Episode 91
Unleashing Imagination: How Fantasy Fiction Fights Climate Change, with children's author Laurel Colless
My guest today is Laurel Colless, a sustainability writer, kids' science fantasy novelist, and founder of the Carbon Busters Club, a climate-science adventure program for children.
With over 25 years of experience working in environmental business and journalism across Asia, the US, and Europe, she combines her expertise in sustainability and technology communications with her passion for education and storytelling.
As an Al Gore Climate Reality Leader, Laurel's work spans ESG reporting, stakeholder engagement strategies, and creating new mythologies for today’s youth that reflect the climate challenges of their generation.
🔑 Takeaways
- How Laurel uses science-fantasy to turn climate anxiety into playful wonder—and real-world action.
- The origin story behind her eco-adventure series: boarding school for climate-defenders with sea‑demon villains!
- Why kids—and grown-ups—need imaginative narratives to make sense of climate change.
- How her global journey through journalism, sustainability, and folklore informed her fiction and climate teaching.
- LaurelColless.com – Find all her books, background story, and sign-up for her newsletter
For more ways to dive deeper into tomorrow’s stories, check out vklavenes.substack.com and storiesforthefuture.com for essays, tools, and behind‑the‑scenes.
Want to be a guest on Stories for the future: Beyond the Bubble? Send Veslemoy Klavenes-Berge a message on PodMatch.
You can always find more information about the podcast and my work on storiesforthefuture.com
Mentioned in this episode:
CS short
Thanks to Creative Space for supporting this episode! Visit getcreativespace.com
Transcript
You are listening to Stories for the Future, where we break bubbles and build bridges for a better future.
Speaker A:Welcome back to another episode.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Vesla Moiklavnes Barke.
Speaker A:And today we're exploring what happens when climate science meets fantasy fiction and how storytelling can unlock courage in a generation growing up with climate change as a backdrop.
Speaker A:My guest is Laurel Colles and she has lived and worked across the globe, from Japan to Greece, from the US to Finland and beyond.
Speaker A:She has worked within investment banking, global trade, telecom, and with different sustainability partnerships.
Speaker A:Now she writes climate themed adventure books for kids that are equal parts thrilling and empowering.
Speaker A:We talk about her own eco awakening, how her characters battle monsters made of overconsumption, among other things.
Speaker A:And why kids don't need more fear, they need a sense of power.
Speaker A:You can expect mythological sea beasts, weather based villains, and a school where the world's top eco kids secretly train to fight back.
Speaker A:Let's jump in.
Speaker A:Welcome so much to the podcast, Laurel.
Speaker A:I'm so happy that you could join me today.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker A:I think you are just the perfect guest for a podcast called Stories for the Future because you are nothing less than a science fantasy fiction writer for kids.
Speaker A:And that just sounds fantastic.
Speaker A:I wish that was me.
Speaker A:It's a great title if I said it correctly.
Speaker A:Did I?
Speaker B:Yes, yes.
Speaker B:And be careful what you wish for because it's my dream life and the only way is forward.
Speaker A:I can imagine.
Speaker A:But before we go into all with your writing and your books, where are you based at the moment?
Speaker A:And maybe just because I think it's so interesting with this global perspective, where have you been living over the years?
Speaker B:So I'm just across the way from you in Helsinki, living in Finland.
Speaker B:I have a Finnish husband who I met 30 years ago in Tokyo, but I actually was born in Austria, so I was born in Australia, grew up in New Zealand, went to Europe after I finished university the way a lot of Kiwis do.
Speaker B:If anyone of your listeners know the New Zealanders, we, we travel really well.
Speaker B:And after a stint in Italy, I went back to New Zealand.
Speaker B:In those days there was a big Japan fever and everyone was studying Japanese even in primary school.
Speaker B:And Japan was, I think, the second largest trading partner for New Zealand.
Speaker B:So I thought, oh, I'll go and have my adventure in Tokyo, learn Japanese and, you know, get a great job somehow in bilateral trade.
Speaker B:So I ended up staying in Japan for 12 years, which hadn't been the original intention, but halfway through my time there, well, I got a great job.
Speaker B:I ended up working with a big corporation.
Speaker B:I spent some time in Mitsubishi Corporation.
Speaker B:I then went into investment banking in editorials, so working with writing even then, but business and economic and financial writing.
Speaker B:And then I met my Finnish husband who was posted there as a diplomat.
Speaker B:And he ended up taking me north, much further north than I had originally ever intended.
Speaker B:North to Helsinki, where I landed a great job at Nokia.
Speaker B: Right around the year: Speaker B: ically during the decade from: Speaker B:And Nokia was very much in that market.
Speaker B:And you know that that's a while ago now, but it was a very interesting place to land and obviously very exciting times.
Speaker B:And from during my time in Helsinki, I think about five, six years, my husband landed his sort of dream career position as Finnish ambassador to Washington D.C.
Speaker B:and you know, I was excited to go along for the ride.
Speaker B:And I managed to get a job at Virginia Tech doing a really interesting partnership program, actually running my own partnership, a three sector partnership.
Speaker B:It was designed to introduce Virginia Tech green technologies into the national capital region and shine a light on the climate crisis and introduce energy efficiency in the big building stock, which I think you might know is the low hanging fruit of addressing climate change in the industrial sectors, looking at modernizing large scale and medium sized buildings.
Speaker B:So I ended up there, was doing that job and then finally if I just jump quickly forward, we circled back to a posting in Athens on the way home.
Speaker B:And then my husband retired and now I'm here running a consulting business and writing these children's books.
Speaker B:But I kind of jumped ahead in the story because there was this pivot that we talked about before the show during that time in Washington, this pivot where I moved away from.
Speaker B:Well, I got fed up with the grown up world and this continuous ability to sacrifice short term gains ahead of long term change, long term things that made good business sense in the long term and for the environment.
Speaker A:I think the pivotal change is really interesting and given your background from all these parts of the world and then I'm always really curious about what exactly was it that made you do the shift.
Speaker A:Was it a personal thing?
Speaker A:Was this because I was going to mention that you're also a climate reality leader, which is Al Gore's program.
Speaker B:Yes, we share that.
Speaker A:We share that, yes.
Speaker A: And so you did that in: Speaker B:I did that mine in Turkey.
Speaker A:In Turkey, yeah.
Speaker B: , Veselimo, and I did mine in: Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And Al Gore came to Istanbul.
Speaker B:Oh, my gosh.
Speaker B:So if you speak about climate wars, this was my climate war, because it just happened.
Speaker B:It was not very propitious, but it just happened that the weekend training was coinciding with this incredible uprising in Taksim Square by the young people of Turkey.
Speaker B:And it was a massive thing.
Speaker B:And I was reminded of it recently when we saw these most recent uprisings in Istanbul around a different issue.
Speaker B:But I was tear gassed to the ground and couldn't get to my hotel, which would have.
Speaker B:I mean, the whole session was organized at the Hilton, which is right on Taksim Square.
Speaker B:So I actually booked myself a smaller hotel on the square.
Speaker B:And I was sitting in the gutter at 5am with tear gas in my eyes and an old lady putting milk into my eyes to help me see again.
Speaker B:So those were my war strikes.
Speaker B:Sorry, I'm digressing.
Speaker B:But it is quite a terrific memory because I was thinking to myself at that time, if I do become this climate warrior that I want to be, this is a great war story.
Speaker B:And in Washington D.C.
Speaker B:i had been five years.
Speaker B:What happened was we arrived at the back end of the Bush Jr.
Speaker B:Second term, so George W.
Speaker B:Bush's second term.
Speaker B:And then there was a transition into the Obama era.
Speaker B:But during that time I was running this program where we had challenged building owners in Washington D.C.
Speaker B:to come forward and sign up for this.
Speaker B:Well, we decided we wanted to get 100 buildings into this consortium and they would each do what we call energy efficiency retrofits.
Speaker B:And the idea behind the retrofits was that the money would come from third party energy efficiency financiers with whom we are also partnering.
Speaker B:And all the building owner had to do was agree and sign up, do the retrofit.
Speaker B:And all of the payments for amortizing those loans to do the retrofits would come from energy savings.
Speaker B:So it's a.
Speaker B:Do you understand this?
Speaker A:No brainer.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And it's marvelous.
Speaker B:And it's not anything new.
Speaker B:You know, it's something that I'm talking now.
Speaker B:Ten years ago we had a press release and we estimated all our avoided emissions for some 45,000 cars off the road or this kind of thing.
Speaker B:And we made a big splashy launch with these 100 buildings.
Speaker B:We got front page of the Washington Post it was quite a big deal.
Speaker B:Construction sector is kind of a laggard when it comes to, compared with say, other business sectors when it comes to addressing the climate crisis and taking measures.
Speaker B:So it was quite a big thing.
Speaker B:But then, you know, I got slowly more disillusioned because even though these building owners were talking and coming to the meetings, there wasn't a lot of progress and there was more talk and more talk.
Speaker B:And then you had building owners saying, well, you know, I might want to flip my building and we're in the middle of a retrofit, the debt would have to be sold forward, all these kind of excuses, you know, I got a little bit fed up and I started thinking if I'm serious about addressing the climate crisis and finding something meaningful to do myself as an individual.
Speaker B:I was already 50 and actually I've heard that people in their 50s, they start thinking about giving back or legacy.
Speaker B:I already had two children by then who were in the target sort of age range for the books that I started thinking about.
Speaker B:So they were 8 and 10 when I really got going.
Speaker B:And I started to think the upcoming generation is now so much is going to be expected of them because nothing is being done or not enough is being done.
Speaker B:It's bad to say nothing because people like me and you, I know, have been working tirelessly.
Speaker B:In fact, I was living in Tokyo during the time of the Kyoto conference, which was one of the very first.
Speaker B:I think it's like COP three where all the nations came together and big pledges, early stage pledges were made, which unfortunately people weren't able to keep.
Speaker B:But I remember thinking at that time, oh, we're going to do it.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:So yeah, so I made that decision and I don't know your.
Speaker B:You seem like this podcast is fairly grounded in fact based discussions, but there was a kind of a mystical thing that happened to me.
Speaker B:I'm also quite a grounded fact based person, but I had this slightly mystical experience.
Speaker B:It happened to me in Washington when I was sort of at this point of inflection and I was at home at the residence and really exhausted, you know, with two young kids, a full time job and then all of the entertainment.
Speaker B:My husband and I entertained 36,000 guests during that period of six years.
Speaker B:Oh my.
Speaker B:We got the papers afterwards, we were like, how could we have done that?
Speaker B:But I had called for or someone had recommended, I can't remember, a massage of someone who came to the home and brought their massage bed and would just give me a massage.
Speaker B:I'm like, oh please so this woman called Heather came over and we went through to this lovely quiet room at the back of the residence.
Speaker B:And she said, now, I'm a Reiki expert, but I'm just going to give you a deep tissue massage just for de stressing.
Speaker B:And she said, however, sometimes when I'm massaging, different things come up.
Speaker B:So if something comes up, like she said, I'm not a psychic, but I have trained in Reiki.
Speaker B:I didn't even really know what Reiki was at that point, but I said, of course, if something comes up, please tell me.
Speaker B:But halfway through the massage, she did say she was doing my calf muscles.
Speaker B:And she said, I'm getting something and it's quite big, it's quite important.
Speaker B:And she said that, are you doing something with children?
Speaker B:And I said, no, no, I'm working, like in a big.
Speaker B:With Virginia Tech.
Speaker B:And she said, well, I feel like you're going to work with children is quite important and you have to do it.
Speaker B:And I said, well, I've been doing these little stories and sort of thinking about it, but nothing.
Speaker B:I haven't really talked about it or thought about it.
Speaker B:And she said, everyone's saying you have to do it.
Speaker B:And I said, who's everyone?
Speaker B:And she's like, all of these guides and, you know, I don't know.
Speaker B:But she said, there's an angel up there on your head, and everyone's saying you have to do this.
Speaker B:I've thought about this that time so many times over the last 10 years where I've thought back.
Speaker B:I don't know if I believe it, but it was kind of like my call to action in a way.
Speaker A:How interesting.
Speaker B:Yeah, because, you know, you never know.
Speaker B:I just don't know.
Speaker B:I'm not about to tell any of your listeners this was a real thing and there were real angels in the room because I saw nothing.
Speaker B:But she had no way of knowing that this was what was on my mind.
Speaker B:So it was a mystical experience.
Speaker B:And I chalked it up as a kind of universal kick in the butt, maybe.
Speaker B:Yeah, go and do it.
Speaker B:If you're thinking about it, go and do it.
Speaker B:And so I'm still doing it now, and I've done four books and they're selling around the world.
Speaker B:But along the way, I made a few mistakes.
Speaker B:I did some early books that were sort of.
Speaker B:I tried to reinvent picture books as hybrid longer storytelling.
Speaker B:You know, I tried to combine picture books and chapter books, and they didn't really work out in the very first stages.
Speaker B:And I think if I hadn't had this kind of mystical, you have to go do this thing that I couldn't really explain to myself and still can't.
Speaker B:I think I might have just quit.
Speaker B:But I kept going and, you know, someone in the literature or publishing world said to me, wait till you're famous and then try and reinvent the genres.
Speaker B:Now just go ahead and find the genre that works, which is what I did.
Speaker B:I found this genre of these kind of longer chapter books for upper middle grades, ages 10 to 12 year olds.
Speaker A:10 to 12.
Speaker B:I mean, it's a bit of a reach for an eight or nine year old, but if they're a good reader, they can do it.
Speaker B:It's a kind of Harry Potter meets Enid Blyton's Famous five, if you know.
Speaker A:Yes, I do.
Speaker A:I read them when I was younger.
Speaker B:I read them when I was younger.
Speaker B:They have their faults, but what is called in the publishing world is ensemble adventure.
Speaker B:So I've created this school which is sort of a secretive.
Speaker B:It's like an international school.
Speaker B:But it's an international school meets a secret academy.
Speaker B:It's on an island shrouded in mist and the world's top eco kids get invited there.
Speaker B:So you've got kids from everywhere.
Speaker B:I'm not focusing on cultures or identities or race, but everyone's from everywhere and that's just a given.
Speaker B:And then we focus on the culture of school and the big issue, which is, well, the issue that I had to overcome, which is how do you turn climate change into a villain.
Speaker B:Into a villain, and then make it appealing to young people, young readers, while still not overwhelming them with fear.
Speaker B:So I don't know if you want to jump into that.
Speaker A:Yes, I would love to.
Speaker A:Because that balance, because that is something we hear all the time that, okay, you have to be honest with the kids.
Speaker A:They want honesty and they can read it and they can see it on television anyway.
Speaker A:But how to balance that?
Speaker A:Because eco anxiety is a thing.
Speaker A:So how do you do that?
Speaker B:Right, yes.
Speaker B:And in terms of the eco anxiety, I can still remember my own children.
Speaker B:I remember Julia, my youngest, crying before bed a number of nights in a row about deforestation and trying to think of ways to comfort her.
Speaker B:But it's scary.
Speaker B:I mean, if you hear at school about the Amazon rainforest and trees being crushed and taken down, you know, I think it's.
Speaker B:I don't know what the latest statistic is, but things like five or six football fields every minute or, you know, when you hear this, the numbers, mind boggling for children.
Speaker B:And then you Go home and you see that the grownups aren't doing much.
Speaker B:They don't seem to be aware of the urgency.
Speaker B:And then you feel a disconnect.
Speaker B:You might even feel disempowered.
Speaker B:Some children feel let down by the adult generation, but certainly they feel powerless.
Speaker B:And that's something I'm trying to address in the books.
Speaker B:And that's something I think that a lot of people are trying to address around the world.
Speaker B:The thing that has been catching my attention for the last few years is watching these class action suits against governments and against corporations, which are basically driven by children.
Speaker B:Of course, they have nonprofits and adults behind them and lawyers that are helping them with their talking points.
Speaker B:But it's kids like 9 to 18 year olds coming forward, standing up at the podium.
Speaker B:They're being given a voice.
Speaker B:And of course they don't always.
Speaker B:I mean, they don't.
Speaker B:They rarely win.
Speaker B:But they.
Speaker B:But just being there and making the point and getting the media attention.
Speaker B: fore we came here in December: Speaker B:The Montana Supreme Court, which was basically sued by a group of young people, all in that age range 9 to 18, they sued the state of Montana for promoting fossil fuels without considering the climate impacts and the impacts on future health of societies and the generations.
Speaker B:That was upheld.
Speaker B:And the Montana Supreme Court upheld the ruling affirming their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which was quite landmark.
Speaker B:There was a very big one in the U.S.
Speaker B: that kicked off in: Speaker B:yes.
Speaker B:And that one has just now been resolved.
Speaker B:And ultimately it wasn't upheld in favor of the kids, but it went for.
Speaker B:I mean, kids grew up during that 10 years.
Speaker B:And it was very high profile and probably what led many in Europe and Australia and others, that we're seeing where kids are standing up.
Speaker B:And then of course, we've also seen kids like the Greta Turnberry effect and also another young girl in Australia who was the Greta of Australia.
Speaker B:And I apologize, I'm blanking on her name.
Speaker B:But the school strikes and other things, these were ways that kids could feel empowered.
Speaker B:So in my books, there's also that underlying sense that I'm creating these situations.
Speaker B:Okay, I'm doing it with monsters, but in a fantastical setting.
Speaker B:I'm creating the environment where the child reading the book could also maybe see themselves there and feel empowered to become part of a solution or to imagine a better future just by reading the books and seeing how my characters are also often against Their better judgment sort of taking courage and standing up to these monsters.
Speaker B:And these are monsters that are not of their own making.
Speaker B:But still, as we've seen in Greek mythology or many of the mythologies, are biblical and indigenous mythologies, you often have these younger brave heroes who come in to stand up to the monster, even though it wasn't their fault or entirely of their making.
Speaker B:Many of the Greek mythologies, actually when the monster comes, it's usually some kind of punishment to a town or a city.
Speaker B:If you think of, say, Theseus and the Minotaur, he has to go to Crete to fight the Minotaur, which was somehow some kind of punishment for the town for their bad behavior.
Speaker B:So, you know, on a larger scale, I've created these monsters, which are a weaponization of weather, a demonification of overconsumption, climate change, extreme weather events, and these kids are learning how to stand up to them.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:And yeah, I guess to your readers, sorry, to your listeners, it might sound a little odd that I wanted to raise awareness of the climate crisis, but I'm writing fantasy fiction and I did have to think quite long and hard about that because I knew climate change had to be the villain, but how to do that and still not, as we talked about earlier, not overwhelm the kids.
Speaker B:So what I did was actually I was inspired by one very great writer, Salman Rushdie, who's been in the news a lot lately, and I did his masterclass in writing.
Speaker B:I didn't mention earlier that I did start my education by becoming a literary comparatist.
Speaker B:I studied, that was what I studied at university, literature.
Speaker B:And I did study medieval poetry and I read a lot.
Speaker B:And I was supposed to be a writer back then when I was 20, but instead I went off to see the world and get into business.
Speaker B:So I've kind of circled back.
Speaker A:Yes, you have.
Speaker B:And when I started writing these longer books, I knew I had to brush up and sort of catch up on writing tips and start thinking more holistically about themes and how to pull together a novel.
Speaker B:So I did Salman Rushdie's masterclass, which is available to anyone you can sign up.
Speaker B:One of the things that really stuck with me was his way of presenting his own ideas about fantasy fiction.
Speaker B:And he argues in his novels, he very often has this fantastical overlay to a story which is otherwise.
Speaker B:I mean, you could call it magical realism, but that term has been taken by the South American poets Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others.
Speaker B:This idea where you have a real world that reflects our own world, but you have this kind of magical things can happen, this fantastical overlay.
Speaker B:So that's what I've done.
Speaker B:I haven't done world building.
Speaker B:And I never like people to ask me about my world building because I don't want the readers of my books to think that I've created a world which is way over there.
Speaker A:No, this is real.
Speaker B:A version of our own world which has all its problems.
Speaker B:And these kids are going to be facing them as they grow up.
Speaker B:And then I have put this fantastical overlay which basically I created monsters.
Speaker B:And what Salman Rushdie says is that there are many ways to tell the truth.
Speaker B:The truth about how we treat each other, how we are as people, how we treat our environment.
Speaker B:And sometimes fantasy fiction can be an even better way to tell the truth.
Speaker B:Realistic fiction.
Speaker B:I was living in Greece and I took the.
Speaker B:I was studying a little bit of Greek language and I took the generic word for humankind or mankind, which is, I can't pronounce it correctly, anthropos.
Speaker B:And I put that word together with hog, English hog, which is symbolic of being greedy or no offense to pigs, you know, taking more than you need.
Speaker B:And I made anthrogs.
Speaker B:And so the generic term for all these monsters is anthrog with a capital A.
Speaker B:And the anthrogs are birthed out of garbage dumps or out of plastic pollution.
Speaker B:They come from human waste and they are smart and they hunt.
Speaker B:And the kids have to learn how to face them down so they can show up as storm.
Speaker B:In the first book, there's a Storm Lord which is orbited by these weather warriors, rainbombs and renegales, these strong, deathly killer winds.
Speaker B:So there's basically this weather war.
Speaker B:And in the midst of it, you know, if you want to.
Speaker B:I don't want kids to feel like they have to be getting any kind of education when they go into my books.
Speaker B:I want kids to think they're coming to be entertained.
Speaker B:And stories are first and foremost entertainment.
Speaker B:But you know, in the event that a child would start to look more deeply at his or her own role in the world as they read the books, that would be a bonus.
Speaker B:But basically I'm going for fast paced, high stakes adventure stories.
Speaker A:Do you think that.
Speaker A:So is one of your thoughts when you started this that if kids get knowledgeable and know about climate change, that they will kind of spread it to their parents?
Speaker A:Or is it more for them to grow up and be ready for what they will be facing?
Speaker B:Well, that's a good question.
Speaker B:You know, I think it depends on the culture.
Speaker B:But I certainly my own children, I've seen how good children are at holding their parents accountable.
Speaker B:I mean, even on small things like recycling or behaviors.
Speaker B:My daughters are thrifting their clothes now, you know, they're selling online.
Speaker B:And the circular economy is really an exciting thing for them.
Speaker B:It helps them save money and it also helps them feel good about being part of a bigger solution.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And if you think of this 15 year old standing up at the podium and suing the Supreme Court, I mean, if that isn't telling the parents, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's just really showing a gap between the action of the young people and the inaction of the older generation.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Then I don't know what it is.
Speaker B:It's a very good symbol, don't you think?
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker A:I'm curious about one thing.
Speaker A:Since you have been living in so many different places and it's like Europe, Asia, the us, Nordics.
Speaker A:Do you see any difference in the kids in the different places?
Speaker A:So I'm just thinking about like Finland where you live now, and Norway where I live.
Speaker A:Kids are growing up, being very often very comfortable.
Speaker A:And like climate change seems very far away.
Speaker A:We're not affected in that way that they would be in, for instance, actually us with all the hurricanes.
Speaker A:But also Asia and other places do see a difference.
Speaker B:Well, I wouldn't.
Speaker B:I want to be really careful.
Speaker B:This is why with these books, I've never gone there in terms of cultures or countries or naming.
Speaker B:Everyone's just kids from everywhere with their own background.
Speaker B:And so I would be reluctant to start saying, you know, and also, I mean, of course, okay, so when I came from Greece, there's a huge, huge problem with plastic pollution in Greece.
Speaker B:And so it was just such an obvious one because if you go down to the beach, it's all there in front of you.
Speaker B:I started doing something called the Carbon Busters Clubs and the books actually grew out of those clubs because I found the storytelling to be the most effective way to try to teach.
Speaker B:But we could also go down and do beach cleanups with these groups that I was organizing and really see it there.
Speaker B:And actually we were on a hydrofoil at one stage, going to an island and the whole hydrofoil got stopped and we almost drowned.
Speaker B:And they found out two hours later, after they'd sent engineers under the boat, that it was one plastic bag that had destroyed the propeller and stuff.
Speaker B:So it's everywhere in Greece and suddenly here in Finland it's not an issue.
Speaker B:So children, it's hard to tell them about plastic pollution and make them understand.
Speaker B:Having said that, my daughters are still on TikTok, especially my younger one.
Speaker B:She's still on TikTok.
Speaker B:She finds out everything that's going on with everyone.
Speaker B:And if there's a big and there are so many now everyday extreme weather events and they're very well documented by kids in their social media on Insta, there is still quite an immediacy, I would argue, for young kids to feel and experience what other kids are feeling.
Speaker A:That's true.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Always want this podcast to be really practical so when people hear about your books, they will want to know where they can find them.
Speaker A:And I also know that you are a proponent for libraries.
Speaker A:So you want people to find them in libraries, but how do you distribute?
Speaker A:And you also said something about trying to get them into schools.
Speaker A:And what's your thought about how people find them?
Speaker B:Oh, well, I mean the books basically.
Speaker B:So I'm an independent publisher now in Finland and the books are available anywhere in the world, wherever you get an online book.
Speaker B:So obviously Amazon, which is the largest platform on any of the Amazon marketplaces, either the ebook, which is which I've deliberately put very cheaply so that anyone can get it, and then the paperbacks.
Speaker B:So yeah, just if you want to make it easier, maybe you could go to my website because I would love also people to come to me with questions or discussion points.
Speaker B:And the website is my name laurelcollis.com so www.l LaurelColas.com yeah, I'll put that.
Speaker B:I don't know if you can put.
Speaker A:That in the show notes definitely.
Speaker B:But I would love to hear from people as well, kids and adults, teachers, librarians, because, you know, my heroic mission.
Speaker B:We started talking about Al Gore.
Speaker B:Al Gore came over, he taught us his presentation, the famous one that grew from the Inconvenient Truth, the movie, which he's updating all the time.
Speaker B:And he asked us at the end to come up with our own heroic goal.
Speaker B: se books as my heroic goal in: Speaker B:And that's when I really launched into them in earnest.
Speaker B:So one of the things that I talk about when people ask me where can they get the books?
Speaker B:Is that I've also made sure that my books are all available for wholesale purchase by libraries and schools and teachers and people who are maybe making commissions on behalf of others, and that is Ingram Spark.
Speaker B:Ingram Spark is quite a well known distribution retailer where you can also find, if you punch in Laurel Collis and then the three first books, you can find them on my website, I have the Stormlord Renegale Tales and then my most recent, Nights Unite.
Speaker B:Shout out.
Speaker B:Knights Unite.
Speaker B:Just two days ago.
Speaker B: y the Green Earth Book Awards: Speaker B:So that's been a real boon for me because that's my dream, to get the books into schools and into children's hands.
Speaker B:They're very science based.
Speaker B:Everything in the stories can be explained by science within the context of the books and even the fantastical elements.
Speaker B:But, you know, they have real science base as well and they can springboard very well into STEM education projects.
Speaker B:The storytelling.
Speaker A:Congratulations on the recognition.
Speaker A:That is huge.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Yeah, it feels like the kind of boost I need.
Speaker B:So it's a sort of validation or verification.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:That I'm on the right track.
Speaker B:So I'm going to keep going with book five, which is.
Speaker A:Yeah, that was my next question.
Speaker A:What is your.
Speaker A:Are you writing on book five now?
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm on book five.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I'm taking a kind of.
Speaker B:I'm taking a climate issue for each one.
Speaker B:There's a new kind of monster in the monster we just had.
Speaker B:It was a sort of leviathan style, a kind of biblical leviathan style sea beast in this one which showed up, I don't know how much Greek mythology you've read, but the story of, for example of Odysseus, when he's coming home to Ithaca, he meets this Charybnis, which is a really scary sea monster that shows up as a whirlpool.
Speaker B:And after it's finished whirling Odysseus and his sailors, it then sucks up huge amounts of seawater and spews it onto the boat to try to drown the ship.
Speaker B:So I have a version of that kind of monster, but I add an environmental twist to my monster and he has been sucking up plastic laden polluted seawater which he spews onto the children.
Speaker B:So I'm playing around with mythology, including mythology from indigenous storytelling.
Speaker B:There's so much richness already.
Speaker B:So I'm kind of becoming a myth maker.
Speaker B:But I'm drawing on all of the stories that we know, including going down into the whale's belly.
Speaker B:So in the most recent story, the kids work inside these mechanical whales that are collecting trash in the same way that a poor whale might eat plastic trash.
Speaker B:So I'm kind of using that motif, but they also go down into the belly of the whale.
Speaker B:And we've seen that many times in mythology in Fact, Jonah and the whale is the one that people who have done Bible studies will remember where he is.
Speaker B:Three days in the belly of the whale.
Speaker B:But also, in the beloved children's story of Pinocchio, the longer version of Pinocchio, Geppetto actually goes down into a whale.
Speaker B:When he's out looking for Pinocchio, he's swallowed up by a whale.
Speaker B:And Pinocchio feels so much remorse, and he goes looking for him, and he's swallowed up, too.
Speaker B:And together, he and Geppetto figure out how to get out.
Speaker B:There's a lot of version to the story, but the one I like is where they make this little smoky fire and they make the whales sneeze.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:And then they burst out.
Speaker A:I didn't know that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And Pinocchio comes out, you know, solving problems, going into the whale's belly and coming out, kind of death and rebirth motif where he gets closer to becoming a real boy after that, where he stood up to responsibilities and helped.
Speaker B:Yeah, because that's another thing, as we talked about earlier with the eco anxiety.
Speaker B:Helping helps.
Speaker A:Definitely.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Doing something.
Speaker A:Action.
Speaker A:Yes, I.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I have a question that I think I know maybe the answer to.
Speaker A:But I guess to write these books for kids, you have to have some kind of hope.
Speaker A:So for the future, are you hopeful?
Speaker A:And how do you kind of get that through in your writing?
Speaker B:Yes, because, I mean, on any level, if you're working with children, I mean, if you look at the numbers, if you look at the IPCC reports, and if you look at the way things are going in terms of countries reaching their Paris targets, I mean, we're basically fried.
Speaker B:But of course, we may not think like that because, you know, if we have children, then we have to be hopeful and we have to keep looking forward.
Speaker B:So I've kind of.
Speaker B:Well, in the writing, we have a big adventure and we face down the monster and we basically resolve it.
Speaker B:We have to.
Speaker B:So we, my characters, become part of the solution in a very empowering way.
Speaker B:Always in the story.
Speaker B:So that's something.
Speaker B:But then also looking in the real world.
Speaker B:Well, I like the way Al Gore does it.
Speaker B:Al Gore does it with his presentation.
Speaker B:I don't know if you've seen a recent one, but it's broken into three parts, and it's very effective.
Speaker B:So the three questions he asks are, must we change?
Speaker B:Can we change?
Speaker B:And then will we change?
Speaker B:And the first part must be changed, frames the whole problem.
Speaker B:You see everything.
Speaker B:Soup to nuts, the whole climate problem in graphic detail.
Speaker B:The second part can we change and then you see that we have all the solutions there.
Speaker B:I mean, even just one hour of sunshine, one hour of power from the sun is enough to power the whole world for one year.
Speaker B:We've got everything's there, we have the technologies and we know how to use them.
Speaker B:And there are more and more coming on stream.
Speaker B:So part three is will we change?
Speaker B:It all comes down to our will.
Speaker B:So I think it's very important, whoever we're talking to, children, adults, we always start to frame these solutions in a positive way and start looking sort of towards resolution that way.
Speaker B:And I started talking about the hockey stick of hope.
Speaker B:If you think of climate change and the way climate change has been presented over the last 10 to 20 years, some people are aware of the famous hockey stick graph.
Speaker B: strial Revolution in the late: Speaker B:So I decided if I take that hockey stick in terms of sort of a hope optimistic motif, we have been making pledges and going along and working as a world at least talking openly about solutions and it's been quite flat.
Speaker B:The progress and what I think is going to happen is we're going to reach some kind of a tipping point where unfortunately, where the extreme weather and the, as you spoke to your point earlier, people don't necessarily see it.
Speaker B:Life is too comfortable and it's hard to imagine what's happening over there in Pakistan when they're with the floods.
Speaker B:Although we recently in Valencia saw it firsthand.
Speaker B:One day, one month's worth or one year's worth of rain in one village came in one day, that kind of thing.
Speaker B:And people really dying.
Speaker B:And what we saw during the pandemic was real sort of life threatening day to day cases where people we knew were dying and people's businesses were failing, our supply chains around the world were melting down.
Speaker B:Whatever, you know, it was hitting everyone where it hurt.
Speaker B:And then, you know, as a world, look what happened.
Speaker B:One year we got a vaccination, everyone rallied, governments pumped money and all their best thinkers and best scientists and big business rallied and we got a vaccination.
Speaker B:So I feel like the same thing is going to happen.
Speaker B:There's going to be a sudden when we really reach the tipping point and we can't ignore it, there's going to be the spike up, but that's what I'm calling my hope hockey stick.
Speaker B:Maybe just one last thing that I've been thinking about, maybe even more lately, is that should we even really be talking about the climate crisis anymore?
Speaker B:Should we?
Speaker B:Because people just seem to freeze up or shut down.
Speaker B:And he was going through this again, the scenario.
Speaker B:Things don't look good.
Speaker B:The whole slide set was a bit of a downer until we got to the end where he said we can be hopeful in light of the fact that renewables are becoming now exponentially cheaper and easier to procure.
Speaker B:But still, what jumped out of the presentation at me, which has stuck with me, is the word CO benefit.
Speaker B:So he was showing us co benefits.
Speaker B:So even if the climate crisis didn't exist, or just say we're a person who thinks the climate crisis is a hoax, even though the last 10 years we've seen the hottest temperatures on record, that's clearly documented, wouldn't it make sense if we just started talking about these solutions and all their benefits?
Speaker B:Let's just talk about all these fixes.
Speaker B:So when you look at the science, the actions that we're taking to tackle climate change, they come with incredibly good co benefits.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:So cleaner air, better health.
Speaker B:So safer cities, stronger local economies, energy security for all.
Speaker B:Why don't we just talk about that stuff?
Speaker B:Not about the government wants you to stop eating steak, or your neighbor says you shouldn't drive your car, or you may not go on holiday this year.
Speaker B:None of this kind of negative.
Speaker B:Stop shouting emergency and just start talking about great ways that we can change our behavior in our home life or in our businesses or even among our decision makers at political levels.
Speaker B:Just start doing new things that are going to bring lasting benefits.
Speaker B:Talk in a more positive way.
Speaker A:I so agree with you because I feel often that I have actually stopped saying, not so much at least, that I work or focus on sustainability and climate.
Speaker A:And I try to say instead focusing on future fluency or a better future or work towards a better life for everybody.
Speaker A:And I also experienced that when having.
Speaker A:That was when I did the climate reality talks, actually, that when I talk to people who were not necessarily agreeing on the urgency of climate change, if I framed it in a different way, talking about exactly what you said there, the co benefits of health and cleaner air and all that that people can't disagree with, it's a lot of.
Speaker B:What can you say?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I think you're onto something really important.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I like that.
Speaker B:Future fluency.
Speaker B:How do you use that?
Speaker B:And also the name of your show, it's got a nice futuristic, well, hopeful feel to it, doesn't it?
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Well, this was great.
Speaker A:And I will put all the links that you shared in the show notes so that people can find the books and hopefully also in libraries and if.
Speaker B:You know any 9 to 12 year olds.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because it's funny with the books when I'm shining light on over consumption, it feels bad to say buy my book.
Speaker B:So I, you know, I would love people to talk to their local libraries or school libraries and see if they can get some ordered.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that we can share.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:And maximize our resources.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I think the work that you do is fantastic and I want to be like you.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, you're too kind.
Speaker A:That's it for today.
Speaker A:Laurel's mix of realism, myth and mission really hit home for me.
Speaker A:And I hope it gave you some fresh ideas, too.
Speaker A:For more future friendly content, reflections and tools for change, you can click come hang out on my substack vclovness.substack.com or check out everything I do at storiesforthefuture.com and of course hit follow if you haven't already.
Speaker A:I will be back next week with more interesting guests and in between, I have my quiet Pivot miniseries coming already this Monday.
Speaker A:Talk to you soon.
Speaker B:Sam.
