Hope or Despair? Reflections on the film ONCE YOU KNOW

Adaptation
Written By Richard Erskine

The following is the text of a 5 minute talk given by Richard Erskine at the screening of Emmanuel Cappellin’s film ONCE YOU KNOW [1].

“Hi everyone. I am Richard Erskine, secretary of Nailsworth Climate Action Network, a group I feel very proud to be a part of. I am also doing work with The Schumacher Institute in Bristol, co-authoring a toolkit for Community Climate Action informed by systems thinking. I also personally blog a lot on climate.

I was asked to offer some reflections, to prepare people for this film, particularly for those new to the kinds of perspectives expressed in it.

I don’t want to reveal any plot spoilers other than to say I think the film is very well done - offering as it does intimate reflections on the difficult subject of how we adapt to climate change.

Few people who have immersed themselves in climate change can avoid being plagued by conflicting emotions and thoughts:

  • Hope versus despair

  • Clarity versus ambiguity

  • Positive futures versus dystopian ones

  • Certainty versus doubt

  • Managing risks versus dread of tipping points

  • Greening our lives versus denial of the sheer enormity of the challenge.

Can we resolve these conflicting emotions at a personal psychological level, and more broadly at a community level?

We unavoidably carry with us framings - contexts, values and assumptions - when we discuss and debate the economy, pandemics, climate change, … whatever.

We can look at climate change through many different framings:

  • a frame of the ecological crisis;

  • a frame of energy transition;

  • a frame of transition and rebirth;

  • a frame of social justice;

  • a frame of carbon debt, and reparations;

  • and, most pertinent to this film, a frame of collapse.

These frames can of course overlap, even throwing up contradictions.

We can find ourselves switching between them, and so getting terribly confused on what conversation should take precedence over another.

Are we actually talking across each other?

Are we even listening?

And let’s not allow the language to be used in ways that cement fixed positions.

For example, it is so easy for the language of tipping points to be translated into a mindset of what I call tipping point determinism, leading to an image of a domino theory of tipping points. Some even claim in allegedly authoritative terms that it’s almost certain that the first domino has already fallen.

Well, this is not how the Earth system works and it’s not what the science is telling us [2].

Actually, a contributor on the podcast webinar/ Q&A of the film [3] makes the point that those who are certain apocalypse is coming are the same as the ones who are certain we’ll be fine, in the sense that neither has any need for hope.

Certainty has no need for hope.

It is those who recognise the complexities and uncertainties of our situation who have need for hope, and yes, also despair, in equal measure.

We don’t need tipping points to suffer extremely severe consequences from global heating.

The Pied Flycatcher flies from Africa to northern Europe just in time to nest so it can feed its hatchlings on the caterpillars of the Winter Moth, which in turn feeds on the leaves of oak trees. But the oak trees have been coming into leaf a few weeks earlier, and the moths have adapted, and the Pied Flycatcher in Africa did not get the memo. There has been a severe decline in their numbers as a result of this ecological dislocation [4].

Thousands of such physical and ecological thresholds have been crossed and will be crossed [5].

As the IPCC says: It is not about some single arbitrary date, because every year matters, every tonne of carbon emissions matters, every action matters. I’d add: every threshold matters.

I personally feel like Greta Thunberg that we should follow the science, and that means the IPCC reports. The same science that Dr Emily Grossman of Scientists for XR follows in her document ‘Emergency On Planet Earth’ [6].

The IPCC scientific reports are scary enough - why embellish them with our opinions?

The film does not fall into the trap of trying to arbitrate on the science, which I really welcome.

Instead it focuses on the emotional and societal responses to climate change and possible futures.

It does this through a very personal framing, which gives it an authenticity and emotional resonance that no report could ever manage.

But in the end, despite its dark moments, it is in essence a vision not of dystopia, but of hope in our shared humanity.”

Richard Erskine, 14th July 2022.

Thanks to Michelle Grant for leading this initiative and for her invitation to me to offer my pre-sceening reflections, and to Sue Ryall for facilitating the post-screening conversation.

Notes & references

  1. ONCE YOU KNOW, written and directed by Emmanuel Cappellin in collaboration with Anne-Marie Sangla, is a Pulp Films production.

    • This showing was on the evening of 14th July 2022 at The Stroud Brewery. ONCE YOU KNOW is now freely available on Youtube, although it is best viewed with others to enable mutual support and discussion following the film.

    • The film is inspired by the 1972 report LIMITS TO GROWTH, which had a big impact on Emmanuel Cappellin and principal contributors. It can be freely downloaded from the Club of Rome website here: https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/

    • ‘Thinking In Systems: A Primer’, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008, by Donella Meadows (a co-author of Limits To Growth) is a little classic and should be required reading for all politicians and climate activists. It, and other systems thinking resources, can best be found via The Donella Meadows Project at https://donellameadows.org

  2. Getting a reliable sense of what the science is telling us can be hard for non-experts, particularly on shouty social media. I always feel we should go back to the established experts. Some summaries can be useful if they do not try to selectively spin the science in a direction to support a particular framing.

  3. ’Once You Know - Earth Day webinar - Replay’, hosted by Pulp Films is a really useful discussion following the film, and is available online https://vimeo.com/704034905/a0f3e6c643

  4. ‘Evolutionary Response to Climate Change in Migratory Pied Flycatchers’, Helm et al., 2019, Current Biology 29, 3714–3719 November 4, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.08.072

  5. This was clear in 2008 with the work of Cynthia Rosenzweig and others (but this evidence has mounted in research since then; see [2/B/ii] above):

    • Cynthia Rosenzweig et al, ‘Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change’, Nature, Vol 453, 15 May 2008 , doi:10.1038/nature06937

      • Key finding: ‘Number of significant observed changes’ in 1970-2004 period is 28,117 of which 90% are ‘consistent with warming’

  6. ‘Emergency On Planet Earth’, Emily Grossman, XR Scientists Community, https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-truth/the-emergency/

      • This largely follows and respects the IPCC findings

Richard Erskine
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