Exploring a Post-Woke Cultural Strategy on Climate

For decades, the environmental movement has worked to expand public awareness of and belief in the climate crisis, based on the belief that if enough of us really understood the problem we would take action. Collectively, we are finally beginning to wake up. But it turns out that simply knowing and caring about the problem isn’t enough to catalyze the changes we need. In fact, a life-threatening ecological crisis continues to accelerate, despite the many “solutions” now at our fingertips. What we need now is not more information about the problem, or even more solutions. What we need is support for actually embarking on a process of profound and disruptive societal change. 

As we stand on the threshold of a radical transformation in our way of life--a cultural transformation, by definition—creativity and culture has much to offer us. This essay suggests that now is the time for those of us working at the intersection of culture and the environment to develop and deploy “post woke” cultural strategies for supporting a just transition, and offers some ideas—and examples—of what this could look like. Download the pdf and READ ON...