To truly grasp the urgency of the crisis, we need to see its impact on people and their livelihoods
When you Google search the words ‘climate change’, the images tab shows what you would mostly expect: melting glaciers, polar bears stranded on sea ice, disturbing graphics of an Earth on fire and plumes of thick greenhouse gases oozing from fossil fuel power stations. This limited set of images has come to represent climate change, but it leaves me wondering: where are all the people?
Imagery and videos are a huge part of how we understand climate change, depicting some of the catastrophic impacts on our planet — from the bush fires raging through Australia to the tidal surges flooding Venice. In Natural History documentaries, landscapes characterised by ice — or lack thereof — usually take centre stage to tell the story of the global climate crisis — remember THAT walrus scene from Seven Worlds: One Planet?
Polar bears and pandas have become much-loved symbols and almost synonymous with issues such as climate change and wildlife conservation, but this highlights a striking and problematic feature of climate visuals — a distinct lack of human stories. When humans are depicted, it normally consists of politicians, scientists or activists and these images, like the polar bear, reinforce the belief that climate change is a distant problem. For us to truly grasp the urgency and complexity of climate change and its solutions, we need films and images which show importance to the individual, covering the impact on topics like food, the agricultural industry and access to clean water.
“Often, when signalling environmental stories to our readers, selecting an image of a polar bear on melting ice has been the obvious – though not necessarily appropriate – choice. These images tell a certain story about the climate crisis but can seem remote and abstract – a problem that is not a human one, nor one that is particularly urgent.”
The climate crisis has already caused harm to the lifelong health of today’s children, warn doctors from the Lancet Countdown, and the 2019 report also found that human exposure to fires had doubled since 2000; wildfires not only cause death and health damage but also have significant economic and social impacts.
But it’s not just about health — by focusing on personal stories, we can tell new narratives from new perspectives, such as the 370 million indigenous people around the world who will be affected the most by environmental degradation and pollution. Living in parts of the world where they largely depend on the natural environment for their livelihoods and culture, indigenous peoples are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than anyone else on Earth. Traditional Ecological Knowledge and cultural practices that are deeply tied to the rhythms of the seasons are being lost as the world changes too quickly for indigenous peoples to adapt.
At this stage in the global climate crisis, we need everyone to feel empowered and more importantly, included in the conversation to find solutions — I believe we can only achieve this by featuring urgent, real stories with real people. By moving the focus from environmental catastrophe to environmental justice, community leaders who are inspiring hope on a local level will be allowed to take up the spotlight they rightly deserve.