Green Writing: Embedding Climate, Nature, and Sustainability in Film and Television

Abstract

Climate change increasingly affects every aspect of contemporary life, yet it remains largely absent from mainstream television and film narratives. While climate communication has often focused on engaging audiences through explicit information or advocacy, comparatively little attention has been given to the role mainstream storytelling can play in reflecting the realities of climate change. This qualitative study draws on document analysis, industry roundtables, and semi-structured interviews with screen industry practitioners to examine the principles and strategies used to integrate climate, nature, and sustainability into mainstream storytelling. Across both the document analysis and practitioner discussions, climate was consistently understood not as a genre, but as an ordinary feature of contemporary life that should be reflected across character, conflict, world-building, and narrative rather than positioned as the defining subject of a story. These approaches were understood to create the conditions under which audiences become more willing to engage with climate while expanding their capacity to imagine different futures. These findings contribute to the emerging field of climate storytelling by documenting how practitioners are integrating climate, nature, and sustainability into mainstream storytelling in ways that reflect the realities of climate change and help create the cultural conditions for change.