While Hollywood productions are becoming more climate-aware, both on-screen and behind the scenes, one area continues to elude the industry: the intersection between food and the environment.
Over three days of panels, plant-based food-fueled chats, and oat-milk coffee creamer optimism earlier this month, the Hollywood Climate Summit showcased how powerful narratives can reimagine a world where green is the norm.
With an impressive showcase of actors, filmmakers, creators, scientists, activists and journalists, we heard examples of emotionally grounded and collectively envisioned stories that are cutting through polarisation, inspiring action, and shifting public consciousness, at a time where we need them most.
But when it came to food, the storytelling still felt stuck in the “eat less meat” montage. While the energy crisis is increasingly seen as a systemic, structural issue shaped by policy and power, food is too often treated as a matter of personal choice or lifestyle branding.
Here are some of my takeaways from the conference, a pledge for why food needs its own storytelling revolution and how it can learn from the rise of climate content in Hollywood. If we want to change how we eat, grow, and distribute food, we need stories that move beyond the plate and into the systems that shape it.
The importance of storytelling through entertainment in today’s political context
The Hollywood Climate Summit took place against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile political environment for climate action. Just days before the event, President Donald Trump unveiled a domestic policy agenda that proposed rolling back clean energy tax credits, and only months earlier, his administration directed the Department of Agriculture to remove all mentions of climate change from its communications.
This shift to the right is not just being seen in politics, but in the media too. Evlondo Cooper from Media Matters spoke of research his company did showing that nine of the top 10 shows with the most following lean right, including podcast, YouTube and others – accounting for 480 million followers, five times more than left-leaning shows.
In the halls and the lobby, the mood of conversations reflected the stakes: filmmakers worried about shrinking funding pools, journalists and creators questioned what they could safely say, and activists feared for their security and the risk of losing hard-won ground.
In this context, storytelling through entertainment media emerges as a crucial platform for covering the climate crisis. As academic research has long shown, entertainment can be a persuasive tool in social and behavioural change. Filmmaker Dustin Lance Black captured this power onstage, telling the audience, “Aim for the heart first. If you can identify an emotional story that moves, the heart will help change the mind.”
The summit featured a number of examples of entertainment media stepping up to reach audiences on polarised topics. Grey’s Anatomy was praised for weaving storylines about climate, abortion, and healthcare access into its long-running show with characters viewers already know and love.
Actor Tonatiuh talked about playing the role of a gender non-conforming character in the TV show Vida and being able to add nuance to the representation. These character-driven stories offer a way for audiences to empathise and engage with polarised issues through the lens of an individual.
Throughout the conference, telling compelling personal stories emerged as a key strength in helping to connect with audiences on complicated topics. In the panel ‘Why Are We Consuming This?; comedian Tig Notaro shared how her journey to veganism, motivated by her health battles, informs her comedy and helps audiences connect to her choices with empathy. She encouraged other storytellers to identify their “North star, their reason that drives them every day”.
Similarly, TK Pillan, advisor to Beyond Meat and founder of Veggie Grill, talked about his mother’s impact in shaping his passion for a plant-based reform to our food system.
While these personal stories are vital in drawing audiences in and offering a human entry point to complex issues, to achieve systemic change, storytelling must also address the systems that shape those choices. There was a particular lack of stories that focus on the huge power imbalances and structures that distort our food systems.
As Pillan put it when speaking about the meat industry: “We have to tell the story. We have to win the narrative. We need everyone’s help because we’re fighting a big, huge, entrenched competitor.” To truly shift the food system, we need narratives that move beyond the personal and confront the structural forces at play.
Almost all panels came back to the question of funding. Aisha Becker-Burrowes, co-founder and co-executive director of Feminist, a non-profit media company, said we both “need more risk-takers within those institutions and more funders who are willing to fund these projects both within and outside of the walls of traditional platforms”.
When it comes to storytelling to reimagine a new system, food is still playing catch-up
‘Climate storytelling’ was a phrase repeated through nearly every panel at the summit. I asked some of the filmmakers who were HCS veterans, there since its inception five years ago, and they noted how the evolution of this concept is helping to position climate as a core narrative in storytelling, making it more accessible to mainstream audiences. While it’s difficult to track this shift without comprehensive data, the growth of the conference and climate storylines in mainstream media indicates its impact.
Central to ‘climate storytelling is a reimagining of a future that works in tandem with nature. The panel ‘Plot Twist: Earth’s Epic Comeback Story’ invited the audience to imagine our favourite place 120 years from now – encouraging us to see a place thriving in a regenerative, nature-centred future. Jeff Hermann, producer of The Wild Robot, spoke about the role entertainment might play in identifying ‘nature-based solutions’ in entertainment media.
And this ambitious vision for a nature-based future did not just play out on-screen. Aru Shiney-Ajay, Executive Director of the Sunrise Movement, talked about how this vision has been translated into policy through the Green New Deal. A positive vision for the future is “at the heart of how we can have a solution to the climate crisis”.
Storytelling centring ethical and healthy food systems is still elusive. While a few panellists like Grey’s Anatomy actor Alexis Floyd called for “clean food access” to play a bigger role in entertainment media plots, full-blown examples of food systems being reimagined for a just, sustainable future were non-existent.
Some of the most compelling food storytelling came from outside the Hollywood storytelling space. On social media, educator Alexis Nikole Nelson, the Black Forager, invites her audience to reconnect with the land around them and take part in the food system by foraging. Project Drawdown’s session ‘Climate Heroes in Your Neighborhood’, local organisations like Crop Swap LA, Support + Feed, and the New Roots Institute showcased their community-rooted food system change work.
In the corporate world, Pillan and Thomas Kraft, founder of VGAN Chocolate, spoke about redefining what “food satisfaction’ tastes like, and reimagining how that could be plant-based.
We have all the tools to tell better food change stories. What’s missing is the same storytelling infrastructure that climate is beginning to build across the industry: one that connects personal narratives to political vision and inspires systemic change.
Content creators are driving action
One of the most telling features of this year’s Hollywood Climate Summit was the sheer number of digital creators, not just on stage, but in the audience too. Their presence is reflective of a deeper shift – traditional gatekeepers of news and cultural narratives are losing ground to social media platforms and a new generation of storytellers who build direct, trusted relationships with their audiences.
This wasn’t just perceived as a threat to the industry, but rather as a call to collaborate across sectors. Where Hollywood can produce beautiful, emotionally resonant stories that shape public discourse, creators have the power to translate that resonance into action.
Take Nimay Ndolo, a software developer and content creator who makes hilarious and raw content on fashion, AI, climate and more. “People follow me because they want to be entertained, first and foremost,” she told me in an interview at the conference. She built her initial following by creating content about the issues that interested her most.
But as her platform grew, so did her sense of responsibility. “I have to ask myself, will this add something constructive? Will it help the conversation, or take away from it?” She said.
When she thinks about the outcomes of her channel, she wants people to be entertained (how could they not be), but she also wants to create space for informed, actionable dialogue. “I want [my viewers] to be more proactive, whether it’s calling their senator or creating a voting plan.”
Nimay is not alone; creators like her have been gathering followings in the millions while discussing the news and political issues in a way that’s entertaining and engaging for audiences.
Turning attention into action is a theme that was echoed by Becker-Burrowes. Social media, she argued, isn’t the endgame; it’s the entry point.
“For us, it’s understanding that we’re building a multichannel ecosystem. It’s pointing people to the books they need to read, pointing people to our website, our newsletter or getting them to come to an event,” she said. Their strategy is clear: meet audiences where they are, then help them go deeper.
What these creators understand is that storytelling isn’t just about information; it’s about entertainment, trust, clarity, and momentum. In a fractured media landscape, they are becoming essential bridges between awareness and action.
So, where to from here?
To truly shift culture, and systems, we need more than a good story. We need collaboration. Climate storytellers have shown us what’s possible when scientists, filmmakers, policy advocates, and activists align on a shared narrative. Food needs the same ecosystem – chefs, farmers, content creators, food justice organisers, and screenwriters working together to connect the dots between personal experience and political urgency.
Because food is a climate issue. It’s also a labour issue, a racial justice issue, and a public health issue. But to the average viewer, it’s still mostly a cooking show or a guilt-inducing PSA about meat. That has to change.
Hollywood is trying to reimagine a green future. If we want that future to feed everyone fairly and sustainably, we can’t leave the food system out of the frame. The stories we tell today will shape the systems we build. It’s time food got the main character energy it deserves.
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This post was originally published on Green Queen.