The Shift with Melissa Fleming: On hope as the antidote to climate doomism
In The Shift, UN Live's thought leaders explore how music, art, media, and even everyday spaces—from stadiums to dinner tables—can become stages for more connection, inspired empathy, and collective action. In today's Q&A, Katja Iversen, UN Live CEO, speaks with Melissa Fleming, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, on how hope, storytelling, and popular culture can become powerful tools for driving climate action and fostering global empathy. Read along as she shares how communication strategies can transcend statistics—inviting us to envision a brighter future, embrace solutions over doom, and rediscover the human stories that move us to act.
It's time to rethink—and imagine the futures we want to create.
Q: At The Museum for the United Nations - UN Live, we know the power of culture in driving positive change. Could you share any examples of how you have seen popular culture really move hearts and minds in a positive direction? Maybe a specific moment, initiative or campaign that made a big impact?
Popular culture inspires people. And, crucially at this alarming moment for our troubled world, it inspires people to act. Big stars and influencers are not only experts at grabbing our attention, they are skilled at fostering empathy and ultimately, moving us to intervene on behalf of people in need. That’s why we’re drawing on celebrity partnerships to engage with audiences who, like us, believe we need to Act Now for peace, dignity and equality on a healthy planet. That has always been the thinking behind our UN Goodwill Ambassadors and UN Messengers of Peace, who act as the human face of global challenges. Most recently our celebrity partners have been helping us drive action via the UN’s flagship Act Now campaign. Emphasizing the power of individual action for a better tomorrow, the campaign has already recorded 25 million actions globally.
Our collaborations with TV and Hollywood studios have helped us reach huge global audiences. For example, we asked stars of global hit shows such as Shark Tank to make public statements supporting action for a better world. Shared on streaming sites and social media, messages like these have reached hundreds of millions of viewers in more than 50 countries in 20 languages and led to a surge of actions recorded via the Act Now platform. This is just one way in which we’re harnessing the power of popular culture to drive positive change.
Q: As someone deeply involved in global advocacy and communications, what do you think is the most important message humanity needs to hear today if we want to create lasting change? Particularly with climate change and global inequality in mind, what do we need to focus on?
The most important message for humanity right now is hope. I’ve long felt, and this is backed by social science, that too much doom and gloom causes audiences to switch off. That’s especially true when it comes to the climate crisis, which often feels overwhelming for so many. For too long, those with a vested interest in delaying climate action have been exploiting this, spreading “doomist” narratives to make it seem as if there is less public demand for action than the global polling suggests. But that’s a total distortion. The truth is the vast majority of people on earth want urgent climate action. We have the solutions at our fingertips, what we need now is political will. That’s why, at the UN, we’re offering an antidote in the form of some much-needed hope. Our Verified for Climate initiative offers stories grounded in science and solutions to counterbalance the narratives of denialism, doomism, and delay. Instead of highlighting overwhelming challenges, we’re inviting people to envision a better future – one that is both bright and possible.
Q: In your role at the United Nations, you’ve helped shape narratives around urgent global issues. How do you think popular culture can be used to shift public perception and foster empathy—especially when it comes to humanitarian crises and climate action?
Soaring humanitarian needs and the spiraling climate emergency are just some of the many urgent global issues facing our world. Yet for many, the impacts of all these problems are far removed from their lives, both in time and space. For others, issues like climate change can simply feel overwhelming, too big, too complicated or too political. Either way, they often simply switch off. This points to a big problem for communicators. If audiences are no longer listening, how can we get them to care – and ultimately to act? Popular culture is one answer. Engaging with audiences via actors or sports stars, we meet people where they already are, sharing relatable stories and constructive solutions, raising unheard voices, and showcasing people and communities doing the right thing. In this way, popular culture can be a powerful tool to rebuild trust in institutions, spark engagement and constructive public discourse — even on thorny issues such as the climate crisis – while rekindling the empathy needed to build public pressure and drive urgent action.
Q: With your experience in global advocacy, what do you think is the best way to connect people across cultures and regions? How can we create a shared sense of responsibility and urgency when it comes to addressing global challenges?
Centralized messaging only gets us so far. To engage people, we have to meet them where they are, on the platforms they use, in their own languages. That’s why we build networks of partners and community leaders who can communicate messages in local languages and cultural contexts. We gained a lot of experience with this during the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, our urgent priority was to get everyone on board to limit the spread of a deadly disease. But audiences were also being exposed to a flood of misleading and false content that was undermining the public health response. We responded with grassroots campaigns. For example, our Verified initiative ran a campaign in a South African township called Khayelitsha, where crowded living conditions were driving the spread of COVID. We recruited local role models – DJs, sports stars and others – to help share how people could help the community stay safe. We’re now applying similar grassroots storytelling tactics to the climate crisis. Our localized campaigns are engaging a wide range of audiences on climate impacts and the energy transition, from indigenous communities in Brazil to faith groups in Indonesia.
Q: As global crises continue to grow, how do you think communication strategies need to evolve to encourage collective action? How can we foster empathy and solidarity across different communities and nations?
Global needs are growing at an extremely alarming rate. This, at a time when UN agencies, along with many humanitarian and development NGOs, are facing severe cuts that will have very concrete and very dramatic consequences for the people we serve. Yet when we try to express the scale of humanity’s needs we run into a problem, something I’ve been grappling with throughout my career: the numbing power of numbers. The sad truth is that the statistics of global human suffering often leave us cold. Worse still, it seems the larger the figures, the less they move us to act. As social scientist Paul Slovic says: “the more who die, the less we care.” Or, as a popular saying has it: “statistics are human beings with the tears dried off.”
There is a solution to this too: relatable human stories. Psychologists say it is far easier for us to relate to a single person’s story than a number. This means that, as global crises grow, our job as communicators will be to flesh out the statistics with stories that break through the noise and breathe life back into the numbing numbers. We’ll need to do all this while continuing to pursue the other tactics I’ve outlined: strengthening community networks, moving away from the framing of global challenges as overwhelming problems, and providing concrete examples of solutions and the ways people can contribute.
We extend our sincere gratitude to Melissa Fleming for sharing her reflections and insights with us, guiding the conversation on how hope, storytelling, and popular culture can reconnect us to each other and inspire urgent action for our shared home on this planet.