For my first artistic curation, I listened to the podcast How to Save the Planet. This show is a produced by Gimlet Media and published exclusively on Spotify. It is hosted by Alex Blumberg and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. The first episode released August 6, 2020. A bit of background on the hosts, Alex Blumberg has been working as a radio journalist and podcast host for nearly 3 decades and is currently an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University. Dr. Johnson is a marine biologist, conservation strategist, and founder of the Ocean Collectiv (a consulting firm helping find ocean conservation solutions grounded in social justice). The pair are more than qualified to host a show on the climate crisis and how we can try and address it.
They began this show as a way to help the average citizen combat the feeling of climate anxiety and powerlessness against the climate crisis. They released an elongated trailer titled “How Screwed are We?” This 11 minute short episode/trailer details their goals for the series. They explain a plan to interview experts about currently implemented solutions, explore radical ideas for how to get people to care about climate change, and outline what the world will look like as we move away from fossil fuels and towards a more sustainable future. They also make sure to ask their guest, “just how screwed are we?”.
I focused on their first full-length episode, “The Witch of Wind”, which released on August 20, 2020. In it they talk to Patricia Haddad and Jeffrey Grybowski. Patricia Haddad is the self proclaimed “Witch of Wind”, a state representative for Somerset, Massachusetts. Somerset is a small coastal town of 18,000 residents that used to be home to the largest coal powered electrical plant in all of New England. When the plant closed down in 2017, the town lost over 250 jobs as well as $16,000,000 in tax revenue. In her attempts to ease the economic impacts of the plant closure, she meets with all kinds of industry leaders. One of them is Jeff Grybowski, the CEO of US Wind Inc., who at this point was the only person to successfully execute the planning and building of an offshore wind farm in the continental US.
Together they work to install an offshore wind farm and in the process, Rep Haddad introduced Bill H. 4568 to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. The bill mandates that state utilities purchase up to 2 Gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind projects by 2027, this would be enough to power 1,500,000 homes.
These interviews really paint a picture for the viewer on how much room for improvement we still stand to make. Currently a quarter of all US carbon emissions come from fossil fuel burning to make electricity. Rep Haddad and Mr. Grybowski have both bet big on a future where we do not need to burn fossil fuels to create electricity.
I found this show to be both interesting and informative. I believe anyone in our class or anyone who has an interest in current events related to the climate crisis would enjoy the show. They publish episodes weekly and also have an email newsletter to keep subscribers up to date on current events, helpful tips, and petitions/movements that are deserving of attention.
For my second artistic curation, I watched the 2019 Japanese anime film Weathering With You. This movie is written and directed by acclaimed animator, filmmaker, and manga author, Makoto Shinkai. The movie is not only visually stunning but has a score and soundtrack to match.
The movie is described as a romantic fantasy film but it is much more. Set in a not too distant future (of 2021) where the weather has gone completely haywire, we pick up the story in Tokyo where it has been raining at record levels for 2 months straight. Although the movie was written as an allegory for the climate crisis and we see the effects of climate change throughout, it does not specifically focus on the root cause. Instead we hear it referred to as crazy weather or record setting storms. We get bits and pieces of reporting on the climate catastrophe and at the 42:00 mark there is a radio weather report detailing partial crop failure and rapid inflation.
The movie opens on Hina Amano sitting beside her mothers hospital bed with torrential downpours visible outside the window. Suddenly there is a break in the clouds and a sunbeam shines down on a distant building. Without thinking Hina runs to the building (Yoyogi Kaikan is the name of it). On the roof we see a Shintō shrine. Hina crosses through this shrine in the sun, hands clasped, praying for the weather to clear. She is transported into the sky where she is surrounded by fish and dragons made out of water and clouds.
Hodaka is a 16 year old runaway who leaves his tiny island of Kozu-shima south of Tokyo. After meeting the owner of a publishing company on his ferry ride into the city and subsequently running out of money, he asks for a job. The company, K&A Publishing, is currently investigating urban legends one of which is that of “the sunshine girl”. The sunshine girl is said to be able to control the weather and temporarily clear the skies.
Hodaka ends up running into Hina who was in trouble and needed some help. They escape to Yoyogi Kaikan. Hina shows Hodaka her powers as a sunshine girl, if she clasps her hands and prays she can stop the rain and dissipate the clouds temporarily. They decide to open a sunshine for hire business and work all kinds of events including birthday parties, flea markets, fireworks shows, and an elementary school field day.
As the movie progresses, we find out the sunshine girl is an ancient Japanese tradition and the wielder of this power will have to eventually sacrifice themselves to fix the weather. I do not want to spoil anything as the movie is definitely worth a watch, but let’s just say things do not play out how we would expect. The allegory for climate change clears up at the end of the film. There is also one moment towards the end when Hodaka is studying for his college entrance exams and he is reviewing a textbook titled Anthropocene: A New Geological Age, I thought this was a nice relation to our course.
In an essay posted following the release of the film, Makoto Shinkai, details how in his view, climate change is not a problem for young people to fix. He says “the climate is going haywire…and as far as I can see, as a middle-aged man, this is what we chose for ourselves. But for the young audience, this is a world in which they never had a choice.” While we can debate the merit of his comments, it allows the viewer a clearer idea as to why the characters in the film act a certain way in different situations.
I found the film quite interesting and impactful. I also found it to be right inline with the themes of Don’t Look Up. While not nearly as on-the-nose, this film shows the impacts of human action/inaction on us all.
For my third artistic curation, I viewed the 2016 documentary film Anthropocene from director Steve Bradshaw. The purpose of this film is to examine whether we have officially entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and to determine whether this new age is a tragedy, comedy or something else entirely. They achieve this by providing an in-depth history of mankind’s technological advancements that contribute to the current climate crisis as well as by interviewing assorted members from the Anthropocene Working Group. The AWG is the international research group formed in 2009 working to prove Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen’s hypothesis that we have exited the Holocene and entered a new geological age where humans are the dominating force on the planet.
In the film we are taken through the history of the term, coined by Crutzen in 2000, as well as shown the history of the Anthropocene. We learn about early humans leaving the “Cradle of Mankind” the Rift Valley in Africa, we discover that some scientists and historians believe the Anthropocene actually began over 8000 years ago when farmers in Asia began harvesting wet rice which emits a large amount of methane and carbon. It also gives us history lessons regarding James Watt and his invention of the steam engine. We learn about Fritz Haber a WWI-era German Chemist who worked on chemical weapons but also discovered ammonia synthesis, which is a process of pulling nitrogen out of the air to fertilize soil.
We’re also given a history of CFC’s (chlorofluorocarbons) or man-made greenhouse gases, from their discovery in the late 19th century to their regulation in the 1970s and 80s. We learn about the Cold War’s large impact on the environment including so-called “sacrifice zones” or nuclear archipelagos. A major one is Novaya Zemlya, an island in the far-north of Russia. Until 1957 over 300 indigenous Nennet lived on this island when they were “resettled” to the mainland to make room for weapons testing and manufacturing. The Russians would eventually detonate ‘Tsar Bomba’ above the island in 1961. To date, ‘Tsar Bomba’ is the largest and most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested.
As the movie progresses, we see the impact of global shipping on the environment. When an ocean-faring cargo ship loads and unloads its ballast tanks, up to 10,000 microorganisms can be trapped inside. They are then transported all over the globe and will often become invasive species where they are dumped. Finally we wrap up learning about the harmful impacts of the Apollo Space Program, one of the single largest emitters of greenhouse gases ands other pollutants the world has ever seen.
Through all the history lessons we hear the perspective of leading scientists, engineers, and economists. Many of them are in agreement that we have entered a new geographical epoch, but debate whether it should be seen as a tragedy or comedy. The general consensus is that we are approaching tragedy if we do not act quickly to combat the effects of climate change and rapid resource depletion.
Personally I found this film to be rather slow, but it could certainly be beneficial for students or anyone who would like to learn more about the Anthropocene and mankind’s disproportionate impact on the Earth.