It would take a fool to deny that we’re currently in the thick of a climate emergency. The science is settled. Since at least the Industrial Revolution, the actions of humanity have severely threatened the delicate balance of our natural world, with that threat only accelerating in the 21st century.
Scientists have been sounding the alarm about this for decades. As far back as 1988, American researcher James Hansen testified to Congress that the Earth was warmer than at any point in the time we’ve been able to measure it as a result of the “greenhouse effect” caused by reliance on burning fossil fuels. The science has moved on since then, but Hansen’s broad thesis remains true. In a May 2024 survey carried out by The Guardian, almost 80% of respondents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated at least a 2.5C rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels this century.
That sounds like a small number, but the impact would be profound. According to scientists interviewed by Reuters, this amount of warming will greatly increase the frequency of both extreme rainfall and severe droughts. This, in turn, will have an enormous impact on food production and, therefore, the price of your weekly shop. That’s not to mention the potential rise in sea levels, displacing millions of people from coastal communities into a world already in the grip of a refugee crisis.
In perhaps the most damning quote from that Reuters report, climate scientist Michael Mann said: "If we can keep warming below 3C we likely remain within our adaptive capacity as a civilisation, but at 2.7C warming we would experience great hardship.”
Climate protests in the UK have become even more urgent in recent in years
(Credit: Tim Dennell)
That should scare all of us and, on the eve of the latest UN Climate Change Conference – COP29 in Baku – the sense of emergency should be enormous. It's doubly the case given the result of the US Election, in which the most powerful country in the world has re-elected the person who pulled the USA out of the Paris Agreement and has previously described climate change as a "hoax". In fact, it's very difficult to work out what Donald Trump actually believes about climate change – if he understands it at all. If we go on the way we are, we’re within a whisker of warming so devastating that we’re beyond humanity’s capacity to adapt to the new world it would create.
That’s why we’re launching “In This Climate?” – a new series about the various ways in which the arts are part of sounding the alarm around the climate crisis, as well as championing potential solutions. We’ll be speaking to scientists, but also the creatives using their talent and innovative thinking in an attempt to save the world. Just as with our previous series "Kick Some Class", we're putting the best creative minds front and centre.
For example, filmmaker Serena Davies talks about her long-standing collaboration with David Attenborough on climate-focused TV documentaries, while comedian Stuart Goldsmith explores his unique stand-up show built around mining laughs from genuine discussion around climate science. We’ve also spoken to the people behind two exhibitions at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham that offer ways in which we can tackle our mammoth problems with waste.
Culture and creativity plays an enormously important role in galvanising our response to the most pressing concern facing us as a species. The science is mostly settled, but the next step is even more vital – what we choose to do about it and how quickly we choose to do it. People have been hearing about these problems for their entire lifetime, so it takes something new and exciting to snap the decades-long apathy about our planet’s plight.
Every move we make now will echo through the rest of the century. It has never been more important for the creative industries to use their voices and make them heard.
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