Author Archives: Hannah

On Monday I went to an afternoon of science lectures from four incredibly knowledgeable speakers. The topics ranged from climate modeling to zero carbon Britain (without a reliance on nuclear), climate negotiations on a global scale to the psychological processes of dealing with climate change on an individual scale.

One question I’ve heard asked about climate change many times over is “what will you tell your children when they ask what you did when you found out?” Well, I’d be able to tell them where I was when my primary school teacher told me that by the time I had children London would be flooded (1987, Barnet), where I was when I marched through woods with my Mum to stop them being destroyed to make way for a motorway (Oxley, 1993). I’d even be able to tell them the moment that I realised that I was certain we were all doomed (Camden, April 2007 in case you’re wondering).

But, perhaps it would be more interesting to tell them the story after I ‘found out’ once I started to understand and visualise the scale of the problem. I’d be able to tell them there was the period of two months when my colleague and I would sit in silence unable to converse because we were so depressed about the future, the argument with my flatmate about accepting funding from oil companies, getting cross with the strawberries flown in from Chili that I found nestling in my fridge, the irritation at anyone bringing a plastic bag into my house, the annoyance when people dared ask “I know it’s a problem, but what can I do” and my helplessness at the ease at which denial and science have became opposite ends of a meaningless spectrum.

Research tells me I’m not alone. The thought processes to accepting climate change are similar to how we react to loss. So here are some of the things to watch out for (friends you might recognise in a few of these stages); denial, shutting off emotions, numbing the pain with alcohol, drugs, manic activity, feeling helpless, bitter, angry, refusing to love, turning away from life. If you can find me someone who has worked in this field for longer than a year without experiencing one of those emotions, I’d give them a very big gold star and buy them a pint.

Before one can act on climate change, one has to accept some pretty big losses, not necessarily behavioural losses (turns out I can still put the heating on when I’m cold), but accepting that the planet isn’t what we once thought, resources aren’t abundant, this can lead to an anxiety that we are responsible for the loss of something beautiful. Climate change is loss. Loss of good things, loss of bad things, loss of ice, loss of flying, loss of pollution, loss of polar bears, loss.

Of course loss also happens on a local scale. We need to learn from how we get over loss on a local scale and apply it to how we react to climate change on a global scale. Today I lost my keys, I was late for a meeting, got really anxious, walked faster to get there quicker, gave my apologies and moved right to agenda item 1. Not sure how this will help with my reactions to climate change, but it’s a story to share with my therapist nonetheless.

HB
24 March 2011

I just read a fictional book called ‘The Good Man Jesus and his Scoundrel Brother Christ’ by Philip Pullman, I’d recommend it to a friend. The re-imagining of a commonly told tale, it questions the value of truth and the value of history. What does truth matter if you’re telling people the history they want to hear? It’s made up, but then so is The Bible.

The Biblical version of the (same) story benefits from enhancements of the bits they wanted us to remember, a deletion of the events they’d rather we never knew, embellishment of the heroics and quiet editing of the mistakes. The story makes sense because it’s been shaped around history to make sense. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say Jesus still dies. There’s only so much history can change.

I also watched an episode of Mad Men set in 1963 which references the then newly released Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. An expertly placed reference to what became one of the most influential texts in the creation of the modern environmental movement.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing; its easy for story tellers and TV show makers to look back on the past and ensure we have become what they predicted. Amending history is the ultimate move in creating the self-fulfilling prophecy, but remembering the truth can lead to a somewhat messier conclusion.

It makes me wonder what editing we’ll do to our own passage of time. How will we mould the truth with the hindsight of the inevitable consequences of climate change? Will we downplay the cradle-death approach of production that the industrial revolution brought us and capitalism retained? Will we erase the voices of those who warned about environmental decay, instead turn climate change into something that just happened upon us one night. What value hath truth when with history we can erase our mistakes?

But, of course, truth matters. If only so we can look back, remember just how much we fucked it up and vow to do better next time.

All this is a long preamble to the role of recording information, of retelling stories and of the value of mapping data. Next week Floda31 will be hosting workshops with students from Umeå Institute of Design. Over the course of the workshops some of the students will be interpreting and mapping data from Floda31, presenting it on this here blog.

I blinked and winter came back. The reason I know this is because it was the London film festival and I spent two weeks sat in a dark room, I enter the cinema and London is basked in autumn sunshine, I leave the cinema in winter dark. It happens every year and yet every year it’s a surprise.

It always amazes me what I continue to be surprised by; how time is going too quickly, how cold it can get, the joy of the first cup of tea of the day, the colour of the Acai leaves in my garden, how much it hurts when you stub your toe. I know these events inside out but without fail my reaction is of maiden surprise.

So I shouldn’t really be surprised by my surprise at the new Tory Government policies. But here I find myself surprised. Surprised that there can be so little regard for our nation’s forests that they can be placed in the the hands of private businesses, surprised that there can be so little regard for our nation’s health that it can be placed in the hands of private businesses, surprised that there can be so little regard for…oh, you get the point. I suppose surprise is a good emotion for at least in itself it invokes a reaction. Angry and shouty sometimes, but a reaction nonetheless.

This blog is supposed to be about sustainability, so here comes the climate bit; why aren’t we surprised by climate change anymore? It’s a global problem with global implications and yet as a population we feel more at ease reacting to a stubbed toe. It’s not as if the data or reports have stayed the same over the years, we’ve managed to go from reports on ‘mitigating’ climate change to a place where ‘adaptation’ is the best case scenario. Every day there are new reports of species loss, of climate related events and increased ice loss. Even NASA has a ticker-tape across their website indicating the latest CO2 levels. Surprised? Not in the slightest.

Perhaps we’re not surprised because we’ve never had to deal with an issue on this scale before and because the reports just keep coming. Paradoxically the ‘rules’ dictate those should be the perfect circumstances to breed surprise, but maybe surprise is reserved for events already experienced over and over again, we need to have some sort of schema to crampon our surprise to.

Climate change is too big to be surprising because it still feels unreal; what if the best approach is to stick to one fact and repeat it over and over again? Parts per million of carbon dioxide stand at 390, they need to be at 350. Surprise.

HB
15 November 2010

It’s November 2009, I’m tired, it’s been a busy year. Copenhagen UNFCC conference negotiations are on the horizon, lots of people say it’s our last big chance to get an international framework for reducing carbon emissions. Then “climategate” happens; a series of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia. Research by prominent scientists at one of the most prominent climate change research units is called into question. Quite honestly, I don’t care. I don’t read any of the news reports. Then Copenhagen happens and it’s a failure so I take Christmas off, eat lots and forget there is a world beyond afternoons spent watching old James Bond films.

Eleven months later people still reference “climategate” in conversations and I just nod along. I’m sure I’m right to assume it’s something the media has blown out of proportion, but I don’t know. I muster up the energy, I read the reports. In a nutshell, this is it:

1,000 emails, 3,000 documents hacked into and stolen from UEA server. 160mb of data. “Controversial” documents refer to emails between 4 scientists. The controversy surrounds how some of their data was used in a few reports and the fact they didn’t want to respond to FOI (freedom of information) requests.

One of the news reports noted that the leaked emails contained the line “Oh MAN! Will this crap ever end??” Jesus, if that was the worse swearword they could find they’d be in for a big fucking surprise if they ever got hold of my cocking emails.

To recap; all the controversy at a time when we should have all been focussed on getting an international framework for emissions reduction is down to 160mb of data and emails between approx 4 people. 4. Four. The number of British scientists who signed an open letter to The Times to say that in no way did any of the leaked documents effect the quality of the research/data that had been meticulously collected over decades and indicated human activities as a cause of global warming? 1700. The population of our fair planet implicated in the lack of progress at Copenhagen? 6.6 billion. 4 vs 1700 vs 6.6 billion. I’ll take the 4 please Bob.

In July 2010 an independent report concluded that The rigour and honesty of the scientists at the Climatic Research Unit were found not to be in doubt, they did not subvert the peer-peer review process, they didn’t tamper/withold temperature data (which is still available should the public wish to download it). They did say the team should have been better at handling public requests for info. The independent review is a 160 page document. So that’s that then.

I’m writing this not to prove that I was right to presume that the reporting would be overblown (although I am) but because it’s a perfect example of our uniquely human ability to put our hands over our ears, rock back and forwards and ignore the big problem. My family lived in the east end of London during the Blitz, my Great Grandmother was pissed with the Germans not because they obliterated London but because all but one of her crystal glasses was smashed during the raids. We still have that single glass.

The big picture is thus; there is no controversy, we’re putting shit into the atmosphere and the atmosphere doesn’t like it. Debate the destruction of the crystal glasses if you will but lets move along and at the speed of a slight trot rather than a slow meander.

I should note that Norfolk constabulary still don’t know who hacked into the system and stole the data, but then I’ve seen Hot Fuzz and know how rural policing works. It might take a while and it will certainly take a lot of tea.

HB
5 October 2010

I’m supposed to have been thinking of issues of sustainability to write about. Instead, I have been fighting the mosquito that bit my foot seven times until it swelled to the size of my ankle, the flying ants nesting in the garden, the bee swarm that made their home in my gas meter cupboard, the decapitated mouse found on my kitchen floor and the baby rat that now lies dead in a black bag in the bin. I live in a city, these aren’t battles I should have to fight.

None of these events have anything to do with sustainability, except that they all do. I went to an interesting talk once about the way in which we deal with issues and how far removed action is from knowledge. They had done their research; if the issue is financial we deal with it quickly. There is a direct link between what is happening in our finances and our action, neatly shown in the way the world was so quick to respond to the financial meltdown. If it is to do with our health, response rate slows down, we know smoking isn’t good for us, but we’ll give it up tomorrow. But issues of climate change and sustainability are the item on the bottom of the to-do list, the one that gets transferred onto next weeks list and eventually after three months you realise that somewhere along the way it became someone else’s problem. We have the knowledge that things aren’t quite right but we’re just not motivated to take the action.

To my pest control. I’d known there was ants in my garden and a few bees hanging out in the cupboard, but it wasn’t until I was presented with hundreds and thousands of both species that I actually did something about it. Inaction will eventually require some sort of drastic action and yet will I do it any differently next time round? I fear not.

Back to sustainability. What if we knew then what we know now about climate change? Would knowledge have changed the way in which our industries developed? Might we have focused on the sun in the sky for our energy and not the sun trapped in the ground? Or was the race to industrialise so competitive that all knowledge be damned? Appropriate action to the decisions of our forefathers is only being taken now and even then mostly in mission statements and memos and that’s in-spite of everything we know. Makes my knowledge to action pest control response seem altogether supersonic.

Issues of sustainability aren’t new but the complexity of the one we face is. This doesn’t mean it can’t be faced, it just means we have to make the line from knowledge to action somewhat shorter. History is splattered with such examples and the climate change issue is no exception with inspiring examples of incredible responses existing across the industries. Knowledge to action without so much as a nest of flying ants to be motivated by, although I suppose there is the omnipresence of those rising CO2 levels.

I’m not convinced it’ll be a Live Earth or a Copenhagen that shortens the knowledge to action line but I do have some hope that people, societies and governments will make the incremental steps that are so desperately needed but only if they have the inspiring examples to lead them there. Knowledge to action without the need for RBS to go bankrupt, again.

I just got sidetracked by another mosquito. I caught it, I killed it. This one didn’t have any of my blood in it yet so perhaps I can be taught. It would just be nice if the lesson learnt didn’t involve a swollen foot looking up at me.

HB
04 July 2010

- dedicated to my two lovely wives who also battled the pests and the brave soul who took the rat outside