Australian environmentalist and author Tim Flannery can recall the moment he first came face to face with powerful evidence of climate change. In his new documentary Climate Changers, the respected scientist reflects on the impact of this experience, and takes viewers along on his search for effective climate leadership.
“I had a background in palaeontology, so I’d excavated deposits that revealed that the climate was very different in the past, and I suppose that primes you a little bit for thinking about climate change,” he tells SBS.
“Then I started working in Papua New Guinea and I was climbing high mountains there in what is called the Alpine Zone, or the Alpine grasslands, and I noticed wherever I went that the tree line was rising all around. That was kind of inexplicable to me and it occurred to me that maybe this is climate change.”
It was a pivotal moment for Flannery, but it wasn’t until a few years later when he could no longer put the potential realities of climate change out of his mind that he set about investigating the phenomena more intently.
“In the early ‘80s, there was very little known about climate change,” he explains.
“It was only a decade or so later, when those niggling thoughts came back to me, that I researched climate change more thoroughly.”
“I came to the conclusion that those grasslands I had seen in Papua New Guinea were going to disappear if nothing was done, and all of that marvellous biodiversity that I’d studied and documented would vanish as well.”
Tim Flannery in Glasgow. Credit: Antidote Films / Totem Films
This discovery led to a fundamental shift, not only in the urgency Flannery felt about the issues facing the planet, but in his own career. Climate Changers takes viewers along Tim’s unique journey, recounting his experience from the decision to leave his job as a museum palaeontologist, to being at the forefront of some of the most significant discussions on climate both in Australia and globally, including attending Copenhagen’s COP15 in 2009 and Glasgow’s COP26 in 2021. It also highlights today’s pressing geopolitical challenges and the fossil fuel industry’s obstruction of change.
Flannery acknowledges that his choice to advocate for climate action has not been without personal cost, but believes there is still cause for hope.
“When it comes to the difficulty of trying to make change in the climate space, it was really difficult two decades ago,” he says.
“You were a voice in a wilderness and it was immensely frustrating and immensely difficult that people couldn’t see what you could see, but over the years I’ve learned to live with the fact that not everyone agrees with me, and some people are quite angry actually at the fact that I’ve been speaking out.”
At the heart of the documentary is Flannery’s call for effective climate leadership and the question of what that looks like in a contemporary context.
“What the reactionary forces have done, the forces that don’t want change, is to link aspects of climate science and climate action with a whole lot of other issues that other people don’t like. It’s been extraordinarily effective,” Flannery admits.
“We have the capacity for change, but the biggest rate limiting factor now, really, is a social one.”
It is Flannery’s insightful conversations throughout the documentary that get to the heart of the question of climate leadership, speaking with a variety of individuals from the CEO of an Aboriginal land council to a former Chair of COP15 in Copenhagen, a former Prime Minister of Australia to an international human rights activist.
...that sense that really life is fragile and what we do to the planet has very real impacts that affect all of us...
“The great climate leaders I know all share one thing in common: they’ve had a moment of realisation that they could lose something very precious,” Flannery explains.
"Al Gore spoke about it very eloquently; that sense that really life is fragile and what we do to the planet has very real impacts that affect all of us. That realisation came to him through the illness of his son. For Jo Dodds (president of Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action), the great climate campaigner in Australia, that realisation came to her when she nearly lost her house in a big fire at Tathra (on the Sapphire Coast of New South Wales).”
Jo Dodds is among the key environmental voices heard in 'Climate Changers'.
Closer to home, the documentary affirms Flannery’s belief that Australia has a unique role to play in leading the way when it comes to climate change.
“Australia does have a big role as we’re potentially a bridging nation. We are a developed economy in the middle of a region which still retains a tremendous amount of traditional knowledge and traditional ways of doing thing. We’re a bridge between developing economies and the rest of the world.”
As for Climate Changers, Flannery hopes it sparks conversations, and is clear that collaboration, respect, and the pursuit of a common goal are all essential parts of facilitating meaningful climate action.
“It would be wonderful if someone said ‘Could I really be a climate leader? Is there something more I can do to make a difference?’” he says of his hopes for the documentary.
“After that, it’s really carefully listening to people. That simple act of listening to one another is so important and it's where we can come together to create something great.”
Climate Changers premieres Wednesday 5 June at 10.50am on SBS, and 10:30 pm on SBS VICELAND. It will also be available to stream at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Climate Changers
