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The Steep Climes Quartet: My Take on Climate Fiction

Writer David Guenette shares creative insights into his Steep Climes Quartet, a longitudinal study into climate futures unfolding across an American county. This post accompanies David’s essay for our Longer feature, where he asks “What is Climate Fiction?”

2,620 words: estimated reading time = 10 minutes

I’ve been at work on the Steep Climes Quartet, a literary climate fiction series. The series is a sort of longitudinal study over time across the consistent location of Berkshire County, in Massachusetts. The first book, Kill Well, takes place in 2026. The second book, Dear Josephine, takes place in 2029. The third book, Over Brooklyn Hills, occurs in 2035. The first three books are published. The final book of The Steep Climes Quartet, Farm to Me, takes place in 2047, and I’m aiming for a Spring 2027 publishing date.

As an entrepreneur, writer, and climate change activist, I’ve studied climate change science and policies for over two decades and believe that the most effective basis for the discussion of the climate crisis in climate fiction is realism. No apocalypse, no fantasy, no deus ex machina. I believe climate fiction can be an effective way for individuals and communities to identify climate change challenges and that climate fiction can offer alternative perspectives for understanding the climate crisis and approaches for dealing with climate change. I believe that climate fiction that focuses on the reader’s familiar circumstances and provides a recognizable world will better explain the nature of the crisis and foster a more powerful identification with the problems we face and the solutions before us.

Of course, the novels better be enjoyable reading.

The changing world — a near-future climate timeline

The main theme of The Steep Climes Quartet is our fractured society and the solidarity climate progress requires of us and our communities. Over the course of writing the series — I started in 2015 — other themes evolve and the series includes some source of hope in the form of an economically competitive clean energy transition. But don’t think I’ve grown pollyannish — ongoing and important plotlines involve various misdeeds by Big Oil. I’m also not pollyannish about the rate of progress and take into consideration that political bodies and society at large typically move at snail’s pace. Still, by Book Three, Over Brooklyn Hills, 2035 sees that core court cases against Big Oil are finally starting to break for the climate, but then again, these same corporations and their political allies have managed to get too many gas-fired generator plants in place, with the net result of slowed progress on carbon emission reductions.

Showing the cover of 'Kill Well' - book one of The Steep Climes Quartet (2023) by David Guenette — ‘Kill Well’ – book one of The Steep Climes Quartet (2023)

In the first three books, the residents of the Berkshires — a pleasant bucolic place, by the way — don’t have a lot of direct experience with the terrible consequences of climate change and, like most of us, hear about such negative consequences mostly through the news. Kill Well, in 2026, has a big heatwave in the upper Midwest, and the West is experiencing another plague of wildfires, but Davin, the Berkshire-based main character, is an economically pressed recent divorcee and mostly caught up in worrying about rising costs and the income he’s struggling for. The worst thing that happens to him in the first book, climate-wise, is that a heavy rain damages his vegetable garden and a part of the Airbnb apartment on the first floor of his Housatonic house. There’s a plot line of a young woman on the run after witnessing her fossil fuel divestiture boss killed on a business trip, which brings her to Chicago, where Davin’s son is living his first year out of college, but who is now heading home to escape the heat and the slowing economy. The two meet on the train heading toward Boston, and she ends up at Davin’s house, and there’s a contract killer in play, too, but the prevailing theme in Kill Well is the widespread economic stress of rising costs and the recession-like state of the nation’s economy that retards, along with Trump, clean energy progress.

Sholwing the cover of 'Dear Josephine', book two of The Steep Climes Quartet (2025) by David Guenette — ‘Dear Josephine’, book two of The Steep Climes Quartet (2025)

In Dear Josephine, set in 2029, the nation is post-Trump and politics is working better, but there remains evil intent of those who run fossil fuel empires. There’s Miami’s destruction by the combination of a powerful hurricane hitting in sync with high ocean surges, but the residents of the Berkshires are unaffected directly, mostly. And then there’s a guy running around the country trying to kill billionaires and there’s a guy using Kill the Rich as cover for assassinations in service to fossil fuel think tanks to ease some newly inconvenient political ex-allies off the playing board. And yeah, in Dear Josephine there’s a fair amount of conversation and thinking about externalities by a regular series character, Jeannie Louise Smith, who’s a climate tech and policy wonk living on Cottage Street, but I did follow a beta reader’s advice to cut a lot of character talk about externalities. This book also marks the appearance of a climate action terrorist group.

Showing the cover of 'Over Brooklyn Hills', book three of The Steep Climes Quartet (2026) by David Guenette — ‘Over Brooklyn Hills’, book three of The Steep Climes Quartet (2026)

Over Brooklyn Hills is six years after the second book and nine years after the first. MAGA, repudiated in the 2026 mid-term and 2028 elections, has given way to economic reforms and climate policies and America has rejoined much of the rest of the world in making climate progress, mainly by pushing the clean energy transition. There’s also a look at the consequences of choosing violence, as the climate terrorist group introduced in Dear Josephine now finds itself involved with Mexican cartels who are battling the U.S.’s militarization of the southern border as climate drought blankets large parts of Mexico, Central America, and South America, driving illegal migration. Climate migration is writ small, too, as seen in a long heatwave hovering over the New York metropolitan area and the Berkshires finds itself with very many more young people (i.e., typically less economically advantaged) escaping the heat and the energy bills demanded for safety, and the towns of South County and the second-homers aren’t enjoying the change in the character of their summer.

Showing the mockup cover to 'Farm to Me’, which will be the final book of The Steep Climes Quartet. The cover may be different by publication, in Spring 2027. — ‘Farm to Me’ will be the final book of The Steep Climes Quartet. This cover is a simple mockup and may be different by publication, in Spring 2027.

Farm to Me, which is in draft and with a mess of notes, sees 2047 with reducing yields of some of the once highly productive agricultural areas in the U.S. due to chronic drought and aquifer collapse. New England has been experiencing a resurgence of its once dominant industry, agriculture. There’s been some real progress with carbon emission reduction, but climate change is locked in place, albeit at levels that would be worse without modest progress. Resiliency and adaptation programs are all the rage, but climate change continues to exert a downward pressure on the economy. Farm to Me sees human nature remaining a good news/bad news puzzle, with a murder mystery tied to one ambitious New England food distribution company. There is the issue of aging in the time of climate change and the angst and agony of the young about the future, where the cumulative effects of climate change pile on and tipping points are just the latest dread, and Davin’s granddaughter, not yet 18 years old, is of interest to a federal investigation into a climate activist group she’s part of.

One goal of the series is to present climate change as accurately as possible and with solid scientific grounding. In this way, readers who may not be similarly inclined to keep up with science and policies may consider their own understanding advanced, and, yes, this is something of an illusion for those future timelines, but then novels derive from the creative act of controlled illusion.

Creative challenges for The Steep Climes Quartet

I’d be happy enough to relax my long-running autodidact efforts on climate change, but alas, climate models keep getting tweaked and plentiful research continues. For instance, there are new findings and expanded concepts about faster rising temperatures than conventional understanding has posited, and I’ve had to make my best guess that 2035 will see a rise of 1.7-1.8 Celsius in the global annual average. By the time I have the fourth book’s manuscript well in hand, I’ll have had to best guess about the global annual average temperature rise in 2047. Yet more speculative are the political winds and social expectations governing these timelines, made all the more challenging because political and societal developments march on up and down and sideways.

CO2 emissions, global temperature rises and climate impact risks for SSP-based scenarios over the present century (IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) “Climate Change 2023” Synthesis report (adopted longer report: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2023/03/Doc5_Adopted_AR6_SYR_Longer_Report.pdf)

Of course, presenting the changing world across the series can’t be simply info-dumped, but rather seen, experienced, and understood (or not) through the characters’ own perceptions. The series uses a third person-semi-omniscient point of view, with characters alternating among chapters and some know more, some far less. Like the rest of us, the most stunning stories of climate consequences are more often heard of, not experienced directly, although over the course of the series, more and more direct experience of climate change comes to all.

There are other challenges in attempting to portray the future. These include representations of technology development and most of the characters in this series are regular people and not pioneering tech heads. Human economies and technologies roll out more slowly than the sci-fi-inclined often hope and not just more slowly but also quite unevenly (tip o’ the cap to William Gibson!). By Over Brooklyn Hills and 2035, AI and the spread of some other technologies advance, with smart glasses and haptic feedback and some modest virtual reality interfaces showing up. An AI bubble in 2030 causes a significant recession, especially in the U.S., but that industry evolves. By the last book, in 2047, AI has settled into a controlled progression, and in Farm to Me, I’m exploring the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, which happens to be based in Great Barrington, to explore what the shift toward a more local economy might look like, especially in response to climate change, although this will be more in the background, too.

This challenge of moderating readers’ expectations with tech grows harder the further one goes into the future, but faulting on the side of less-is-more is the right bet. For the Farm to Me story, there’s a part that involves regenerative agriculture, and there are advances in sensor technologies that can accurately analyze carbon sequestration in soil. This sort of development is not a big stretch but rather an incremental improvement in monitoring systems, no doubt to be aided by AI-based computations.

Still no flying cars.

The makings and markets for cultured meat and fermentation-based protein, set up in Over Brooklyn Hills, are a well-established market by 2047. The failure of property insurance and the climate threat to housing markets in some areas will be leaking into the general economy. There will be some new nuclear reactors, although fewer than one might expect, since such energy production is hampered by high costs and bankruptcies.

Did I mention no flying cars?

Of course, I’ve got to finish the damn manuscript first.

The foundation of climate fiction

Projecting out two-dozen-plus years, prognostication becomes more fluid, but keeping up with the best climate science remains an important requirement in writing this series. No magic solutions need apply, but rather only informed extrapolation. For example, it may be that regenerative agriculture is among the best of carbon sequestration strategies, but carbon capture remains an unlikely silver bullet. There’s also opportunity to explore the issue of real costs, where externalities (there I go!) of all sorts of things, from hamburgers to fast fashion, will get a nod, because sustainability will only grow as an issue in the years ahead. The world won’t be ending in 2047, but the higher and persistent loading of greenhouse gases take their toll, with some tipping points threatening. But the main story — the foundation of climate fiction — remains the progress our society makes based on our understanding of climate change and the economic, political, and moral choices we face.

Will our society make sufficient progress?

Talk about a cliffhanger!

Find more

You can read David’s new essay for our Longer feature, Telling Stories about Climate Change.

David explores these ideas, and examples of climate fiction, at The Steep Clime on Substack. And you can find more of his writing — including the first three novels in the Steep Climes Quartet and other books — at his website, davidguenette.com.

Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher, was published in 1973 and is available from Vintage (Penguin Books).

The Schumacher Center for a New Economics, in Great Barrington, MA, USA, was founded in 1980 to envision the elements of a just and regenerative global economy, “undertakes to apply these elements in its home region of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts; and then develops the educational programs to share the results more broadly, thus encouraging replication.” They produced a new study guide to Small is Beautiful to mark its 50th anniversary in 2023.

In the UK, the work and example of E. F. Schumaker’s work inspired the creation of the Schumacher Society, the Schumacher Institute, and Schumacher College.

***

From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say something about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.

David – “AI and writing: a tool, not a partner:

“Serving as a research agent, AI can be an excellent tool for writers who need facts and figures and overviews on a topic. This applies to non-fiction, such as the climate change articles I write, but also as convenient quick research or confirmation (or pointer to errors) for fiction writing. This is how I’ll use AI. I don’t typically worry about hallucinations because I know the knowledge domain well enough to spot AI’s missteps or the results of a poorly put query.

“AI can be helpful, too, as a high-level copy-editor and proofreader, mainly to bring in fresh eyes to discover obvious issues that the writer—having written the work—often has trouble spotting. Having a good human copy-editor remains, in my opinion, an essential element of book production. The way I’ll use AI for copy-editing and proofreading makes for less drudgery and lets the real copy-editor and the proofreader better concentrate on improving the manuscript.

“I suppose AI can be helpful with emails and letters—the sort of business correspondence best delivered as clearly and briefly as possible—although I often don’t bother because emails and letters default to a common tone and style, which isn’t anything a writer should want. I often find that AI—I typically use Gemini—offers “improvements” that are lowest denominator style choices and I often enough conclude with a “Yeah, I don’t think so” response when checking out what AI thinks an email or letter should be. Although, apparently, AI likes em dashes nearly as much as I do.

“AI in the actual work of creative writing seems to me an uninteresting cheat aimed at writing as “content” for easy, quick, and undemanding consumption and thus misses the fun part of the whole process of creating a poem, short story, or novel. My conclusion about AI as a co-author (or, I suppose, even principal author): Why bother?

“Of course, I had to use AI to assess this short essay, didn’t I? It found one typo and offered a slight improvement in another sentence. It also suggested a stronger transition in the last paragraph to better distinguish creative writing from mere content.”

David Guenette

A writer and author of literary climate fiction series, The Steep Climes Quartet, who also writes about climate fiction and climate change science, technology and policies.

Solarpunk Symphony: Where Are the Music Programmers Who Heed the Science?

Composer Lola Perrin introduces her special essay for our Longer feature on a recent Solarpunk Symphony residency in Norway, describing how her symphony responds to frustration with cultural venues’ lack of response to the climate risks we face.

2,900 words: estimated reading time = 11.5 minutes

Longer is the place for works that don’t fit within the normal ‘short reads’ format of our blog. Longer is for essays, fiction or other forms that haven’t appeared online elsewhere and explore in more detail the creative responses to our ecological and climate crisis. With each new Longer piece, the author introduces it here with an original post, where they can reflect on the motivation or inspiration behind the work or the process of creating it.

***

In my essay, Climate Music — From Hill to Hill, I describe my trip to Norway for a music-climate residency at Bergen’s Grieg Academy of Music to workshop and perform my new climate composition ‘Solarpunk Symphony, Music from the Erratocene for 4 pianos and citizen voices’. This was also an opportunity to debate publicly with artists and climate scientists.

11th January 2025, shows at the 130,000 square foot Pasadena Convention Center in LA should be opening. An exhibitor announces dates in March; “In light of the ongoing fires and the challenges many of us are facing, we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone the Pasadena Bead & Design Show.” A Washington Post video report¹ shows residents sheltering from the fires at the centre, whose website now has this; “We understand how deeply these events are affecting our community, and we are here for you. Your safety and well-being are our top priority, and we look forward to gathering again in March, when we can all come together, support one another, and celebrate the art and creativity that unites us.” In the video we see hundreds of America’s latest internal climate migrants streaming around, temporarily housed in the site’s 1,200 hotel rooms. I see the elegant lettering of the frontage, Exhibition Hall & Ballroom, and immediately grab a screenshot, thinking “it’s already happening”.

Showing: Screenshot from Washington Post video report Altadena evacuees lose family homes to Eaton Fire, 12/1/25 — Screenshot from Washington Post video report Altadena evacuees lose family homes to Eaton Fire, 12/1/25

I wrote about exactly this situation in the introduction to my 2024 climate composition, ‘Solarpunk Symphony’, describing how communities impacted during increasing climate events will seek shelter in our modern-day temples — those cultural institutions with their thousands of square feet of protection — transforming them into places of refuge.

“August 2024’s environmental news; within the next twenty-five years millions of Americans will be affected from sea level rise and coastal flooding. Many of the world’s leading classical concert venues are in regions threatened by sea level rise and flooding. To name a few; Boston Symphony Hall is in between the Charles River Basin and the coastline, both are around 3km away. Guangzhou Opera House is 3km from the Pearl River that flows into the South China Sea. Concert halls closer to the water’s edge include Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall roughly in between East River and Hudson River, both around 1.6km away. Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires is 1.5k from the coast. Artscape Theatre Centre in Cape Town is 1km from the coastline. Southbank Centre in London is 300m from the River Thames. Kanagawa Kenmin Hall in Yokohama and Harpa in Reykjavik are both on the coast with a 200m walk to the shoreline. Given what’s happening, venues on the waterfront may wish now to consider relocating. Venues three kilometres from the water’s edge could hypothetically be far enough away to avoid becoming flooded themselves this century, but, critically, being so close to flood zones, they’re in a good position to offer shelter and safety, just as some theatres in hurricane zones already do”.

– Introduction to the 2024 composition ‘Solarpunk Symphony’

Let’s start at the end

In the early twenty-tens I went to science-led events to learn more about climate change and where artists were encouraged to make creative responses. In one such response I decided to compose a climate work for two pianos but then became increasingly blocked with no ideas at all, except wanting to work from imagined visions of a flooded London, and these images by Phil Maxwell.

Showing: Banglacam. Photomontage by Phil Maxwell 2010 — Banglacam. Photomontage: Phil Maxwell © 2010 philmaxwell.org

Showing: Anti-Nazi Demo. Photo by Phil Maxwell, early 1990s — Anti-Nazi Demo. Photo: Phil Maxwell © early 1990s philmaxwell.org

I remember sitting for days on end trying to get some kind of musical idea, eventually shouting in frustration “if I can’t find the beginning let’s start at the end”, and there it was, the entire piece hit me in an instant.

“I flew over the piano and began playing an enormous climax as if a very long and dramatic piece was trying to end; it was loud, full of chords and kept trying to slow down,” Lola said. “This was my beginning, Let’s Start At The End would commence with a sense that something huge was ending.” The piece consists of six movements in which we travel backwards from the edge of destruction to an innocence“ full of promise”.

– Extract, interview with Abdul Hamid (2014)

The year before, Manhattan had flooded in Hurricane Sandy’s deadly demonstration of how the defences of a metropolis can be overcome by extreme weather. Up to forty-two people drowned, thousands of homes were destroyed, power was shut down. Climate events like hurricanes might have been getting stronger and more impactful, but talk of ‘global warming’ was still a taboo, conversations were hard to find and harder to have. My programme notes spelled out the work’s train of thought, aiming to increase audience engagement with the crisis. The world premiere was performed by Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble at Women of the World Festival 2013 at London’s Southbank Centre.²

Solarpunk Symphony: showing: Southbank Centre, London. Photo: Lola Perrin © 2024 — Southbank Centre, London. Photo: Lola Perrin © 2024

Planning for climate futures

That iconic cultural complex was established in 1951, ironically — for me — coinciding with the beginning of The Anthropocene. Its three concert halls, art gallery, ballroom, archive studio and library are situated on the banks of the River Thames, and are not far from the Thames Barrier, a feat of engineering to keep the waters from flooding London’s streets, one that is overwhelming when you see it close up.

Solarpunk Symphony: Showing theThames Barrier, London. Photo by Andy Roberts — Thames Barrier, London. Photo: Andy Roberts https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thames_Barrier_03.jpg#file

Planning for the Barrier began decades before its 1981 opening, “after 1953, when England experienced its worst flood of the twentieth century during a storm surge in the North Sea causing the collapse of a 300ft sea wall, over 300 deaths on land and two hundred people lost their homes in Canning Town.³

The Barrier was designed to be closed only around twice a year, mainly for maintenance checks. However, instead of the anticipated eighty-four or so closures, it’s already been closed a slightly embarrassing 221 times in 42 years, mainly to alleviate increased flooding from more intense rainfall.⁴

Is the Barrier designed to adapt to the changes we’re seeing as we proceed through this century’s forthcoming impacts, or might Southbank Centre one day be a bit like today’s Pasadena Convention Center, but with thousands of displaced Londoners whose homes have been inundated, seeking water-free safety in its compound? I reach out to members of Extinction Rebellion Scientists for answers. An engineer sees my message and creates a new WhatsApp group, ’Thames Barrier’, adding a handful of experts who have since been generously helping me with information.

For example, geologist Andrew Zolnai, from a blog he wrote; “A group considered the necessity for a second barrier under Climate Change that increases both flooding and sea level seasonal elevations. I made maps & handouts here 5 yrs. ago among a DIY series here to encourage citizen science: these help address Climate Change in a proactive way using freely available UK gov data on almost-free software”.⁵

Thames tidal defences are reviewed every ten years, and to avoid being worn out before its end-of-century lifespan the Environment Agency (EA) plans to stop using it to manage rainfall flooding by 2035, by installing ‘alternative flood management’.⁶ This seems of quite critical importance when you think of all the drainage systems in properties constructed before increased rainfall from global warming was factored in. Another message comes in; “in the case of the Southbank Centre, the drainage was probably installed when it was built in 1951, so would not be sized to cope with increases in rainfall due to climate change”.

The EA surface water flood map indicates that the Centre is generally at low to medium risk of flooding. Not much in life is ever certain, and that includes flood defences protecting London. According to the EA these defences “can fail or water could spill over the top if it is deep enough”. Not too comforting! You can find the flood risk of every postcode in the UK online.⁷ Back in 2013 civil engineer Dr Richard Bloore, part of the project management team completing the Barrier, said that a second barrier would be needed because of the effects of global warming. The Southbank Centre is in Flood Zone 3, meaning high risk from river and sea flooding. The risk does not take account of the protection offered by the Thames river defences — so, it probably won’t flood as long as the barrier doesn’t fail!

How does sea-level rise affect the Thames Barrier? The EA has said that environmental changes are unpredictable and the current infrastructure “may not be enough to hold back the flood”.⁸ The defences need reinforcing.

Showing: London River Thames Inundation Risk, sea level rise model (colour halftone), Risk of Flooding from River & from Sea. Contains OS data Crown Copyright and data from Environment Agency under Open Government Licence — London River Thames Inundation Risk, sea level rise model (colour halftone), Risk of Flooding from River & from Sea Populated Places @azolnai & blog.zolnai.ca Contains data from OS Zoomstack, Contains OS data ©️ Crown Copyright and database right 2025 Contains data from Environment Agency under Open Government Licence. For more information please visit blog.zolnai.ca/2025/02/london-thames-barrier-update.html

Unless the Barrier fails, Southbank Centre and its neighbourhood may well be spared from flooding in the next few decades. It’s a different story down the river in East London. In commemorations marking the 40th anniversary of the Thames Barrier, experts at The Institution of Civil Engineers discussed how the lower-lying riverside regions in East London from Poplar to Romford are at risk of flooding by 2050. Do the people living in places like Hackney Marshes know about this? I think there’s a case for an internationally recognised concert hall concerning itself with the fate of thousands of people vulnerable to flooding down the river. Something akin to this is already starting. Culture Declares Emergency’s brilliant work provoked Southbank Centre into declaring a Climate and Ecological Emergency in 2024. Resolutions include “the provision of space twice a year, free-of-charge, to artists, activists and community organisations”.

The disconnect between scientists working on climate risk and communities having little opportunity to organise around their research is disturbing. I can think of two American climate scientists who have been vocal in recent days about having left California because of increased fire risk. Citizens all over the world need clear information.

A chartered surveyor once told me he couldn’t believe how many homeowners knew next to nothing about the construction of their homes. We’re just not in the type of society where we connect with the most important things, are we?

In a fun-sounding biometric study concert goers were fitted with an “EEG wearable headband to measure brain-wave activity”. Results suggested “a sizeable increase in oxytocin, the hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain contributing to a number of warm-and-fuzzy human emotions.”⁹ Live music very helpfully causes an “overall positive shift in brain activity, including spikes in attention, engagement, and emotional intensity”.¹⁰ Another study looking at synchronised emotions found “live music creates a remarkable physiological bond among audience members”.¹¹

Come out, come out wherever you are!

Where are the music programmers who pull all of the above together? We’re in a (insert swearword) Emergency and it would be lovely if more venues would jump on board.

Sydney Opera House https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Interior_of_Sydney_Opera_House_Concert_Hall_during_performance.jpg

Look at forthcoming concerts in say, Sydney, where five million people are vulnerable through sea level rise along the coast, flooding in river catchments, bushfires in forested areas and increased temperatures causing more heatwaves and urban heat islands.¹² Sydney’s Symphony Orchestra commence their 2025 season with “The eight horns opening Mahler’s Third Symphony set the tone for the monumental drama about to unfold … a riveting introduction to our 2025 Season”. Not to pick on this orchestra, (the Mahler is a miraculous work), but I can’t find a single concert in the season that builds community in audiences around our existential problem.

Imagine this beautiful concert hall, the orchestra on stage tuning up, the audience erupting as the conductor takes her place. But who is this at her side? She’s been joined by the director of programming who speaks about a new concert series to inform and plan resilience to Sydney’s anticipated 50cm of sea level rise and temperature increases of 1.8^oC by 2050 …

We might as well go a step further in this thought exercise. Someone somewhere has the bright idea that the great power of music to positively supercharge our emotions be put at the service of climate science internationally. Music to kickstart a new era of programming around the science is being sourced. In a flurry of activity (a WhatsApp group springs up, ‘Climate Music Programmers’?), a gentlewoman’s agreement has been made between programmers in venues across the world, Boston, Guangzhou, Manhattan, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, London, Yokohama, Reykjavik … to increase homegrown capacity around climate risks in their combined millions of square feet of audience space.

There could be a silver lining to this – excuse the pun because I’m talking about silver-haired concertgoers. As Dianna Skinner wrote in Violinist.com “There is an ever-growing concern as to how to get people, particularly younger people, into our concert halls and opera houses”.¹³ Not so long ago thousands of young people joined Greta Thunberg’s school strikes, because where else do they have but the street to express themselves? Catering for this climate generation, with their music and their musicians, would be a good step for them and also for the venues.

Long-term budgets in our institutions are obvious barriers to the imaginative thinking above. But is it too imaginative or can institutions shift to create the ‘war-like response’ that’s been called for by climate scientists for too long now? And what about the description ‘climate activist’? Shouldn’t we move away from the notion that doing something about the frightening future means you’re on the sidelines somehow, an ‘activist’? There are bound to be untold numbers of employees in the world’s cultural organisations who are also in the climate activist category.

Are You with Us in National Service? World War 1 poster public domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Are_You_with_Us_in_National_Service?_Art.IWMPST13964.jpg

Can a ‘war-like response’ to climate threats come into being in these cultural hubs, inspired by National Service in wartime? How about today’s workers having opportunities to volunteer in a ‘Climate International Service’ hosted by venues? Activists would come out of silos, repositioned within cultural centres joining up to make a tsunami of climate responses. Even more reason now with the growing suppression across today’s American society. The trustees of Washington’s Kennedy Centre have been dismissed by the American President for its progressive programming, apparently he is replacing the Chairman with none other than himself (and undoubtedly bringing in other climate deniers and rejectors of diversity, equity and inclusion).¹⁴ We should forcefully integrate climate science, mitigation and adaptation as part of our culture to increase the fight back — wherever we are in the world.

Heat deaths in Europe may triple by the end of the century, but do people in Europe know? This kind of information was talked about during audience conversation at the world premiere of Solarpunk Symphony in Bergen. As scores of musicians proved in their ClimateKeys concerts, my climate-engagement concert series, audiences welcome these formats. Venues just have to find more ways to let in projects like these.

Solarpunk Symphony: Showing ClimateKeys poster, 2017 — ClimateKeys poster, 2017

A buddy from Extinction Rebellion, playwright April de Angelis, told me about her forthcoming libretto for Jonathan Dove’s new community opera, ‘Uprising’.¹⁵ It’s the story of Greta Thunberg and the school strikers. This gives me goosebumps because Kristian Skår, one of the young pianists who performed Solarpunk Symphony in Bergen had been a school striker in Oslo. Something hopeful is happening; ‘Uprising’ is being snapped up and being programmed in more venues even before it’s had its world premiere at Glyndebourne. That’s a really positive indicator that should inspire my fantasy WhatsApp group of international climate music programmers to swing into action and get with the programme!¹⁶

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Lola’s full essay, Climate Music — From Hill to Hill, is the fourth piece for our Longer feature, which provides space to explore in more depth creative and critical responses to our ecological and climate crisis. Her residency at Grieg Academy was funded by Culture Moves Europe Mobility Fund.

Lisa’s references

Washington Post video report ‘Altadena evacuees lose family homes to Eaton Fire‘, 12/1/25
Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble
The Tide is High: the Thames Barrier Historic London Tours (9/2/22)
Thames Barrier Wikipedia
Andrew Zolnai blog, Thames barrier update (5/2/25)
What needs to be done across the estuary (outcomes): Thames Estuary 2100 (DEFRA, 2/5/24)
UK Long-term flood risk map, by postcode
Flood experts discuss the future of the Thames Barrier as water levels rise, Poplar London, 10/4/24
Biometric Study At St. Vincent Concert Shows Live Music Increases Emotional Brain Activity, Live For Live Music 25/6/18
Why Does Live Music Make Us Feel So Happy? Medium 25/8/23
Scientists observe a remarkable synchronization effect among classical music listeners, PsyPost 24/8/24
Climate change in Metropolitan Sydney, Adapt NSW
Classical Kids… Raising the Next Generation of Audience Members, Violinist.com 12/10/19
Trump says he is firing Kennedy Centre trustees and naming himself chairman, The National 8/2/25
Uprising! Director Sinéad O’Neill on Glyndebourne’s new community opera written by Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis, Planet Hugill 8/1/25
Severe Weather is Threatening the Future of Outdoor Concerts, Rolling Stone 12/8/24

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You can read Lola’s artist statement for Solarpunk Symphony on her website. Her previous ClimateCultures posts include ClimateKeys — Moving Climate Conversations Centre Stage, where she describes her own and many others’ experiences of the major global ClimateKeys initiative she set up to bring together musicians, experts and audiences to engage in climate change conversations.

Lola Perrin

A composer and classically trained pianist focused on the disconnect between the climate emergency and programming in music venues and her ClimateKeys global no-fly concert series.

Moving With the Word ‘Transitions’

ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe shares participants’ reflections from a workshop exploring the word ‘Transitions’ – the final Environmental Keywords discussion from the University of Bristol – and the sense that we need better words to capture our imaginations.

2,100 words: estimated reading time = 8 minutes

Although it was a smaller group that gathered in the St Philips area of Bristol than for the University’s previous two workshops in their Environmental Keywords series, it was as full of experiences and ideas. This final event followed the same format as the others, beginning with a walk around the local area so each person could place their own thoughts on the word ‘Transitions’ in the context of their encounters there and their conversations together while walking. And, as before, this process of exploring ideas through local explorations of place proved fruitful in the discussions that then took place at the workshop.

The tricky thing

One participant reflected on the difficulties in applying a word like ‘transitions’ within the social contexts of environmental issues when compared with the seemingly simpler patterns in the natural world. “Ecological transitions are something which are much easier for me to grasp. I can see seasons progressing and [on the walk] I took images of the flowers and the blossom coming out. I know that species are migrating and then migrating to different parts [e.g. with climate change], but that’s a more gradual transition. For me, transitions become really difficult as soon as humans are involved. Humans are just so complicated.”

It’s a complexity that often seems to get reduced to quick fixes, to a reliance on technology and its promises to shift us away from a problematic state and towards a desired, improved one. But “it’s not just about these technological solutions. It’s about the really tricky thing. It’s about demand, right? And how much energy we’re using. And you can’t just magic a problem away through net zero, right? Or through electric cars.”

Indeed, one contribution suggested that “to achieve net zero targets, we need to transition to a lower energy-consuming society using about 20% of the fossil fuels we use currently and 50% of the total energy. The hope that we can transition to 100% renewable energy under the current energy demand just doesn’t add up. Also, the net zero scenarios considered by policymakers include technologies that are not ready for deployment and they may never be. So, things like green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.”

In fact, of course, transitions — in technologies, economics, business and consumer behaviour — are also what drive our current direction deeper into ecological and climate predicaments. Seemingly small and gradual shifts ramp up our resource use. One person illustrated this, asking “are we missing out on observing some changes that are happening and then waking up and thinking ‘Oh, no. Something changed. And I haven’t noticed that transition process’? … So for example, you know, thirty years ago you would have a weekly bath and now you have a daily shower and we know norms of convenience and hygiene change because of the materials around you, and so on.”

As someone else commented, this failure to grasp the scale of the issue and the nature of the required response can quickly lead to frustration with ‘official’ models of transitions. “When people use the word, it feels like they’re just tinkering around the edges when what we need is something much more fundamental. And the tinkering around the edges of things gets quite irritating. I don’t mean the small-scale, say, small communities who make something work and then how does that scale up? I mean the imposed transitions.”

Transitions - showing broken windows in an abandoned building — Photograph: Workshop participant © 2022

But another participant offered a more nuanced view of how transitions can take shape in the more autonomous cultural sphere, beyond policy and technological supply and demand, for example in how refugee and immigrant families respond to new surroundings and circumstances. “So I think that transition is countries, languages, cultures. I see it firsthand and it’s fascinating to me how and what rules are bent, where tradition is pulling and where, you know, modernity is pulling and just the meshing of culture and language and all that.”

Empathetic transitions

Holding each of these three workshops in different areas of the city has given the series a strong identification with the challenges and the opportunities involved in negotiating social responses to environmental change, and how change often cannot be imposed from above. “So I naively believe that you can’t implement any change if you don’t take the people who live there on board. … I think otherwise it’s like colonialism. You’re coming, you’re plonking your view onto the world on it and you’re thinking that that’s what’s wanted.” Another expanded on this: “The only way to do that is really to spend a huge amount of time talking to people and to find out how people want to use the space, how they depend on that space, how they perceive ownership of that space, and what are they willing to give up to protect that space. And those discussions are usually not happening.” Of course, these conversations are also not simple things to hold open and to engage every voice in.

Transitions - "If you want to know more about moving to Bristol ask a Bristolian." — Ask a Bristolian
Photograph: Workshop participant © 2022

Picking up on the nature of conversations and what they offer — even short explorations such as this series of half-day events — another participant observed, “You can’t just expect transitions or transformations or change to be easy. Like there will be that conflict always. And people have their own priorities and their own interests. So it’s crucial to really understand other people’s worlds, really put yourself in someone else’s shoes. That’s why we like this sort of exercise, you know, because you don’t have to agree with someone else’s interest, but it makes you realise that we could all be more than a single issue person. … That’s why I like these sort of empathetic activities.”

We begin to see here, of course, the links between ideas of ‘Transitions’ with those of ‘Justice’ and even ‘Resilience’ — how these work with or against each other, and that would be a fascinating area of future exploration. One person offered an example from South America, of changes as a nation continues to emerge from a long heritage of dictatorship and how its constitution now “recognises explicitly the different indigenous relations to the ocean. …. So there’s a change here where this has been written into a constitutional framework. Now what that then looks like in terms of how does that become concrete actions, we don’t know. But there’s a high-level political change here.”

Often, the space between formal, top-down approaches to transition and more local, autonomous change is experienced as a gap, where change fails to take shape or lead to the desired outcomes. “The risk is you end up with the gap in the middle between the small scale community initiatives and the kind of discourse, the well-meaning discourse, from the top.”

Reaching to transformation

Maybe it’s also where it’s hardest to visualise the difference that can make the difference. As one participant put it: “So if you look at climate change and transitions, people are talking about energy, people are talking about food, people are talking about cities and with some of those I could imagine transitions, but in some of them it’s so complex that I can’t envisage what a city of the future might look like where we have had a transition. … And I find that is my intellectual challenge. I just can’t imagine. I just lack the creativity to think about how crazy this could be. … Is it that I’m just so embedded in this society where I have found my space, my niche … that I can’t see transitions.”

Another person offered an almost rueful observation: “I’m just wondering whether transition has become such a gentle word and maybe we need a less gentle word?” And a point that came up more than once was how an early experience of the Covid pandemic was the sense that change was not just inevitable — a dramatic ‘push’ on how we live — but that change is also always possible, and can be turned into something positive; but there is also always the risk of it being lost, of it fading into a return to ‘business as usual’. “It is something which forces us. But we’ve had a global pandemic, that is a pretty big push. And what we’re coming to is back to living the way it was before, with variations — we might not go into the office every day, but ultimately, it is still very much the society it was before. So if that doesn’t push us, what will make us live differently?“

As one person put it, a word like ‘Transitions’ seems to speak of a smooth process and something that’s maybe linear and inevitable: something people must move with. “You’re either going forwards or backwards. It’s either a yes or no, and it doesn’t do justice to that range of different experiences that we end up thinking about in these activities. And I do really worry because there are signs now that some of the arguments about transition, and net zero as it is so often framed, are becoming really polarised.”

Another contribution emphasises the ‘real world’ nature of change that lies behind a simple word like ‘Transitions’. “In the whole engagement debate, there is not enough being taught about how conflict arises and how you can’t make everyone happy. And especially for environmental transition, the expectation that there are some standards of living which we cannot continue: how do you have that conversation …. You won’t have a low traffic neighbourhood that will satisfy everyone because it involves some sacrifices. It involves making roads one way from two ways, taking some parking space. The new cycle lane is seen as someone else taking parking space and there are the trade-offs and everything.”

Transitions - showing a car lane becoming a cycle lane — St Philips Causeway approach
Photograph: Workshop participant © 2022

Ultimately then, the conversation returns us to the adequacy of the words we use. One person summed it up by saying that ‘Transition’ is probably not the right word. “And I feel like that this exercise has really reinforced that, I think, precisely because it is so embedded in the language of the kind of top-down government initiatives. … So I think we need another word. What word would that be? I don’t know. ‘Transformation’? …. Because I think there’s stuff already happening that we can draw on and it captures a bit more of a sense of human agency. It’s actually a bit more hopeful. …. And I think ‘transition’ sounds a bit like ‘transition is happening whether you like it or not’. The word ‘transformation’, for me, means that it sounds like more of an opportunity, a kind of intention.”

One participant shared with me that they didn’t have strong feelings about the word, as “I don’t use it much in my own work, my own life.” And maybe that is part of the issue, that it has little everyday purchase.

And another contributor offered a further alternative: “So should we be talking about transitions or should we be talking about revolution?”

Find out more

Do contribute your responses below to be part of the conversation! See the Leave a Reply box underneath the existing comments.

Environmental Keywords is a short interdisciplinary project at the University of Bristol, investigating three keywords — ‘Justice’, ‘Resilience’ and ‘Transitions’ — that are common in the environmental discourses that shape how we think of, talk about and act on the ecological and climate predicaments facing us.

With funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, the project is led by Dr Paul Merchant, Co-Director of the University’s Centre for Environmental Humanities, and involves colleagues from different departments and disciplines, as well as local community groups, ClimateCultures members and other creative practitioners.

The project focused on three workshops in Bristol, facilitated by Anna Haydock-Wilson and complemented by online content here at ClimateCultures:

‘Justice’ — Wednesday 16th February 2022
‘Resilience’ — Wednesday 9th March 2022
‘Transitions’ – Thursday 24th March 2022

Anna has created this short film from the series, with contributions from Paul and the different participants who joined the conversations.

We have four previous posts in the Environmental Keyword series. ‘Justice’: Walking With the Word ‘Justice’ by Mark Goldthorpe and Permeability: On Green Frogs, Imagination & Reparations, a response from writer Brit Griffin. ‘Resilience’: Growing With the Word ‘Resilience’ by Mark Goldthorpe and A Nature More Resilient, a response by psychotherapist Susan Holliday. And the main Environmental Keywords section has pages with other creative responses to these words from a number of ClimateCultures members. Look out for the ‘Transitions’ page, coming soon!

Mark Goldthorpe

An independent researcher, project and programme manager on environmental and climate change issues - investigating, supporting and delivering cultural and creative responses to our predicaments.

Hacking the Earth

Curator and writer Rob La Frenais interviews scientist and fellow ClimateCultures member Bill McGuire about Skyseed. McGuire’s novel explores geoengineering — the ‘fix’ proposed by some as global heating’s global solution. What on Earth could possibly go wrong?…

1,930 words: estimated reading time = 7.5 minutes

As COP 26 in Glasgow approaches, there’s a new thriller, Skyseed by scientist Bill McGuire which is aimed at drawing our attention to the growing lobby of industrialists, fossil fuel producers, politicians and scientists who want to explore the idea of geoengineering — what is called in the novel the ‘Fix’ — using novel, large-scale, engineering solutions to global heating.

Showing cover of Skyseed novel on geonegineering — Skyseed, by Bill McGuire

In a tense drama set in 2028, the world’s scientific community — astronomers, volcanologists and climate scientists — slowly becomes aware there is a conspiracy of ‘bad actors’ who are secretly unleashing synthetic biology-inspired ‘nanobots’ to eat up the carbon in the atmosphere. Without spoiling the plot, there is an unexpected volcanic eruption during this process which sends the world hurtling towards a new ice age, where ironically we have to go back to dirty coal technologies like steam trains to try to reverse runaway cooling. This is probably the first thriller based on the climate emergency as it is unravelling right now and certainly the first based on geo-engineering. As the book’s cover suggests “hacking the earth might be the last thing we ever do”.

The ‘bad actors’ are — wait for it — Britain and the USA. It’s a story that mirrors the unthinkable alliance between Blair and Bush to launch an illegal war in Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction, based on a ‘dodgy dossier’. In the book, the UK Prime Minister has already bought a dodgy dossier on geoengineering from the US President, while at the same time testing the water with a climate scientist he had previously campaigned with before getting elected and back-pedalling on climate pledges, Jane Halliwell. Here she responds to his suggestion that a ‘fix’ might be possible.

Jane looked at the PM for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘Prime Minister, you know what needs to be done. Nothing’s changed. Our priority has to be slashing emissions, not (increasing) GDP growth. Nothing else will do…Kickstarting the stalled renewables and transport decarbonisation drives, a crash programme in energy efficiency. It’s the same old stuff. I’m afraid there’s just no silver bullet.

Moving from science fiction to reality?

Geoengineering with a space lens — Space Lens. Image: Mikael Häggström – Including the image ‘The Earth seen from Apollo 17’, also public domain licensed, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#/media/File:Space_lens.png

Bill McGuire: “Extreme geoengineering measures include building colossal mirrors or lenses in space to cut the amount of solar radiation reaching the planet.”

McGuire knows his territory. When he’s not writing novels he’s Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at UCL, London and contributing author to the IPCC 2012 SREX report on climate change and extreme events. I asked him how he became aware of the dangers of geoengineering as portrayed in his thriller.

“Well the idea’s been around since the Cold War really, people like Edward Teller brought it up. So it’s always been at the back of my mind. Over the last couple of years, there’s been a UN moratorium of geoengineering; open-air experiments anyway. Despite that, people have started to bugger around, if you like, and try things out. It’s the fact that it’s growing in terms of credence and involvement that has sparked my interest in it. People are getting into it in all sorts of ways. For example there’s a project designed to brighten the clouds over the Great Barrier Reef. It’s aimed to preserve the Reef, but it’s pretty clear they are developing a technology that can be used around the world and make large amounts of money out of it. It’s moving from pages of science fiction to what potentially is reality.”

There are already documents circulating about a ‘soft’ version of geoengineering, for example a group led by Sir David King called the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge. What was his response to that? Was ‘climate repair’ also another excuse for inaction on climate?

“In Skyseed I talk about direct interventions that try and cut out incoming sunlight. Those are pretty drastic ways of doing things. The technology in Skyseed is actually a form of carbon capture. The ‘bots suck the carbon directly out of the atmosphere, which is that cause of the devastating cooling. However there are geoengineering techniques based on carbon capture which can be done in all sorts of ways. One that doesn’t sound too bad is spreading basalt dust on farmland. Basalt dust reacts with carbon — it locks it away and does a good job in that way. But when you look at these things, whatever they are, at scale they are huge projects. It would involve spraying basalt dust on half the world’s farmland, just to reduce the emissions by about a 20th of what we produce every year. This is the big problem with geoengineering, it has to be at a massively huge scale if it’s going to do anything at all.

“The other thing I have an issue with is, if you think geo-engineering is a solution waiting to be utilised, then you’re never going to spend as much time pushing as hard as possible for cutting emissions, because you’re always going to think: ‘doesn’t matter, there’s a backstop — we can always resort to that’. If, for example, you’re protecting a city with your loved ones you fight a damn sight harder if you’re in the last line of defence than if you’re in the second line of defence. This is a systemic problem with geoengineering as a whole.”

Geoengineering with iron sulphate — Photograph: NASA (Public Domain), 2006 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17189
Bill McGuire: “This shows a plankton bloom off the coast of Argentina. Some geoengineers want to dump large quantities of iron sulphate into the ocean to promote more plankton growth, the idea being that more plankton will suck up more carbon dioxide.”

With regard to the speech by Jane Halliwell to the Prime Minister above, had he come across any politicians taking the idea of geoengineering seriously?

“I think the UK government is taking it seriously. There are people in government keeping up to speed on what’s going on. It’s certainly not being ruled out. Of course, the fossil fuel companies and others are pushing this. If they can keep temperatures down they think they can keep pulling oil and gas out of the ground. There’s a lot of lobbying in various countries.”

In his book, could the rogue geoengineering activity have been spotted from space, for example from the ISS?

“The sort of scenario I talk about in the book, which is extreme and which we don’t have the technology for at the moment, in terms of these self-replicating nanobots; firstly it was detectable because of the density of the atmosphere. The astronomers were complaining they didn’t have decent observing conditions in the Canary Islands. Certainly, if somebody was pumping, for example, tens of millions of tons of sulphur into the atmosphere, illicitly, that would be picked up, because there are monitoring instruments up there.”

Geoengineering - overview of the SPICE (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering) project — Image by Hugh Hunt, 2011: SPICE SRM – overview of the SPICE (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering) project. Creator. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SPICE_SRM_overview.jpg

Bill McGuire: “So-called solar radiation management includes mimicking a volcano by pumping millions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. This blocks incoming solar radiation leading to cooling of the lower atmosphere (troposphere) and surface. This is especially risky, as cooling due to large volcanic eruptions – e.g Tambora (Indonesia) in 1815 – is typically accompanied by extreme weather, reduced crop yields, widespread harvest failure and famine.”

Geoengineering — to what end?

With the Arctic ice melting at an alarming rate would that be a legitimate reason for engineering solutions, like re-icing the Arctic with giant mirrors, for example?

“It depends on your point of view. The natural way would be to allow it to heal itself, really. ‘Re-wilding the climate’, I call it. If we decide as a society that if we have brought emissions under control we now want to reverse things, you would use geoengineering schemes to refreeze the Arctic, etc. Or we might argue that we brought emissions down, let’s just let the Earth get back to where it wants to be. Before we started influencing the climate the global average temperature was on its way down towards the next ice age. If we talk about ‘repairing the climate’ we don’t even know what that means. Does that mean getting back to 280 parts per million carbon dioxide, which it was in the interglacial period, because if it is, we will end up in an Ice age again? At a higher level nobody knows. It’s not an issue that’s been addressed yet. Once we get emissions under control, knowing what we do next is a big issue.”

Photograph: Simon Eugster, 2005: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cirrus_fibratus_and_Cirrocumulus.jpg

BillMcGuire: “Thinning of cirrus clouds by means of spraying them with chemicals is proposed as a means of increasing heat loss from the Earth and human activities into space.”

Had he been in a room where people were seriously fanatical about geo-engineering?

“I haven’t been in a room with them, no, but I keep track of things and I know there are individuals who are fanatical about it as an agenda, certainly. There are people like that about. Not many so far, thank God.”

So for example?

“Well the chap (David Keith) who runs the SCOPEX experiment, for example, at Harvard. They already designed an instrument that will go up into the stratosphere and test, first of all spraying water, then calcium carbonate then sulphur dioxide as a means of testing pumping out millions of tons of sulphur. There’s also the Great Barrier Reef project I referred to before. People like Bill Gates are involved in these, they funded some of these studies. Tech billionaires need to have these big shiny projects, don’t they? They can’t keep their hands off. “

In the novel, the whistleblowers who draw attention to the effects of geoengineering (like him) get assassinated by dark forces of the State. How real was this? McGuire: “Well it’s a thriller isn’t it!”

Find more

Skyseed by Bill McGuire was published by The Book Publishing Guild in September 2020, and you can read more about Bill’s work on the novel and thoughts on geoengineering in his piece for the ClimateCultures Creative Showcase — including a link to a podcast interview.

You can find out about plans for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021 and Pre-COP activities at the official COP 26 website.

In his article for The Guardian (16/4/20) — Scientists trial cloud brightening equipment to shade and cool Great Barrier Reef — Graham Readfearn describes experiments to use a modified turbine to spray trillions of nano-sized salt crystals into the air from a barge. And this article by Jeff Tollefson in Nature (27/11/18) reports on researchers’ plan to spray sunlight-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, an approach that could ultimately be used to quickly lower the planet’s temperature: First sun-dimming experiment will test a way to cool Earth.

Rob mentions the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge, which was founded and is chaired by former UK Chief Scientific Advisor Sir David King. The Centre’s research themes include deep and rapid emissions reductions, greenhouse gas removal and restoring broken climate systems, and it also develops policy.

Climate Emergency – a New Culture of Conversation, Rob’s previous interview with another fellow ClimateCultures member, discussed ClimateKeys, composer Lola Perrin‘s ground-breaking global initiative to ‘help groups of people tell the truth to each other’ about the ecological and climate emergency.

Rob La Frenais

An independent contemporary art curator, working internationally and creatively with artists entirely on original commissions, directly engaged with the artist’s working process as far as possible.

Celebrating Clean Air Day

Artist and writer Selva Ozelli marks Clean Air Day with a roundup of international art shows she has curated and participated in during this year of pandemic, spurred on by urgent connections between our environmental and health crises.

2,380 words: estimated reading time = 9.5 minutes + 2 mins video

It has been an unprecedented year, with 13% more large, uncontrolled wildfires around the world compared to last year — spelling dire consequences for carbon dioxide levels, health and biodiversity, as well as the economy. And human actions in burning down ‘Magical Forests’ — as depicted by my childhood friend artist Mehmet Kuran — are mostly to blame, according to a newly released report, Fires, forests and the future.

wildfires and clean air - showing art by Selva Ozelli — “Wildfires in the Age of Corona”, Oil 40 x 30 cm, Canvas Paper
Artist: Selva Ozelli © 2020

The year began with Australia’s record-shattering bushfires, burning down a forest the size of England. According to The Guardian, “On New Year’s Day in Canberra the air quality reading was the worst on the planet: 26 times levels considered hazardous to human health.”

In April, nearly 20% of the forested area of northern Thailand burned, and wildfires overtook Indonesia and Ukraine’s Chernobyl region, causing dangerous levels of air pollution. By June wildfires lit up the Arctic Circle, with Siberia registering the most extreme recorded temperatures, resulting in the severest Arctic melting. By August a government researcher told Reuters that Brazil’s Amazon wildfires were the worst in the past ten years. The West Coast of the U.S. slipped into an epic wildfire season, which is still ongoing. These wildfires raging across the world smashed last year’s records for CO₂ emissions, according to scientists at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, and aggravated respiratory ailments amid the ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic — the most devastating plague to ravage humankind this century.

This unparalleled year brought out the artist and curator in me for the first time in my life. The unprecedented global Covid-19 lockdown allowed me to allocate my time to expressing my thoughts and feelings about climate change and Covid-19 via paintings, in addition to my series of articles on digital technology adoption, solar energy and tax policies in jurisdictions with the greatest carbon emissions.

International art for global challenges

I took my first step as a curator with an art brochure for fellow ClimateCultures artist Rana Balkis’s Infinite Possibilities series. We are now entering what is known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but still fuelled by coal and fossil fuels — with adverse environmental effects. In this era, not only are we able to transmit our ideas and our art digitally around the world, but also the pollution from energising these digital technologies — as well as diseases affected by pollution. This triggered an urge in Rana to find a new way, through her art, to raise awareness of climate change and environmental consciousness. In Infinite Possibilities — with two paintings selected in the United Nations’ Covid-19 Artwork open brief — working in the style of collage, she intends her oil paintings to expand our curiosity and imagination so we better connect, understand and adapt to our technologically changing world by expanding our perception in the context of our stagnant values, behaviour and norms.

Since our atelier, led by Teymur Rzayev, is a space for many talented climate change artists and interesting artwork, next I curated Atelier Teymur Rzayev’s First Digital Climate Change Art Show, with five paintings that were acknowledged in six international art contests. As I reported for the ClimateCultures Quarantine Connection series, I initially planned our group show to take place at the Balat Culture Center in Istanbul. However, due to Covid-19 social distancing rules, it was cancelled at the last moment. Therefore, I had to quickly switch to launching a digital art show with the assistance of Cem Ustuner, the owner of Pinelo Art Gallery, so it could reach global viewers. Our group show was registered as UN Environment, Ocean and Desertification Days digital events and it received a favourable art review; it got ample international press and was published by the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change, Hong Kong.

Clean Air

The good reception of this show encouraged me to continue curating ten, and participating in seven, climate change and Covid-19 themed art shows: four group, and three solo. These were published by the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change Hong Kong, Climate Museum UK and over 160 museums, culture ministries and NGOs in over 40 countries around the world. I am pleased to share these art shows here today, to commemorate UK’s largest air pollution campaign: National Clean Air Day, which was launched in 2017. While this is normally celebrated on the third Thursday in June, due to Covid-19 this year Clean Air Day is celebrated digitally on 8th October in the UK.

Encouraged by the increasing interest of the international community in clean air, and emphasising the need to make further efforts to improve air quality, including reducing air pollution to protect human health, the UN General Assembly decided to designate 7th September as the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies, which was celebrated digitally for the first time this year around the globe with the highest level of participation from the UN — and Turkey’s Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, where Professor Mehmet Emin Birpınar, Deputy Minister, explained that “the coronavirus pandemic has shown the importance of clean air all over the world.”

But the largest ever global Climate Ambition Alliance — launched in 2019 and representing 452 cities (including London and New York City), 22 regions in 120 countries, 1,101 businesses, 45 of the biggest investors, and 549 universities — is the ‘Race To Zero’ campaign. It rallies leadership and support from businesses, cities, regions, investors for a healthy, resilient, zero-carbon recovery ahead of COP26, where governments must strengthen their contributions to the Paris Agreement, achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest.

As part of the Race to Zero campaign, run in coordination with the UN and the City of New York, ex-Mayor of NYC Mike Bloomberg kicked off Climate Week in NYC on 21st September by announcing that Bloomberg Philanthropies and Sierra Club successfully retired 60% of U.S. coal-fired power plants — 318 out of 530 plants — via the Beyond Coal campaign. A day later, injecting new momentum into global climate action, President Xi told the UN General Assembly that China, the world’s biggest polluter of greenhouse gases, pledged to go carbon neutral by 2060 — only a week after the EU committed to increasing its emission-reduction target from 40 to 55 percent by 2030. On 27th September, the last day of Climate Week in NYC, the world’s first shipment of blue ammonia was transported from Saudi Arabia, which has the World’s second-largest oil reserves, to Japan — the World’s sixth largest CO₂ emitter — where it will be used in power stations to produce electricity without carbon emissions.

“Desolate Tree”, Oil, 90 x 90cm, Canvas
Artist: Fatma Kadir © 2020

With world leaders taking important steps towards decarbonisation, I curated a group show Clean Air for Blue Skies and my solo digital art show Breathe Life with the theme of air pollution. These two art shows contain six paintings that were acknowledged in five international art contests of forest fires, lonely trees, gardens and portraits of artists who were economically impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic with their shows being cancelled.

My solo art show Breathe Life includes portraits of composer and singer Niall Horan (Heartbreak Weather – Human’s Inertia in the Face of Wildfires) and ClimateCultures artist Renan Kaleli (Pollution), who is working towards preparing an art show Climate Change to Corona, with five paintings selected in the UN’s Covid-19 Artwork open brief. These artists turned to launching digital concerts and digital art shows this year, so I have also included a portrait of Professor Erdal Arikan (Pollution 2), the creator of 5G technology.

Urbanisation & Biodiversity

Serife Akkan explored the theme of urbanization and its impact on the environment and CO₂ levels in her solo art show One Door One Hundred Trees. Serife wanted to bring attention to and set alarm bells about the destruction humans are making of their environment — particularly since she witnessed firsthand the rapid urbanisation in Istanbul during her lifetime and its impact on air quality.

One of the concerns associated with predictions of CO₂-induced global warming is the claim that the number of birds and their habitat areas will decline. Conserving and restoring the ecological connectivity and integrity of ecosystems that support natural cycles are essential for the survival and well-being of migratory birds. Artist Fatma Kadir explored the theme of biodiversity in her two solo art shows Bird Watching 1 & 2, with sixteen paintings that were acknowledged in three international art contests to commemorate biodiversity in birds that are important plant pollinators and seed dispersers.

This July, less sea ice covered the Arctic Ocean than in any other July since scientists began keeping track of it with satellites in 1979. This marks another step toward the devastating and planet-reshaping inevitability of an ice-free summer for the Arctic Ocean. Artist Semine Hazar explored the theme of Arctic melting in her solo art show Sea Watcher. The inspiration was her trip to the Antarctic in 2017 where she witnessed the ice melting and, with a great sound, crashing into the sea. This brought tears to her eyes. Semine’s late husband was a captain. Captains determine their sea routes based on the silent light signals of lighthouses. With her sea and lighthouse themed paintings, Semine wants to draw attention to the importance of oceans to our world and our ecology as the largest carbon sink, and the need for us to guard them. She wants the silent signals from the lighthouses to be visible to all of us, not only captains of our world.

Covid-19

The current high levels of air pollution around the world have contributed to increased rates of chronic respiratory disease and impaired lung function in people of all ages, making air pollution a major and increasing threat to public health according to a study published in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science. Many of the diseases that are caused by long-term exposure to air pollution are the same diseases that increase the risk of severe illness and death in patients with Covid-19.

In my two solo art shows Art in the Time of Corona 1 & 2, with sixteen paintings that were acknowledged in five international art contests, I explored whether climate change caused by CO₂ might be one reason for such a terrible global Covid-19 pandemic which spread around the world like a tsunami alongside heightened CO2, penetrating deep into our respiratory and circulatory systems, damaging our lungs to the point where we become highly vulnerable to the coronavirus.

“Corona Corona”, Oil, 30 x 30 cm, Canvas
Artist: Selva Ozelli © 2020

The unprecedented pandemic has put an enormous burden on health systems and professionals worldwide. So far, more than 27.9 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and more than 1,000,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. Some 18.8 million people have recovered. The pandemic unveiled the challenges and the risks health workers face globally including healthcare-associated infections, violence, stigma, psychological and emotional disturbances, illness and even death. These frontline workers are physically exhausted and emotionally strained from the harrowing experience of serving on the Covid response with respiratory as well as neurological manifestations.

To commemorate their sacrifice I have included portraits of Covid-19 frontline professionals, including Dr Esma Akin, Chief of Nuclear Medicine at George Washington Hospital in Washington DC, USA; Dr Kalbiye Yalaz — the teacher of Dr Akin — who established the first pediatric neurology department in Hacettepe Hospital; Lale Baymur Vanli, a Pediatric Neuropsychologist who is the first psychologist to be hired into the first pediatric neurology department in Hacettepe Hospital and daughter of late Professor Feriha Baymur, who established the first Psychology department at Hacettepe Hospital and University.

Finally, climate change artists Fatma Kadir from her Bird Watching series, Resul Rzayev from his Mountain Air series, and I from my Art in the Time of Corona series donated artwork to the Portakal Cicegi Project, which will be on sale until 15th October 2020 to raise funds for the orphans of Covid-19 frontline health care professionals.

Find out more

Selva’s articles have been published by the world’s first Climate Change museum, The Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change in Hong Kong, as well as over 100 other publications around the world. She contributed Tsunami / Chasing the Quarantine Blues Away for Day 22 of our Quarantine Connection series, and in September 2020 art.earth published her piece, Acknowledging the true cost of climate change.

You can find out more about Clean Air Day in the UK and the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies campaigns, where the UN has described air quality as a two-fold problem, with both health and climate impacts. WWF published its report Fires, forests and the future: a crisis raging out of control? in 2020. You can read 8 things everyone should know about Australia’s wildfire disaster, published in Vox about the start of the bushfires in January 2020, with the Guardian reporting how “for months, Australians breathed air pollution up to 26 times above levels considered hazardous to human health. The long-term impact could be devastating” in Inside Australia’s climate emergency: the air we breathe. In June CNN published Temperatures in an Arctic Siberian town hit 100 degrees, a new high. In September, Reuters reported Exclusive: Brazil Amazon fires likely worst in 10 years, August data incomplete, government researcher says. This Nature Briefing from June 2020 suggests that Half the world’s population are exposed to increasing air pollution.

Artist Rana Balkis is also a ClimateCultures member. You can view Selva’s and Rana’s paintings for the UN Covid-19 art show at the Trvst website, and Selva’s brochure about Rana’s Infinite Possibilities series is published by Issuu. The international art show Atelier Teymur Rzayev’s First Digital Climate Change Art Show was featured in Coin Telegraph in May 2020, with a slideshow available in this piece from the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change, Hong Hong. The Museum also has this slideshow of the Breathe Life art show Selva curated, and you can see slideshows of the Clean Air for Blue Skies art show, as well as the ‘One Door One Hundred Trees art show she curated for Serife Akkan, the Bird Watching series from Fatma Kadir, Semine Hazar’s Sea Watcher show, and Selva’s own show, Art in the Time of Corona.

Selva Ozelli

An environmentalist working as an artist, writer, international tax attorney and public accountant, who has curated a Climate Change Art Show at Balat Culture Center, Istanbul ...