The Pervasive Power of Story in Climate Change

By Kim Wunner, April 30, 2025

The sciences and humanities are bridged via the CP Snow Lecture Series

Guest Lecturer Erin James addresses a full lecture space in the C.P. Snow Lecture Series. Photo Credit: Tessa Dill

This week, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Eric Leibensperger addressed a lecture hall filled with students from three combined classes with a screen filled with news stories related to climate change in just the last five days. The message was, “the narrative is moving quickly, change is happening.” What is that narrative? Who and where does it come from? What is it telling us?

That was the topic of this year’s School of Humanities and Science’s C.P. Snow Lecture Series. Erin James, University of Idaho professor of English, co-founder of the Confluence Lab, and author of the Narrative in the Anthropocene visited IC’s campus to lead students through the deep reveal of the narrative in the Earth and the pervasive tools we have in equal complements of the arts, humanities and science. In fact, she has a word for it: Syndisciplinary.

“We now know that environmental issues are just as much, or even moreso, cultural problems as they are ecological problems. It really demands people who have an understanding of both sides of that binary to think about how to mitigate or respond to a lot of the issues that we're having these days.”

Erin James, University of Idaho professor of English, co-founder of the Confluence Lab, and author of Narrative in the Anthroprocene and C.P. Snow Lecture Series Guest Lecturer

In an interview with James she explained, the application of the arts and humanities to the sciences is where real solutions will emerge in the climate crisis. “We now know that environmental issues are just as much, or even moreso, cultural problems as they are ecological problems. It really demands people who have an understanding of both sides of that binary to think about how to mitigate or respond to a lot of the issues that we're having these days.”

Students and faculty at IC have been studying from the syndisciplinary playbook for years without realizing it. In fact, it's why the college established the two-day C.P. Snow Lecture series 50 years ago: to bridge the gap between the humanities and the sciences. According to Peter Melcher, associate professor of biology and former chair of the C. P. Snow Committee (2005-8), "Scientists need to learn about the arts and the humanities—science doesn't take place in a vacuum. And art, music, poetry, the humanities—they're all so intertwined with scientific innovations. On all fronts, understanding is greater when there is an open, interdisciplinary exchange of information."

A Story in the Rock

“Anthropocene” is a great word, an important word in climate change. If we reach back to our high school Earth Science classes, we can recall related words like the Mesozoic or Paleozoic periods—those are geological eras. Eras span hundreds of millions of years. Within eras, we have epochs. The Anthropocene is the current epoch, depending on who you ask.

If you could slice into the Earth's crust and zoom in on the Anthropocene layer, the human evidence you will see includes radioactive fallout, microplastics, industrial byproducts, urban sediments, technofossils (cell phones and electronics), and tracts of long-lasting and globally distributed chemicals like DDT. It’s not pretty.

The narrative of the Anthroprocene is one where humanity’s effects on the environment are in the Earth’s crust and if we take a good look, we see a story of climate change being written as we as live it.

There is some controversy around this epoch, when it started and if it even exists. The rigor of that conversation spans every academic area we can think of—politics, science, spirituality, art, ethics and philosophy.

Students writing their climate change stories in the AM lecture by Erin James. Photo Credit: Benjamin Braverman

Climate change has long been a topic reserved for scientists. We learn from the Anthropocene that climate change is an issue that scientists alone cannot solve because behavior is a very human thing.

How does that understanding emerge so that both science and the humanities can know enough of the other to produce informed narratives that represent the breadth of the human experience in relationship to climate change? We learn from the CP Snow lecture the key to that learning is in storytelling. Words have meaning.

C.P. Snow Lecture Series chairperson and IC associate professor of the environment, Paula Turkon explains, “there's this very interesting theory out there that says that humans have evolved to the extent that they have, because we have very early on used stories to convey information, and that gave us an evolutionary advantage in passing on information… humans are maybe predisposed to wanting to learn through stories.”

This tracks, doesn’t it? We consume news stories. We learn from movies and books. Family traditions are passed down by storytelling. Our Instagram and Facebook feeds are full of compelling stories from which we learn about topics and issues, from who wore what to the Met Gala to goats and kittens being friends to the effects of climate change.

Eleanor Henderson, writing professor at IC, is teaching James’ Narrative in the Anthropocene in her slow read class on power and resistance. The class introduces books that are related to the craft of writing in some way, but also ask students to engage in conversations about power and resistance. She says, “in some ways it is a book about solving problems of climate change through storytelling through a kind of narratological lens. So, looking at the study of constructions of narratives, how narratives kind of function in our society.”

C.P. Snow Scholar Jordan Rice '26 receives their award from Erin James. Photo Credit: Tessa Dill

The suggestion from the C.P. Snow Lecture series is that perhaps the story isn’t over. If we find common ground, we can use narrative to unite.

For example, take wildfires. James and her team at Confluence Lab live in an incredibly fire-prone part of the world—much of their work is dedicated to understanding and mitigating the potential damage of wildfires. As she puts it, “Everyone in this part of the world has a fire story. So fire becomes a way that we can talk about some of the changes that are happening in our environment without kind of engaging in that really, politically divisive language and rhetoric.”

"Scientists need to learn about the arts and the humanities—science doesn't take place in a vacuum. And art, music, poetry, the humanities—they're all so intertwined with scientific innovations. On all fronts, understanding is greater when there is an open, interdisciplinary exchange of information."

Peter Melcher, professor of biology and former chair of the C. P. Snow Committee (2005-8),

C.P. Snow Scholar Nandini Agarwall, ’25 with Erin James. Photo Credit: Tessa Dill.

At the closing event to the lecture series, Henderson hailed that Erin’s book “Empowers us to envision different stories.” Those new stories can come from the conversations happening on the bridge between the humanities and sciences.

Nandini Agarwall, ’25 is one of two winners of the C.P. Snow Scholar award, given to distinguished students who fulfill Snow’s vision of bridging the humanities and sciences in their academic and extracurricular activities. She says the award means “curiosity and experimentation. I like looking at that and learning from that.”

Her co-awardee, Jordan Rice ‘26 says the award “validates a lot of the work that I've been doing at IC and a lot of the things that I've been learning in my life. Yeah, and it really just makes me feel like I've kind of accomplished something and that the work that I'm doing is valuable in the way that it crosses all sorts of disciplines.”

And so we ask, what is your climate change story?

Be Both Science and Humanities

IC is a campus and community of interdisciplinary thinkers. Join us to combine your passions and interests in ways only you can imagine. Start at the School of the Humanities and Sciences.

Ask Big Questions

Interested in the topics mentioned in this article? Consider a major in Environmental Sciences, Physics, Philosophy or so many more.