Doomsday narratives about climate change don't work. But here's what does | Victoria Herrmann

Feeling hopeless about a situation is cognitively associated with inaction. Instead of being defeatist, look to climate change heroes who are leading the way

The title of David Wallace-Wells' recent essay in New York magazine is catchy, if not uncomfortable. "The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreck - sooner than you think."

The article asks us to peer beyond scientific reticence into a doomsday future. The accounts of mass heat deaths in cities and praying for cornfields in the tundra is disturbing, but they're familiar. It's the same frame for how we talk about a much more immediate climate change disaster - US communities at risk to sea level rise today.