Kira Liu: The Power of Storytelling as a Tool to Combat Climate Change

For a global problem, how often do we neglect climate change’s impact on individuals? Even if we may acknowledge how monolithic, how enveloping our problem really is, the way we traditionally think about climate change lends itself well to compartmentalization. Our heads struggle to conceptualize the extent to which industry pollution, or even our own carbon footprints, affect anything except for problems far removed from our lives. Kira Liu, Senior Community Engagement Coordinator at Climate Generation, recognizes this as a problematic way to view our most existential problem—it lacks that ultimate catalyzer, the human heart. She works to draw together communities—urban and rural—by using a tool embedded in our nature to bring together the head and the heart: storytelling. When we share our climate-related vulnerabilities with our neighbors, from hearing their Khmer-American bedtime stories, to how their solar company was inspired by the passing of their brother, climate change travels from the farthest stretches of the world to our own communities.

Kira’s own climate story begins in Boston, Massachusetts, or rather, its Wingaersheek and Crane beaches. There, peering into the tidepools, basking in the sun, and listening to the waves fostered in her an interest in biology at a young age. She pursued that interest at Saint Paul’s Macalester College until she took her first environmental studies class. This push away from the hard sciences into people-oriented classes like Environmental Justice introduced to her a lot of local environmental problems in the context of injustices to marginalized communities. Upon graduating in 2017, she worked a brief position at the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Department, where she educated the community on issues like water quality, before joining the Minnesota GreenCorps with her worksite at Climate Generation. After working there in her GreenCorps position for a year, Kira was hired on with her current position.

Climate Generation is a Minnesota-based non-profit founded in 2006 by educator and former polar explorer Will Steger. Climate Generation’s mission as a whole is to empower individuals and their communities to engage in solutions to climate-related issues. Rather than discuss climate change through a scientific lens, Climate Generation hopes to discuss these issues on a personal, more tangible level in order to ground them in a more accessible way.They achieve this by providing educators with teaching solutions for climate change and partnering with high school-age students seeking to mobilize and take action against climate issues in their communities. In a way that honors Steger, Climate Generation places a large emphasis on the importance of storytelling. Rather than discuss climate change through a scientific lens, Climate Generation hopes to discuss these issues on a personal, more tangible level in order to ground them in a more accessible way. Many people typically conceive of climate change as entirely scientific and far-removed, and it is often difficult to make a personal connection this way. However, everyone has their own climate change-related story whether or not they realize it as being climate change-related. People can use these stories to reach those less familiar or less on board with climate change, as well as to reach representatives and others in positions of power.

Much of Kira’s work at Climate Generation centers on the issue of climate justice. Even though climate change is regarded by many as the single most existential threat to humanity in the 21st Century, many do not acknowledge that low-income communities, communities of color, and Indigenous peoples experience the brunt of the impact despite contributing the least to its effects. Factors like systemic racism predispose these underprivileged communities to vulnerable health conditions that a warming climate exacerbates through increases in temperature. Lower quality infrastructure and the lack of a safety net renders these populations more vulnerable to extreme weather events like hurricanes or wildfires. Climate change is also an issue that operates on large spatio-temporal scales and is deeply embedded in the structures of our society. By using personal anecdotes about social justice issues and the environment, Kira and her team at Climate Generation add to climate change discourse through an environmental justice lens. This non-traditional, human-centric approach to climate justice advocacy is a great way to persuade people who struggle to relate the conceptual, scientific framing of climate change to their lived experiences. The work that Kira, Climate Generation, and many others are doing is fundamental to rectifying our society’s overreliance on harmful, unsustainable practices that create unequal outcomes and damage livelihoods.

Among Climate Generation’s many wonderful stories, a few of Kira’s favorites are those of Liz Lat, Bob Blake, and Ben Passer. Liz recalls the bedtime stories her parents would tell her as a child about life under the Khmer Rouge, as well as her own youthful memories of Minnesota weather as a first-generation Khmer-American. Bob’s is a touching story about the passing of his brother and his resultant journey navigating being a surrogate father, founding a solar company, and taking on issues of climate change as a member of the Red Lake tribal nation. Ben’s is a heartfelt story about growing up mixed-race in an all-white family in conjunction with environmental and social justice issues in the Twin Cities. Each of these stories demonstrates a clear connection between personal identity and place. Our connection to the environment shapes our lived experiences and molds us into who we are as individuals. Climate change threatens this connection, so understanding this threat, communicating it to others, and coming together to mitigate it is increasingly important.

In addition, Kira has helped run the youth program at Climate Generation, where she has connected with students and communities across Greater Minnesota. This was certainly eye-opening for her, as it was the wake of the Trump presidency and the first time she had spent in a conservative rural region whose views on climate change sharply differed from those of the communities in which she grew up. She learned that Each local community presents its own challenges, and their unique stories can provide for climate solutions, even in traditionally unreceptive areas.each local community presents its own challenges, and their unique stories can provide for climate solutions, even in traditionally unreceptive areas. She allied with many students who pledged to use their own personal climate stories to navigate tough conversations with climate-denying parents and Line 3-supporting community members. Climate Generation also partners with local park organizations and chapters from other non-profits, like MN350, the Sierra Club, and the 100% Campaign, to host climate change-themed events and build community resilience.

Climate Generation’s stories have been collected and shared on local and state-wide levels, and have even reached international audiences. The project Kira feels most proud of to date is the publication of the collection Eyewitness: Minnesota Voices on Climate Change, a book inspired by the work of Terry Tempest Williams. Eyewitnessis full of diverse student, artist, and activist perspectives from around Minnesota, telling the full story of how various communities are coping with global warming. Earlier this year, Kira helped plan an event for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day to distribute copies of the book to every legislator on the Saint Paul Hill until the COVID-19 pandemic forced a hair-pin turn to a virtual storytelling slam. It garnered over 1,000 participants, including some from outside of the United States. This success has crossed over to virtual Climate Generation workshops as well, opening up an avenue for future climate justice organizing. Plans to share Eyewitness with legislators continue, now with letters from each district’s constituents attached to their representative’s copy.

Since George Floyd’s murder on Memorial Day, 2020 and the subsequent international protests in support of Black lives, Climate Generation has incorporated a stronger component of racial justice in their work. As Kira notes, storytelling reveals these systemic problems and communicates them in an approachable way to people in positions of power. It challenges the unjust reality in which the greatest burdens are placed on BIPOC communities, who have been historically excluded from climate decision tables. As media and Presidential Debates address global warming more frequently now than in the last 20 years, Kira works to ensure that racial justice follows climate change in the same sentence.

Even though Kira is relatively new to the environmental justice movement, she still holds an inspiring vision for the future: one with activism ranging from the federal level down to the local; one where students address climate justice not just in science class, but also English, social studies, and art; and one where root problems for each individual community have been properly addressed. For Kira, the best advice for other budding climate activists is to jump in and start branching out and making connections. There are many amazing organizations, especially in the Twin Cities, that are looking for support in resolving climate issues. Lending a hand to the various local causes is a great way to develop leadership skills, learn important lessons for the future, and meet like-minded individuals who are similarly invested in climate-related issues. Additionally, building broad networks among organizations and individuals helps to elevate the stories of the most marginalized communities and empowers them to inform solutions and actions.

Our interview with Kira was an enlightening experience—in reflecting on our discussion, we both started thinking about our own climate stories. Seeing as Kira is not too far removed from taking her own Environmental Justice class at Macalester, we began wondering about our lived experiences and what compelled us to be so interested in the environment as to take this class. In a world where issues of science are increasingly politicized, we reflected on our struggles in discussing pertinent issues like climate change with our often skeptical relatives, peers, and representatives. After conducting this interview, we gained a sense of clarity that perhaps we were trying too hard to sell the conceptual arguments of science, rather than the cherished memories of our lived experiences in relation to the environment. After all, each individual has their own climate story about our beautiful planet, and we should share it from the heart.