Climate Countdown or How I found myself immersed in the world of climate action
On New Year’s Day I decided that I would be in Paris this December for COP21. I didn’t know what I would be doing there, whether I would be inside the negotiating space or outside on the streets, but I figured I had 11 months to sort out the details. Little did I know…
Fast forward to today – 11 months later – and I not only do I have a ticket to Paris but I will be there as the director of Climate Countdown, a web-series that has spent the last 8 months mapping out climate solutions and tracking paths towards a successful COP21. We have released 8 episodes already, each averaging 10 minutes long, and have interviewed people in New York, DC, Boston, Baltimore, Milan, Bonn, Paris and Beijing.
So how did I get into all of this? I moved to New York City just over a year ago, after working as an animation producer in the UK, with the goal of making more socially engaged films. With time on my hands, I enrolled in some MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and it was while taking the Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s (SDSN) course on Climate Change Science and Negotiations that I learned about COP21.
I had always been concerned about climate change but, quite frankly, thought we had missed our window of opportunity to do anything about it. So when I learned that our window was still open, I thought – why don’t I know about this? I considered myself a well-informed plugged-in knowledgeable person when it came to what was going on in the world, but I had no idea what a COP was or that 2015 was being talked about as our last chance to avoid a climate crisis. The more I learned, the more inspired I felt to do something more than just recycle.
If 2015 was the year for action, I had to join the fight. What else could I do but make a film about it? I still knew very little about the ‘climate change world’ but luckily I lived near Columbia University and so I jumped right in to it all. Very quickly I had met Kathy from SDSN and Nicole from Citizens’ Climate Lobby and a team began to form. With it, an idea emerged: to make a conversational web-series that would release episodes throughout the year to build momentum towards Paris.
We wanted it to be more than just a series of informational videos – it needed a character. At the heart of it, Climate Countdown is a personal journey to find out what people are actually doing to tackle the climate crisis and how can I, as an ordinary citizen, feel empowered; and so I moved from behind the camera to in front of the camera. To fill the spot behind the camera, I recruited a filmmaker friend, Eric, and with him came the idea to use post-its as a visual tool for simplifying what were often complex concepts. I always retain information better when I write things down and am able to tangibly map out and connect ideas; I also have a nerdy love of Muji pens. The pieces of a successful web-series were all falling into place.
The topics of the episodes have emerged organically; as we finish one episode, it becomes clear where we need to explore next. We started by explaining the context around COP21 and then I went to Bonn for the first session of negotiations to find out how the process works and what the contentious issues were. If you had told me last year that soon I would be sitting in the midst of the UN negotiations, I would’ve raised a very skeptical eyebrow at you – but there I was at UNFCCC HQ listening to China ask the other countries of the world what the principles of the agreement would be.
My experience in Bonn helped to shape my thinking about the UN negotiation process. After talking to people about what success in Paris looked like, it became clear that action needed to come from outside the official negotiations as well – from civil society, industry, business and citizens. Saleemul Huq encapsulated this bigger picture when he told me: “The technology exists, the money exists – the political will doesn’t exist. We have to create political will.”
This is where we are now, exploring the areas of Money, Technology and Political Will. To tackle the climate crisis, we will need all three areas working together and so we want to figure out for each area a) where are we, b) where do we need to be, and c) who is working to close that gap. We will be releasing episodes covering these topics between now and COP21 and then in Paris, this investigation will merge with our exploration of the official negotiations and a fuller picture of the action needed will emerge.
The future of our world is being decided this December but the Paris Agreement is not the end – it is only the beginning. As global citizens, we need to know what is being decided on our behalf and hold our governments accountable in the years ahead. We need to ensure that commitments made in Paris are carried out and that these are made more ambitious as we move forward. The stakes are high, the transformation needed is huge – but we can do this. Join Climate Countdown and together let’s build the political will to make this happen.