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"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
When it comes to carbon dioxide, just a little goes a long way to warming the planet. Unfortunately, we’ve been dumping vast amounts into the atmosphere, recently passing 400 parts per million. Let’s look at the science of the greenhouse effect, and how it’s impacting our global climate.
'As humans, we would once have been fearful of such places. Now we want to explore them'
This was taken in the Lake District for a project about the impact ice has had on landscapes. I called it Phase Transitions. Nature is constantly changing but it's generally too slow for us to notice: the only way we can see it is by comparing photographs. I'm interested in how we now want to explore these sublime, overpowering vistas, where once we would have been fearful of them. There's also all the uncertainty about what melting ice will mean for us and the planet.
I started exploring these themes by researching places shaped by ice: carved valleys, boulders, marks in rock. Then I went on field trips to Wales, the French and Swiss Alps, and the Lake District. I had to do everything on a tight budget, camping and staying with friends en route. The weather was a problem, too: whenever it rained, I had to put my large-format back 5inx4in field camera in the car.
I shot this on a sunny day in 2009 in the Great Langdale valley. I was heading up a mountain and went past Copt Howe, a substantial boulder that dropped out of a melting glacier into what is now a farmer's field. It has many circular bronze-age carvings in it, as well as natural faultlines. Then this scene caught my eye. Despite my unwieldy equipment, I always try to set up quickly. On this occasion, leaning over a gate, I only managed to get a single shot while the conditions lasted. I couldn't tell at the time, but the heads of the cow and the calf were caught at just the right moment, as if they were about to look round to see what I was doing.
I like the juxtaposition: the natural wilderness of the mountains in the distance, and the cultivated farmland in the foreground where the livestock are lazing. Although it's not my most technically accomplished shot, it was a turning point for me in that it captured a moment of stillness that seemed to say a lot about cycles of change, perhaps best embodied by the fact that the two animals represent the young and the old. Landscapes can look so natural but, in one way or another, they have often been shaped by us.
Born: 1983, Colchester
Studied: Falmouth College of Arts, University of Brighton
Influences: Caspar David Friedrich, Katie Paterson, Andreas Gursky, David Attenborough
High point: Taking part in the show Still Outside (or Unexplained), exploring the interaction between people and the environment
Low point: The cost of photography
Top tip: Shoot lots – it takes time to develop the way you work
The Environment Agency has warned the UK to expect more floods but its advice seems to be falling on deaf ears
A moving new exhibition of photographs at Somerset House shows the human impact of flooding around the world over the past five years and provides an insight into how climate change may already be disrupting lives and livelihoods.
The images from major flooding events in the UK, Pakistan, Australia and Thailand feature victims and survivors as they cope with the inundation of their homes and the aftermath. The photographer, Gideon Mendel, says his intention is "to depict them as individuals, not as nameless statistics". He adds: "Coming from disparate parts of the world, their faces show us their linked vulnerability despite the vast differences in their lives and circumstances."
One of the most striking exhibits shows Margaret Clegg standing knee-deep in water in the living room of her house in Toll Bar, Doncaster, which was flooded when the River Don overtopped its banks in June 2007, following a record downpour.
It is not clear to what extent, if any, climate change contributed to the occurrence or intensity of the summer 2007 floods in England and Northern Ireland, which cost the UK economy more than £3bn. A single extreme weather event cannot be definitely attributed to climate change, the influence of which can only be detected and measured through the analysis of statistical trends looking back over many decades. That means we will not be certain for many years to come about how flood risk is being affected.
We know from basic physics that a warmer atmosphere can become more humid and holds more water vapour, theoretically increasing by about 7% for every extra centigrade degree. As a result climate change is expected to increase the intensity of the water cycle in many parts of the world, causing both more droughts and more floods.
An analysis of UK weather trends between 1961 and 2006, during which the average temperature increased by about one centigrade degree, indicated that although our winters have not become significantly wetter, the number and severity of heavy rainfall events has increased. Meanwhile, summers have become drier and heavy summer downpours have decreased in all parts of the UK, except in north-east England, where some of the 2007 flooding occurred, and north Scotland.
Climate change is expected to increase the risk of flooding in many parts of the UK. Projections published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2009 suggested that, under a "medium emissions scenario", overall winter precipitation should be higher in the 2080s, while summer rainfall should generally be lower, particularly in the south.
The UK climate change risk assessment, published by Defra earlier this year, calculated that these potential trends mean the annual damage from coastal and river flooding in England and Wales could increase from about £1.2bn today to as much as £12bn in the worst case scenario over the next 80 years.
Such an increase in the risk of damage would have major consequences, not least in terms of the affordability and availability of flood insurance for homes and businesses. Indeed, a crisis is already approaching, with insurers warning that from next year they may not continue to offer cover for 200,000 high-risk properties, exposed to a greater than 1 in 75 annual risk of flooding.
Under an arrangement dating from 2000, insurance companies have subsidised flood cover for those in high-risk properties in return for greater government investment in coastal and river defences.
At present, the Environment Agency is responsible for building and maintaining these defences. The agency has told the government it needs to increase its annual flood risk management budget by 9% by 2014-15. However, the House of Commons public accounts committee has highlighted government plans to reduce the agency's flood risk funding by 10% over this period, and to shift more responsibility on to local authorities, even though their overall budgets are shrinking.
Perhaps even more worrying is the neglect of the risk of flash flooding, caused by heavy downpours from often very localised storms that can inundate poorly drained areas, particularly in cities. Of the six million properties in the UK that are currently exposed to some degree of flood risk, four million are threatened by surface water flooding.
Yet when the climate change risk assessment, upon which the government is basing its national adaptation plan, was published earlier this year, scientists warned that it was flawed because it had neglected possible future changes in flash flooding and other important threats.
The assessment stated: "Whilst the number of properties at risk from surface water flooding is similar to the number at risk from tidal and river flooding, suitable information for analysis were not available at the time of writing this report."
In his official review of the assessment, Prof Martin Parry of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College expressed "concern that the risks identified do not necessarily represent the full range of potential risks, and the metrics were selected not on the basis of importance but on the availability of evidence". However, Defra ignored his advice, surprisingly admitting that "the risks provided in this report are not intended to be a full range of risks".
This lack of attention to flash flooding could make it much more difficult to implement an important part of the government's national planning policy framework, which states that local plans "should apply a sequential, risk-based approach to the location of development to avoid where possible flood risk to people and property and manage any residual risk, taking account of the impacts of climate change".
The likely increase in the risk of flooding is just one of the many ways in which unmitigated climate change will significantly affect homes and businesses, and will create larger societal and economic costs for the UK. These serious long-term impacts are often overlooked by those who complain about the cost of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to limit the future impacts of climate change, yet they are just as important.
• Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Drowning World exhibition is showing at Somerset House until 5 June.
In the latest of our writers' favourite film series, Leo Hickman is bowled over by the elemental force of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass's 1982 environmental masterpiece
Want to set the world to rights? Have your say in the comments section below – or write your own review
It's a film without any characters, plot or narrative structure. And its title is notoriously hard to pronounce. What's not to love about Koyaanisqatsi?
I came to Godfrey Reggio's 1982 masterpiece very late. It was actually during a Google search a few years back when looking for timelapse footage of urban traffic (for work rather than pleasure!) that I came across a "cult film", as some online reviewers were calling it. This meant I first watched it as all its loyal fans say not to: on DVD, on a small screen. If ever a film was destined for watching in a cinema, this is it. But, even without the luxury of full immersion, I was still truly captivated by it and, without any exaggeration, I still think about it every day.
Koyaanisqatsi's formula is simple: combine the epic, remarkable cinematography of Ron Fricke with the swelling intensity and repeating motifs of Philip Glass's celebrated original score. There's your mood bomb, right there. But Reggio's directorial vision is key, too. He was the one who drove the project for six years on a small budget as he travelled with Fricke across the US in the mid-to-late 1970s, filming its natural and urban wonders with such originality.
Personally, I view the film as the quintessential environmental movie – a transformative meditation on the current imbalance between humans and the wider world that supports them (in the Hopi language, "Koyanaanis" means turmoil and "qatsi" means life). But Reggio has rightly refused to define the film's specific meaning; he even fought unsuccessfully with the distributor for the film to have no title. (Incidentally, it was only Francis Ford Coppola's last-minute support that helped push it into mainstream cinemas.)
"It's meant to offer an experience, rather than an idea," said Reggio in a 2002 interview (included with the DVD as a special feature). "For some people, it's an environmental film. For some, it's an ode to technology. For some people, it's a piece of shit. Or it moves people deeply. It depends on who you ask. It is the journey that is the objective."
It's the sort of answer you might expect from someone who was a resident member of the Christian Brothers teaching order from the age of 14 to 28. He also cites Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados as one of his most moving spiritual experiences. But it was his time spent making shorts for the Institute for Regional Education in the early 70s that sparked Koyaanisqatsi. The New Mexico-based institute provided $40,000 of funding after he made them a series of campaign films aimed at raising public awareness about how technology and surveillance were being used to "control behaviour".
The first section of Koyaanisqatsi begins with long, aerial shots of the natural world – cloudscapes, ocean waves, the desert scenery of Monument Valley made so famous by 1950s westerns. Slowly, the presence of mankind drips into the film: we see power lines, mines and atomic explosions. Then, after half an hour or so – yes, this film demands commitment, concentration and utter capitulation – the pace and visual intensity picks up, as some transfixing footage of derelict housing estates being demolished feeds into urban scenes of traffic, shown in either slow motion or rapid timelapse. We see hotdogs and Twinkies being made in a food factory, people spilling out and on to trains and elevators, and jumbo jets taxiing at LAX. And then it climaxes perfectly with archive footage of a Nasa test rocket exploding during takeoff in 1962, with the camera tracking the final flaming piece of debris as it falls back to earth.
It may look hackneyed now, as we've become so used to Koyaanisqatsi's much-imitated techniques – Madonna's Ray of Light video, high-definition slow-motion footage of sport, Adam Curtis documentaries. Our minds have been seared by images of the Twin Towers falling and the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles exploding – both prophetically foreshadowed in the film. But still, 30 years on, Koyaanisqatsi can connect with us, perhaps more than ever. And you can't overstate how much Glass's score sets the tone and rhythm for the film's rolling, relentless cycle of imagery.
"I didn't want to show the obviousness of injustice, social deprivation, war, etc," said Reggio. "I wanted to show that which we're most proud of: our shining beast, our way of life. So [the film] is about the beauty of this beast." He clearly thought he might partially disguise his concerns about the direction of mankind within the film. But other statements reveal his true feelings:
"What I tried to show is that the main event today is not seen by those who live in it. We see the surface of the newspapers and the obviousness of conflict, social injustice, the market, the welling up of culture. But for me, the greatest and most important event of perhaps our entire history has fundamentally gone unnoticed: the transiting from old nature – or the natural environment as our host of life for human habitation – into a technological milieu, into mass technology, as the environment of life."
The New York Times, in its original 1982 review, was somewhat ambivalent about the film: "Koyaanisqatsi is an oddball and – if one is willing to put up with a certain amount of solemn picturesqueness – entertaining trip." But the film, which is actually the first part of a (long-delayed and, in my view, far less successful) trilogy, has since been added to the National Film Registry by the US Library of Congress due to it being "culturally, historically and aesthetically" significant.
My one regret with the film is that I have yet to see it on the big screen. I missed it last year at the Brighton festival – where the Philip Glass Ensemble played the soundtrack live – and again at Edinburgh earlier this year. I am determined not to waste such a chance again.
Spending £500,000 – and considerable energy – on Nowhereisland to drag six tonnes of Arctic rock to the UK for the Olympics is wrong
It's not that often that you will find me squaring up in support behind the likes of the Daily Mail, the TaxPayers' Alliance and the more reactionary elements of the Conservative party. But on this particular issue, they have called it correct.
Just what was the Arts Council thinking when it agreed back in 2009 to hand over £500,000 to the artist Alex Hartley in order for him and 18 volunteers to create Nowhereisland?
The creative idea itself is actually rather captivating: find an Arctic island that has recently been exposed by melting ice and then break off some rocks to form a new "island nation" which can then be transported to the waters off the UK in time for the 2012 Olympics.
During its conception, Hartley billed it as a "travelling embassy" intended to highlight issues such as climate change and land ownership. Here's how his website explains it:
In 2004, artist Alex Hartley discovered an island in the High Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, whilst on the Cape Farewell expedition. The island revealed itself from within the melting ice of a retreating glacier and Alex was the first human to ever stand on it and with the help of the Norwegian Polar Institute, the island, named Nyskjaeret, is now officially recognised and included on all maps and charts subsequent to its discovery. In September 2011, Alex returns to the Arctic to retrieve the island territory. Once in international waters, Alex will declare Nowhereisland a new nation.
I "get" its artistic merit. It's just the cost and contradictions associated with the project that I have a problem with.
Nowhereisland is one of 12 "Artist Taking the Lead" projects commissioned for the Culture Olympiad next year. The Treasury provided £6m, with a further £950,000 coming from National Lottery coffers.
There's a hearty debate to be had about whether those sorts of sums are justified in these austere times. We are constantly being told that every penny of public money counts, so £7m is not to be sniffed at. We could all probably think of more urgent ways to spend that sort of money. Wouldn't a corporate sponsor be more applicable when it comes to funding this sort of large-scale arts project? If we are going to spend £500,000 of public money on regional art – Nowhereisland will represent the South-West during the Cultural Olympiad – wouldn't it be wiser to spread it across the dozens of arts projects in desperate need of funding, rather than hand it to one lucky recipient?
Phil Gibby, head of Arts Council England in the South West, has responded to critics, telling the BBC:
It is absolutely vital to invest in vibrant arts projects in Devon, but we could not have spent this money on them. It is a remarkable visual sculpture and we reckon more than a quarter of a million people will engage with it. So for everyone getting engaged with it, it is about £2 or less.
But my bigger gripe is that there appears to be a contradictory vein running through the rocks that now form Nowhereisland. For a project that claims to be driven by environmental concerns, where is the logic in digging up six tonnes of rock from a pristine environment and then towing it by barge hundreds of miles away for display?
And wasn't it entirely obvious to the Arts Council that the core message behind the project would be drowned out by the completely predictable outcry over its huge cost and environmentally unsympathetic construction? If the aim of the project was to raise awareness about the urgency of climate change then, sadly, it seems to have already failed.
"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
"Basically the price of a night on the town!"
"I'd love to help kickstart continued development! And 0 EUR/month really does make fiscal sense too... maybe I'll even get a shirt?" (there will be limited edition shirts for two and other goodies for each supporter as soon as we sold the 200)