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Unfortunately, climate change researchers have typically sought to prove the particular through the universal rather than the other way around. I use the term universal to refer to the science-based story of global climate change; in contrast, particular refers here to stories about climate change observed or experienced on a local or at least less than global scale. From the vantage of fields such as political philosophy and behavioral psychology, both of which I will introduce into this chapter later, there are many reasons why the universalist approach which recounts the elegant, compelling, empirically-grounded story of global climate change caused by inefficient human practices is not likely to catalyze an effective response.

This is not a critique of universal stories per se, some intimation that ultimately they are not valid, inspiring or useful. In fact, universal narratives are often very compelling, suggesting solidarity around important values like justice, human rights and peace, and a shared fate in relation to far reaching challenges such as pandemic disease, extreme poverty and climate change. At the same time, however, the complexity of things like justice and peace, and of challenges like extreme poverty, is inevitably grappled within very particular contexts, in response to very particular needs and observations, and results in very particular innovations or adjustments to local values, practices, and institutions. In historical terms, universal stories typically emerge from particular ones. Christianity began, for example, as a very small cult with a highly particular account of justice, validating itself and trying to survive in the hostile, unequal and violent …