How To Put ‘Positive’ and ‘Climate Change’ in the Same Sentence
By Dugald Maudsley
I’ve covered a lot of climate change stories in the last 30 years — a lot. I did my first back in 1990 when I worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Kind of depressing to realize that. And over the last three decades, that’s exactly what climate change has become for me — depressing!
Until now.
It all started with a challenge. Sue Dando, executive producer of The Nature of Things wanted us to produce a climate change documentary that was “positive.” Seriously, that’s what she said. I wasn’t even sure you could put “positive” and “climate change” in the same sentence.
But I was wrong.
As our team at Infield Fly Productions began digging, they started to uncover why. Clearly, we rely on governments and companies to make big cuts to C02 emissions. But that wasn’t the whole story. For us, the big revelation was that individuals — you and me — could also make a massive difference. The formula was simple: small personal changes multiplied millions of times.
And it became the driving force behind Curb Your Carbon, a documentary that will have its world premiere on The Nature of Things on 14 January at 9pm on CBC TV and on CBC Gem.
Here’s how the forumla works: Worldwide, livestock production creates 7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. That’s 15 per cent of total worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. But if half of us ate just one less serving of beef each week, we could cut C02 production by 1.5 billion tonnes a year — one tonne for every cow on the planet.
That discovery – our power to have a big impact – was an eye opener.
And so was this: I had no idea we wasted so much food. And when I say “we” I’m not talking about big grocery chains or farmers; I mean you and me.
Every single day, in Canada alone, families waste the equivalent of one million cups of milk, 750,000 loaves of bread, and half a million bananas. In a year, Canadians throw away 2.2 billion kilograms of perfectly good, perfectly edible food. Producing that food creates C02 — tonnes of it.
If food waste were its own country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after China and the United States.
And there was our positive story. Rather than the same debilitating tale about flooding rivers and haywire weather, Curb Your Carbon could be about empowerment.
Instead of a depressing litany of sinking countries and growing deserts, we could offer an inspiring list of ways to cut C02 emissions. We could all do something: make a lot of small changes and the numbers would add up.
Already, we were a million miles from the kind of climate change story I’d done my entire career.
So we decided to keep pushing. Why not try something we’d never seen before — tackle climate change with humour: instead of melting glaciers and burning forests, how about crazy stunts and hilarious animations? Ever seen garbage-stealing ninjas or a racecar driver who never steps on the gas? You will.
And why not ask one of the funniest guys around — a Canadian known for his impeccable environmental credentials — to narrate the doc? Luckily, Ryan Reynolds thought this was a great idea and Curb Your Carbon was on its way.
“I grew up watching David Suzuki and his show,” Reynolds told us. “I’m no David Suzuki, but it was an honour to do this. I really appreciate being asked.”
Montreal artist Benjamin Von Wong also believes that small steps can create big changes when fighting our climate crisis. Which is why we wanted to include him in the documentary. Ben is an environmental activist who hates plastic, he has made it his medium, turning it into extraordinary art to convince us to stop using the stuff.
“I think we need to realize the massive difference that can happen over time when you decide to make one shift in your behaviour and it accumulates over a lifetime,” Von Wong told us. “If you can find those little things that you can really stick to and champion, and get others to do the same, then magic can happen.”
He’s right. Climate change may be depressing. It may seem insurmountable, undefeatable, and inexorable.
But it isn’t.
And, contrary to what I believed when I started making Curb Your Carbon, you and I do have the power to fight it — one individual act at a time.