In March this year, a ‘rain bomb’ across northern NSW and south-east Queensland severely impacted arts organisations in two Australian states. Globally, it matched severe flooding that was experienced in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Seoul, and Kentucky (USA), wildfires soared in France and Spain, while New Delhi and the UK experiences extraordinary heat waves.
The U.K. hit its highest temperature on record in July, breaking 104 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time, after government officials declared a national emergency.
These events bookend a year that has been dominated by climate action conversations across exhibitions, in podcasts, discussed in new books and even on our main stages.
One project that brought together the urgency that we face collectively – using design and culture as a platform for that discussion in partnership with science – was 100 Climate Conversations, presented by Powerhouse Museum (Sydney, Australia).
The ambitious project started in March, and a conversation was presented every Friday over 100 weeks – the irony that it was ‘recorded in a former coal-burner’ is not lost on anyone. The project’s archive will now become part of the Powerhouse’s collection for future generations.
The conversations that count
To mark the completion of the project, ArtsHub takes a look eight of those conversations.
010 | 100 Veena Sahajwalla: Green manufacturing
Visionary inventor Professor Veena Sahajwalla sees waste as an opportunity. Through her work as Director of the Sustainable Materials Research & Technology (SMaRT) Centre, UNSW, she engineers new ways to combat and find value in waste that drive down manufacturing’s carbon footprint.
Sahajwalla said: ‘Imagine if we could then say, but wait, after it [any object] stopped working, it’s not a waste, but it’s actually a resource that’s just waiting to find another life. So, why are we even calling it a waste?
‘Imagine that whole sort of circular way of thinking could be real, because we can imagine and reimagine over and over again all the different ways in which those materials could actually be reformed,’ she continued.
When I talk about reform, I’m actually saying it goes beyond recycling.
Veena Sahajwalla
For the recording and transcript.
013 | 100 Mike Cannon-Brookes: Investing in carbon neutral Australia
Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes is determined to push Australia towards a carbon neutral future. An outspoken advocate for renewable energies and investor in the nation’s largest solar farm, Cannon-Brookes sees a transition to renewables as a win for the climate and an incredible economic opportunity for Australia.
He said: ‘I think it’s changing, certainly the direction of the leadership and the vision. There’s a little bit of a sensation of like, Yeah, this stuff’s all possible in the future, right? Like one day it’ll be possible. And I’m like, ‘No, that’s today.’
We can do it all inside our country, it’s entirely within our control.
Mike Cannon-Brookes
For the recording and transcript.
016 | 100 Bruce Pascoe: Nourishing Country
One of Australia’s most influential thinkers, Bruce Pascoe shares his experiences of the 2019 Mallacoota bushfire and how he has been nourished by the revival of his East Gippsland farm and traditional knowledge and practice.
Pascoe said: ‘It’s hard work but after Dark Emu became interesting to Australians, I could see that there were chefs and bakers ringing me every day wanting this food and I became really alarmed. I thought, “Here we go again. This is the new colonisation”.’
What we need is a new conservatism. We need to be really careful about what we do. We want to do everything slowly.
Bruce Pascoe
For the recording and transcript.
018 | 100 Rebecca Huntley: The art of constructive conversations
Researching how individuals approach the climate challenge with different understandings, perspectives and attitudes, social researcher Rebecca Huntley has developed tools for engaging the disengaged, persuading the cautious and increasing the numbers of concerned and motivated Australians.
In conversation with Benjamin Law, she said: ‘One of my favourite focus groups ever was all these young men, I was doing something on whether you should buy environmental products and talking about climate change … and one of them said, “Yeah, we’re probably headed for some kind of, you know, climate-based apocalyptic world.” And he said, “You know, I reckon I’ll do OK with that. I’m like really strong, I’ve got a big car”. He thought that, actually if we had an apocalyptic world, he and his mates would come out on top.’
The fundamental principle of communication is actually listening and understanding.
Rebecca Huntley
For the recording and transcript.
022 | 100 Ninotschka Titchkosky: Carbon conscious architecture
Tackling issues of climate through the application of new techniques in digital fabrication and principles of circular economy, architect Ninotschka Titchkosky leads the decarbonisation of the Australian architecture and building industries.
She said of a turning point for her in 2016 that she ‘was really thinking about the waste within our industry and the way that we make things, the way we build and understanding what things like robotics and digital manufacturing would actually offer us as architects and as an industry that would reshape the way we do things. And so, in 2016, we started to form a partnership with Sydney Uni at the time around robotics and digital fabrication, and that’s been an ongoing journey since that time.’
We need to go into an adaptive mode and be much more focused on adaptive reuse and reinvention, augmenting what we have and think of it more like sort of a surgical editing process rather than a knockdown rebuild.
Ninotschka Titchkosky
For the recording and transcript.
Read: Is climate change turning the blowtorch on outdoor theatre?
023 | 100 Tim Flannery: Changing the Game
Globally recognised scientist, conservationist and author Tim Flannery co-led the formation of the independent Climate Council in 2013 and is now chief councillor. Through his research and work he continues to campaign for effective climate policies.
Comparing the pandemic action to climate, he said: ‘…here was a government that could be proactive. It could take economically adverse decisions, it could listen to science in an effort to get on top of the problems the pandemic presented. So, I thought if they can do that with the pandemic, why can’t we do it with climate change? We’ve got the scientists telling the government what they need to do. We know we have to take some actions that will have an economic impact. We need to make investments, obviously, and spend some money to deal with the problem. Why aren’t we doing it? And it came down to pure ideology, I think.’
All I can say is that in the real world, things are looking a bit different from what you might predict from that model of risk analysis.
Tim Flannery
For the recording and transcript.
032 | 100 Zoltan Csaki: Remaking fashion
Determined to curb carbon emissions, Citizen Wolf o-Founder Zoltan Csaki rejects the relentless fast fashion cycle, which annually sends almost a third of unsold clothing to landfill. Combining an on-demand manufacturing model and proprietary technology that ensure the perfect fit, Csaki is challenging cheap mass production and our shopping habits.
Csaki said: ‘Quite simply, far too many clothes get made every year. Overproduction is the default in the industry… No one wants to address it. No one wants to talk about it. But the problem is, as a result of all of this overproduction, one in three pieces of clothing made every year goes to landfill unsold, often with the tags still on, often with holes punched through to preserve brand equity. Not that there’s anything wrong with those clothes, just that the brand who produced them doesn’t want to dilute their brand, so they literally just destroy it before they landfill it.’
We cannot solve climate change as a species without changing the fashion industry.
Zoltan Csaki
For the recording and transcript.
041 | 100 Emma Bombonato: A sustainable Australian icon
The Sydney Opera House is one of our nation’s most treasured cultural landmarks. With almost 11 million visitors per year, it illustrates how even the largest organisations can take creative approaches to energy and waste management to address the climate crisis.
Bombonato said: ‘Heritage conservation is just another form of sustainability because if you think about heritage, what we want to do is change as much as necessary, as little as possible, so we will only intervene when we need to.’
She added: ‘I think that art and culture has a really important place in the sustainable development for the future, and it’s important that we recognise the role of art and culture as the hearts and the minds of talking to our community.’
World leadership in sustainability is not just about the environment, it’s also about recognising … social sustainability is equally as important.
Emma Bombonato
For the recording and transcript.
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