Dear friend,

The fight against climate change is already as hard as it is but it doesn't just mean fighting natural elements. Turns out, it doesn't even mean just fighting big conglomerates, trying to change government policies or trying to convince people that what we're doing to our planet is destroying it. For some people, being a climate activist means putting your own and your loved ones' lives in danger. Latin America is one of the most dangerous places for climate activists, especially women. Read this excellent piece from Open Democracy on the challenges women activists in Latin America face in their fight against climate change.

Berta Cáceres solidarity rally, Honduras 2016. Photo: Flickr/Daniel Cima/CIDH. CC BY 2.0.

If we want to stop humanity from destroying the living planet we need to start thinking beyond the current time and beyond borders. SpaceBuzz is an organisation that is aiming to do both. It's based on the idea of the 'overview effect', something that astronauts who see the earth from outer space experience, that allows them to see it as a "fragile ball of life". SpaceBuzz's mission is to give this experience to as many children so that they will grow up not taking the earth for granted. We talked with Spacebuzz's founder Hidde Hoogcarspel to see where Spacebuzz is headed (other than to infinity and beyond).

Would you like to read this newsletter in the comfort of your own inbox? Sign up 👉 and receive it every Saturday.

More Stories

Creative agencies across the world claim commitment to fight climate destruction

Solutions

Written by
Deniz Gulsoken

on
17 July 2019

"In May 2019, the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion pointed their attention to the advertising industry and called all marketing and communications professionals to declare climate emergency and focus their efforts on fighting the destruction of our planet.

On the public letter the Rebellion issued, they asked especially the higher-ups in these sectors to use their influential powers to persuade their clients and their audiences to join the fight against climate destruction. The letter reads:

“...[Y]ou can do anything you want and you can shift mass behaviour in a heartbeat. One of the reasons we’ve got here is because you’ve been selling things to people that they don’t need. You are the manipulators and architects of that consumerist frenzy. Imagine what would happen if you devoted those skills to something better.”

The Rebellion also made clear that the letter was written by members who had dedicated years to the advertising industry and thus they would know if the measures these agencies take were just sugar-coating. They said: "making a small campaign to give up drinking from plastic straws is not going to cut it".

A month later, over 40 advertising and communications agencies have heard Extinction Rebellion’s call and signed a letter promising to declare climate conflicts within their company and committing to use their power to inspire change.

They also claimed to have heard Rebellion in terms of taking real action instead of just sugar-coating. The letter doesn’t just end with a promise to 'do their best’ but includes tangible solutions.

For individual marketing and communications professional signatories, the letter means they will refuse to work in fossil fuel projects in the future.

For agencies, signing the letter means disclosing their ‘climate conflicts’ by declaring their turnover from high carbon clients by the end of the year 2019. Four agencies, albeit ones that already have a sustainability focus, already published their “client disclosure report”.

The Creative and Climate signatories claim that disclosing how much they earn from high carbon clients is just the first step on a journey towards 'divestment'. Extinction Rebellion has yet to comment on this development/letter, however, to me, this language sounds very similar to the exact kind of cop-out the Rebellion said they didn't want to hear.

The role of advertising in the fight against the climate crisis shouldn't be 'divestment' but it should be to dismantle the high-carbon, consumerist lifestyle people of the world live and strive for; a lifestyle the industry has played a large role in promoting.

The advertising industry and communication professionals are incredibly powerful in driving change in society. As the middle people between citizens and companies, it's their job and expertise to convince people to make certain choices and companies to direct their businesses towards people's wants. It's time for the industry to take responsibility and use this power to drive the change that's going to save our planet and its inhabitants.

Cover image by Joanna Kosinska.

This story features:

climate change / Extinction Rebellion / advertising / Communications

Read more
Using ship’s logs from the past to predict the climate of the future

Your moment

Written by
Deniz Gulsoken

on
16 July 2019

Are you, like many of us, feeling helpless about the impending climate crisis? Maybe actively participating in scientific efforts to make sense of the changing climate so we can find out ways to stop its destruction can give your mind a little bit of peace.

Old Weather is a project with the main goal of studying a wide range of climate phenomena in order to understand their impact on the global environment. They do this by looking at weather observations. According to Kevin Wood, the Lead Investigator of Old Weather Arctic Project, information about the weather in the past is crucial to understanding what is happening to our climate in the present and what will happen to it in the future.

Old Weather's information about the history of our climate is collected by investigating sea-journeys, as old as 150 years. Dating back to the 19th century, Old Weather has amassed a large number of logbooks from ships ⁠— mostly military and whaling. These logbooks, along with logistical details about the journeys themselves, also contain detailed descriptions of the weather and sea-ice conditions of their time.

This is valuable data for the scientists at Old Weather, especially because the logs belong to ships that patrolled the Arctic. The area is now a matter of major concern in terms of climate destruction. Old Weather takes this data and plugs it into computer models specifically made to improve climate projections based on past conditions.

“In order to understand what the weather will be like in the future, we need to understand what it was like in the past.”

Information about what the weather and sea-ice conditions were like in the past is not only crucial for climate scientists to make sense of the present and predict the future of our climate, but it’s also extremely valuable for historians to better understand the context in which world-changing historical events occurred.

Old Weather, however, has one big obstacle in their pursuit: the fact that the data they are trying to recover all comes from old ship’s logs means that all of it is handwritten by hundreds of different people. For the scientists, this means that they cannot automate the transcription of these ship’s logs because computers are not able to decipher human handwriting accurately.

This is where concerned global citizens came in. Old Weather works with volunteers from all over the world in getting the handwritten information from old ship's logs into computer models. People decipher the information on these old logbooks and deliver it to the scientists at Old Weather.

Anyone who is comfortable with the English language can sign up to become a citizen scientist with Old Weather. So, if you want to actively contribute to climate science fighting the destruction of our living planet, you can do so by volunteering with Old Weather. As a bonus, you'll get to read original historical documents, detailing epic adventures of sailing the seas.

This story features:

climate change / Volunteer

Read more
Why 'Koyaanisqatsi' is still a must-see documentary in this time of climate change

Your moment

Written by
Davide Banis

on
15 July 2019

Environmental documentaries are on the rise. From David Attenborough’s Our Planet to Leonardo di Caprio’s Ice on Fire, our screens are brimming with new films and series that urge humanity to take care of the Earth and slow down climate change, in the hope we’re still on time to avoid some of the most nefarious effects of the climate crisis.

Many of these documentaries make their case compellingly and are must-sees for anyone who wants to understand what’s going on with our planet at the moment.

Nevertheless, despite plenty of newer and more updated films and TV series, one of the most visually powerful documentaries on climate change is still Koyaanisqatsi, a 1982 experimental film directed by American filmmaker Godfrey Reggio.

Koyaanisqatsi is a visual meditation on how technology wreaks havoc on the natural world consisting mainly of portraits, time-lapse, and slow-motion footage of different people and landscapes across the United States, glued together by a mesmerizing soundtrack by Philip Glass. Climate change is never explicitly mentioned in the film. Nonetheless, the documentary can be an inspiring starting point for reflecting on global warming and the relationship between humankind and nature at large.

Here, I grouped three reasons you should give Koyaanisqatsi a chance during your next movie binge, even if it’s an arty film from the Eighties with no dialogue or plot.

1) It’s aesthetically stunning

First off, the 1982 Reggio’s experimental film is still visually stunning. The cinematography by Ron Fricke captures both the beauty of nature and the somewhat riveting aggressiveness of human intervention.

For example, in this time of flight-shame, just have a look at the magnificence of the scene where a Boing 747 is taxiing at Los Angeles International Airport, advancing almost ethereally on the tarmac, sort of a 2001's monolith on wheels, accompanied by the transcendental music of Philip Glass.

2) It doesn’t try to convince its viewers

While most of the contemporary environmental documentaries state their case explicitly, Koyaanisqatsi doesn’t really have a thesis to bring forward. Godfrey Reggio isn’t trying to convince us of anything.

Yes, “Koyaanisqatsi” means “unbalanced life” in the Hopi language and that’s a hint on how to interpret the film but, actually, Reggio wanted to leave his masterpiece without any title (understandably, the producers convinced him otherwise).

With the sheer power of its images, Koyaanisqatsi shows that the relationship between humankind, technology, and nature is a complex and multidimensional problem, and that no simple narrative that pitches “bad, polluting technology” versus “good nature” can make it justice.

3) It has good faith in what humanity is able to accomplish

Of his documentary, Godfrey Reggio said that “for some people, it’s an environmental film. For some, it’s an ode to technology. [...] It depends on who you ask.”

The interpretative openness of the film is confirmed by some reviews it received when it was released.

In his 1983 review, the high priest of film criticism Roger Ebert wrote that “all of the images” in the documentary are beautiful, even those of “man despoiling the environment.” The shots of the expressways, for example, are “two-edged.” On the one hand, they’re an instance of life “out of control” but, on the other, they exemplify the humankind’s ability to overcome incredible challenges.

It’s “open to all sort of contradictory interpretations,” echoed the New York Times’ Vincent Canby.

This “two-edged” approach of the movie highlights the unbalancedness of our relationship with nature but it also implies a certain faith in what our species is able to accomplish.

Bonus track: Koyaanisqatsi Remixed

If you want to experience an (even quirkier) take on Koyaanisqatsi, you can have a look at “On Exactitude in Science,” a 2017 video installation by Irish artist Alan Butler.

The artwork is made of two screens. On one, we see Koyaanisqatsi playing, on the other, a shot-by-shot remake of the documentary realized modding the video-game Grand Theft Auto 5.

It makes for an alienating yet thought-provoking meditation on the role of humankind in this time of climate "challenge."

This story features:

climate change / Documentaries

Read more

About Kinder

Topics

To infinity and beyond

Dear friend,

More Stories

Creative agencies across the world claim commitment to fight climate destruction

Using ship’s logs from the past to predict the climate of the future

Why 'Koyaanisqatsi' is still a must-see documentary in this time of climate change