At the end of the movie, the hero figures out that, in his words "we don't need you, you need us!", and the ants rise up to overthrow their overelords.  All from the Disney Liberation Front.

but the most relevant genre, it seems to me, is the horror flick, or monster flick.  It's just like global warming/peak oil/etc.: an individual/group of people find out that there is a threat, nobody believes it for the first half of the movie, then people finally believe the heroes, and the rest of the movie is about defeating the monsters.  Except we are all in the first part of the movie, and instead of a way cool monster, there is the banality of unconscious economic growth.

I can't say I've mastered this yet, but three resources that I've found very  useful are:

Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots. A long read, so dip in or read the reviews. He argues that there are basic archetypal stories - rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; the hero as monster; rebirth and so on - which fulfil psychological needs and which form the basis of much of our literature, films etc.

Steve Denning's stuff on storytelling in organisations or see a related UK site  
www.storytellinginorganisations.org.uk/

And the work of Chris Rose, who used to be Director of Campaigns at Greenpeace UK and now advises on communication and campaigning. He stresses the need to tell stories of good and evil, with heroes and villains. He has a website www.campaignstrategy.org/ which is full of good tips.

He argues that the emotion-heavy soft touch campaign commercials are able to gain support from voters based on appeals outside of reason.  The goal is not to emulate these commercials, but to have the dialog (needs to be two way) between candidates/issues and the public to be carried out in a different medium.  He argues that the newspapers worked better because it was in print and people could write back.  Radio was not so good.  TV is horrible.  But the internet, and blogs, in particular, are a big step in the right direction.

Not sure what to do about it.

grist.org

But Grist could certainly run a pro-environment story contest, providing space for short-short stories (under 1000 words), short stories of up to X000 words, and longer works (short novels).  Provide the server space, arrange for some of the many gifted Seattle-based authors to make the picks, give away some prized (how about some BIKES and electric scooters this time, not damn hybrid SUVs).

The 5% Project

It just means fitting political reality into a coherent narrative with a recognizable arc and recognizable characters. For instance, the Bush administration sold the Iraq war by telling a story: a bad man was amassing weapons, getting ready to share them with our enemies, but by acting quickly we could defeat him and replace his empire of evil with a democracy of freedom.

It was nonsense, of course, but the point is, it was a compelling story. It's something that resonates with everyone, even people with no understanding whatsoever of the empirical details or policy implications.

We ought to be able to tell a compelling story about how humanity can free itself from dumb, brute force industry and learn to live smarter, cleaner, more pleasant lives, lives that enrich rather than depleting the earth's web of life.

Obviously I suck at this stuff, but somebody needs to do it.

grist.org

"Practice, practice, practice."

DR, I get the difference between telling stories and creating compelling meta-narratives.  But perhaps rather than throwing up your hands and saying "somebody really oughta" you could use the platform to provide people with opportunities to practice the arts.  Storytellers are made, not born.

The 5% Project

It could be green oxygen supporting all life or purple hydrogen sulfide suffocating all life.

But the happy ending is the second half -- wind farms, solar panels, and electric cars.  Forests and polar bears.  The snowmen survive.

Think we could flesh it out and plug it to Disney or Pixar?

Then there is Story, as in the story we are telling ourselves as we do what we do. Daniel Quinn has a lot to say about that. So does George Lakoff.

Our stories shore up our Story. We listen to the stories that support what we are telling ourselves as our Story. But stories can also shift the Story, I believe, if it's done right. That's an epic task, and one that needs doing greatly. I only have the vaguest notion about how to go about it.

Eat what you grow, grow what you eat