagen for the 2009 UN Climate Talks, the process ended in total failure. While we’d been naively posting photos of people politely asking for climate action, Big Oil had trained its full firepower on the process: attacking climate science, warning that emissions reductions would wreck the economy, and threatening politicians with electoral consequences. I remember standing in the cold outside the conference center on the last night of the talks, holding a candle at some pathetic vigil, and thinking: That’s it. It’s no longer enough to just talk about climate. The only way we’re going to see progress is if we go to the root of the problem. We need to take on Big Oil itself. We need to talk about fossil fuels specifically.
But how? The fossil fuel industry was one of the most powerful forces in the world. It controlled governments. It was governments. At the time, ExxonMobil was the most profitable corporation in history. Just organizing some more days of action with pretty pictures clearly wasn’t going to cut it. We needed a way to boil this challenge down to something visceral. A story that everyone could understand. A classic David vs. Goliath struggle. A specific fight against the industry that could symbolize all the fights against the industry that were underway around the world.
Enter KXL. For years, farmers, ranchers, and Indigenous leaders in the US and Canada had been sounding the alarm about the Canadian tar sands, some of the dirtiest fuel on the planet, and the proposed Keystone XL project. This was to be a 1,700-mile pipeline that would transport the tar sands fuel across one of the largest aquifers in the US, and some of its best farmland, to export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico. But there was a hook: In order to be built, the pipeline required a “presidential permit” to cross the US border with Canada. Normally, these permits were just rubber-stamped, but we saw an opportunity to pressure President Obama, who had made big promises on climate, to reject the project. If we could tell a powerful story about Keystone XL, we had a chance to not only stop this one pipeline but also build a movement that could fight fossil fuel projects everywhere.
Calls to deny the Keystone XL permits were too loud for the Obama administration to ignore. (Credit: Milan Ilnyckyj)
The campaign against KXL taught me important lessons about how to fight fossil fuels. I saw the power of visuals, asking people to wear suits and dresses to our sit-in at the White House so that the photos would echo the imagery of the civil rights movement. I observed the way the public gravitated to individual “characters,” like Randy, a cowboy-hat-wearing Nebraska rancher straight out of central casting who was fighting to stop the pipeline from cutting across his land. I felt the importance of grounding our campaign in deep-seated values, like the love of home, the sacredness of water, the beauty of the land. I learned how creative actions generated the most attention, whether it was surrounding the White House with 15,000 people or camping out on the National Mall with tepees and a wagon for a week.
Over the last decade, we’ve put all of these lessons to use fighting dozens more fossil fuel projects, from the Dakota Access Pipeline, to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, to LNG export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve also developed new strategies, like fossil fuel divestment, which gives people everywhere a way to take on the industry by pressuring their university, church, pension fund, or city to stop investing in coal, oil, and gas. And we’ve adapted to the changing media landscape, relying less on traditional outlets and more on creating our own content, engaging online influencers, and running fast-paced digital campaigns.
Now when I look at the climate movement, I see storytelling everywhere. During the campaign to pressure President Biden to stop approving new LNG export terminals, frontline leaders were up on Instagram, documenting the visceral ways that the pollution from these facilities was impacting their everyday lives. Young people were all over TikTok, raising awareness, combating industry disinformation, and driving hundreds of thousands of petition signatures. Our friends at Greenpeace were out in DC, projecting huge images of smokestacks and refineries up on government buildings. Members of Congress were repeating our talking points about the need to end fossil fuels. Put it all together and we were able to tell a story powerful enough to move the president and win a major battle against fossil fuels.
Jamie Henn speaks at a rally in front of US Capitol. (Credit: Bora Chung; Survival Media Agency)
Of all the stories that we need to tell, perhaps the most important one is about ourselves. Despite what Big Oil wants us to believe, we aren’t powerless in the face of the climate crisis. We have all the solutions we need to transition away from fossil fuels, and by working together, we can build the political will necessary to get us there. My daughter turned three this year, and when I think about the story I want to tell her decades from now about the climate fight, it isn’t a tragic tale of resignation and cynicism, but an epic adventure full of resistance and hope. That’s a story we’ll get to write together.
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