an ode to planet earth
It feels ominous to watch a TV series on the beauty of the outdoors, during a time as surreal as the COVID19 lockdown, and more so during a time where anthropogenic activity remains at the lowest levels it would have been in the past 50 years or so. Nature is returning and peeking out at us in unimaginable ways even in dire, Dickensian cities like New Delhi where the smog on an average day is equivalent to smoking a hundred cigarettes. We now wake to a whole symphony of birds chirping, cotton candy clouds, the bluest skies, stars at night, and the vivid colors of the Gulmohars and Bougainvilleas.
On April 22nd 2020, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, I decided to make the family watch the Netflix & WWF production, Our Planet, narrated by the indomitable Sir David Attenborough. Sir Attenborough's voice belongs in a league of its own, where few others do: Morgan Freeman, Amitabh Bachchan, and Zia Mohiuddin. The beginning and end of every natural history prestige wall of fame.
Last year, an image of a starving polar bear went viral on social media. It drew a number of individuals to feel the despair of a devastated natural world, and the impact we as humanity have had on the planet's other creatures. But this series isn't that, and it isn't your average Discovery programming for kids and the “tree-huggers.”
Our Planet spans eight episodes, 45 minutes on average. To describe the videography and filming skills of the production team, the most superlative adjectives would fall short. Scene after scene, the show transports you to different landscapes and ecosystems across the planet, shot in excruciating detail. Each hair on the polar bear is clear and visible. Each block of ice of the glaciers falling into the sea is discernible. It's an incredible production feat, no doubt, and yet the genius of the show is still deeper.
From the get go, Attenborough does not let you sit still and take in the beauty of our planet, the way he may have allowed you to do so in a previous series like Planet Earth. No friend, it is already too late, and you don't get to sit on your couch, admiring the diversity of life our planet has to offer without understanding the role you have played in decimating it. Walruses dropping from unscalable heights to their death due to a lack of navigable sea ice, malnourished young polar bears hunting endless icy expanses but with shortened hunting seasons, the glaciers the size of skyscrapers crashing into the Arctic seas.. the scenes are endless, and they will stick (as they should). The dramatic and almost manipulative musical score ensures that the feeling of despair, awe, and complete child-like wonder doesn't leave you till long after. It’s the kind of wonder I felt when I visited the Ngorongoro National Park in Tanzania for the first time - complete and utter bewilderment. Seeing zebras, giraffes, and wildebeest from a few meters away can almost be a religious experience, because when was the last time, that as an adult, you saw something for the very first time?
I work in the field of climate change, and read hundreds of pages on the impacts and risks of climate change nearly every week. Sometimes I visit our project sites and engage with local organizations and governments in resource strapped countries where the impacts are being felt now. Most of it, I am afraid to admit, is incredibly dreary, heavy on the science and the numbers, and rarely presents a picture as comprehensive as this production does on a singular particular impact of the wider anthropogenic catastrophe that is climate change. Do not forget, habitat loss and lack of wildlife conservation are just some of the issues we are bound to grapple with as the slow onset changes present themselves over the course of the following few decades.. in my lifetime. But the issue of communicating the work - the risks, the impacts, the solutions - remains. We don't have clear answers for why people still do not directly engage with climate journalism as eagerly as they probably should. How much science and despair should one actually employ while communicating the impacts (without the reader completely losing interest)? It's an incredibly polarized debate because while the average person doesn't connect with the science on a human level, the same lack of rigor in communication can cause a lack of scientific understanding of climate change, leading to inaction.
But film and footage such as this, and beautifully captured art such as this, helps - it translates the dreary text into a visual collage and tells us what we seek to lose if we continue business as usual (which for more reasons than this, is not an option). Sea level rise, increasing salinity, climate induced disasters - these are all just the tipping points. But while the series induces you to feel for the natural world, feelings you thought you had reserved only for human storytelling, this series doesn't drown you in irreversible despair. Like any excellent classical piano composition, it dips low enough and draws you up again to appreciate the wonder that is the planet we live on (which is called a “shepard’s tone” as I am told). It always ends on a hopeful note, but reminds us what there is to lose if we don't act.
Our Planet captures that point of intersection between us and the natural world, and outlines those living, breathing connections between us so clearly, we cannot ignore the facts. In an interview with Guernica Mag, four climate change storytellers described this difficult job of communicating such a depressing topic to people who need to hear about it, and noted most accurately, that "writers and artists fill in a lot of cognitive gaps for people," highlighting a study where people build empathy for future versions of themselves, and thus literature or films that reflected an altered climate reality was crucial to getting the point across.
It was no surprise that the head of World Bank’s India office, Junaid Ahmad, chose to begin his keynote at the annual TERI climate change focused summit in New Delhi in 2018 with a famous Bengali poem, an ode to the river Ganga, noting the centrality of the natural world in the Bengali renaissance. Amitav Ghosh, the famous Indian author, has long been a proponent for climate literature and wrote an entire book about it, by the way - "The Great Derangement," in addition to basing multiple novels surrounding the natural world (including his latest, Gun Island). He is perhaps one of the most sensitive chroniclers of the natural world's place in human storytelling and mythology, and thus rightfully and subtly recommends Richard Powers' The Overstory ever so often. Both Ghosh and Ahmad have alluded to the iconic place the climate and environment has held in our imaginations - the greatest poets have always weaved beautiful couplets as odes to seasons (the monsoon, the spring), the rivers, the mountains, and other aspects of our natural world. But what happens when those are irreversibly altered? What will inspire us then?
National Geographic, science and nature media companies, and conservation organizations have long used the images of the fluffy white polar bears, and the cute but predatory cats, to compel viewers and readers to act. However, in a strong change of course recently, the UK based newspaper, Guardian announced a landmark decision to change the way readers would engage with climate journalism and climate focused mass communication. It is inarguable that images that define climate change (or any issue) shape the way it is understood and acted upon, and either connote the emergency or they don't. The Guardian went on to argue that the “cutesy” animal images seemed too remote or abstract, and didn't necessarily denote the human aspect or the urgency of it. Instead, they were going to focus their editorial strategy to "showing the direct impact of environmental issues on people’s daily lives as well as trying to indicate the scale of the impact." These included images of entire forests going up in flames, people fleeing extreme weather events, children in mounds of trash, and the like. In case you haven’t noticed, the New York Times has also begun its dedicated Climate and Environment coverage in a more mainstream visible way, including listicles for guiding sustainable everyday living.
As an idealistic graduate student at The Fletcher School, Christine Russel came to speak to my climate policy class. Russel, who had been a national science reporter for the Washington Post for years, and now sits at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, also advocated the need to go beyond polar bears. But that's not all - the melting Arctic impacts humans too - the several indigenous communities such as the Inuit, that live around, and depend on the ecosystem for their survival, will face seriously devastating consequences.
During the lockdown, countless people (family, friends, writers, social media influencers) have expressed the desire to go back to "normal." What is normal anyway? There was nothing normal about our way of living right before this - the unlivable cities, the unbreathable air, the undrinkable water, endless and needless consumption, the spending of valuable Earth resources on jetting around avocados, the rampant destruction of our key habitats, forests, and ecosystems.. the list is endless. The "normal" which was more… destruction. The Amazonian fires, Australian bushfires, the Californian wildfires, typhoons in the Philippines, locust infestations in East Africa (all this, just a span of one year, 2019 - 2020) - none of which could be described as "natural" for their root causes were man-made. Countless people have also expressed the desire to rethink their patterns of living - why do we buy so much? Why do we travel so much? Why do we need to consume so much?
Why is what we have in our local settings not enough? What are we seeking?
We continue to normalize the violence of human pillaging of the planet in the name of development, and rarely stop to think what it's done to us, our health, and our lives. We didn't have control over its speed, its goals, it's make up. COVID is giving us this chance, but it only matters if we use it wisely.
It would be a travesty to end this piece of writing with such gloom, especially after I tell you everything wrong with such writing about climate change so I will leave you with a call to action. If you're reading this inside your house, step outside if you can. Maybe in your balcony, your garden, your street - just for a few moments. Take a deep breath, and see how you feel. Is there a difference? Maybe you can see the beautiful red Gulmohar tree that I see on my street, maybe you hear squirrels (or maybe now I understand why Keats wrote as many odes as he did). If you don't feel any different, feel free to check your smartphone weather app (the AQI has been at its lowest in the past 2 decades).
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If you're interested, here are some additional resources on climate writing and communication:
Brechin, Steven R. and Medani Bhandari 2011, “Perceptions of Climate Change Worldwide,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Volume 2, Issue 6, 871-885. (T)
Russell, Christine 2008, "Climate Change: Now What?" Columbia Journalism Review, July. (T)
Lorenzoni, I and N.F. Pidgeon 2006, “Public views on climate change: European and USA perspectives” Climatic Change, Vol. 77, 73-95. (T)
Center for Research on Environmental Decisions 2009, “The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public,” Columbia University, New York (available for download at: http://www.cred.columbia.edu/guide/).
Dupar, M., with McNamara, L. and Pacha, M. (2019). "Communicating climate change: A practitioner’s guide." Cape Town: Climate and Development Knowledge Network.
In Literature:
The Great Derangement - Amitav Ghosh
Gun Island - Amitav Ghosh
The Overstory - Richard Powers
Please do reach out if you have further recommendations!