There was a recent report from a British organization that monitors how the media covers climate change. After looking through hundreds of articles they saw that there were several ways of presenting climate change; two of the big ones were what they called “climate porn” and “small actions”.

Now climate porn certainly sounds the most exciting – and it is! The authors of the report describe it as the anxious thrill we get as we watch models of the oceans swallowing Florida, or hear that the entire American breadbasket could turn into a desert. Even more so, the language used in these stories in pure sensation: it’s the end of the world.

Very exciting stuff, and what usually happens is you get a quick thrill and shut off the television or put down the magazine.

That kind of presentation has the potential to make the crisis of climate change seem so huge that it becomes part of the realm of fantasy; the result is deflated apathy. And then, once the show is over – and it certainly needs some helpless victims being washed away by a flood of some sort – there comes the next feature: How to make a difference.

Unfortunately, the British authors go on to say that the language of this presentation – the “what you can do” part – seems to be on an entirely different scale. What can you do about Florida going under water and Europe freezing over? Why, buy more energy-efficient light bulbs, of course! This is the talk of “small actions” – it’s the message that we can all make a difference with our individual, carbon-saving choices – and in many ways it seems totally inappropriate when joined with the doom and destruction of climate porn.

So, how do we work with these two stories – the end of the world, and the strange idea that we can save the world (collectively) by taking many small actions? The disjunction between the two ways of thinking could be very depressing.

The British researchers say that one simple solution is to find a middle ground: Talk about the potential impacts of climate change in a straightforward and fact-based way, and “inject great energy” into how we present solutions.

I think there is also an interesting comparison to be made here between the language used to describe this climate challenge and the talk about the threat of nuclear annihilation in the cold war. In those days the scale of the problem was the same – the “end of the world” – and the solutions were also seemingly ridiculous: “hide under your desks.” And yet at some point a movement grew that saw the possibility of a world where America and the Soviet Union could begin to dismantle their nuclear arsenals. This movement saw the end of the arms race, and it grew step by step, protest by protest, petition by petition, until it actually began to influence the policy of governments.

Although today we are still in the process of stepping back from the Nuclear Age—and there are still many steps to be taken to rid the world of the danger of nuclear weapons—enormous progress has been made. I think in some ways, in the late 1960’s, it would have been hard to imagine the changes that have come about 40 years later.

So too are the possibilities with climate change. There is a potential for a movement to grow, light bulb by light bulb, that does begin to match the energy and scale of the problem. One might say that choices about light bulbs can lead to choices about the cars we drive and the homes we buy, and those choices, multiplied by the millions, begin to set a new standard for government policies about how we produce energy and the standards we set for ourselves and other nations. Most importantly, the language we use to describe the urgency of those solutions will grow in force – and that is pretty motivating stuff!

Read more about the British media research: