We have known about the Greenhouse effect since the 1820s. The warming-effect of carbon in the atmosphere was investigated in the 1850s, and newspaper articles about the detrimental effect of burning fossil fuels and the amount of athmospheric CO2 on the earth’s climate began to appear in the early 1900s. Rising temperatures and CO2 levels were observed from the late 1930s onwards, and since 1965, scientific advisors to the US American government flagged up the ‘greenhouse effect as a matter of real concern‘. In 1980, the then US President Jimmy Carter commissioned a report that was published as ‘The global 2000 report to the President-entering the twenty-first century, vol. 1’. The report concluded that problems such as pollution, overpopulation, global warming, and other environmental issues posed a severe threat to the future of humanity, and called for international cooperation in solving these problems. I was 13 when I found that report in a little, independent bookshop. I started leafing through it’s 1000 and was shocked. I’ve tried ever since to raise awareness to the destruction we are causing. I tried protesting, leading by positive example, influencing policy through research and raising awareness through education. Not to much avail, though. Throughout my adulthood, things have gone from bad to worse, and and yet many of us still live in denial.

One of the problems that are acutely visible is how climate change exacerbates our self-generated freshwater troubles. As an environmental scientist who works on water quality, I’m aware in most years about the general level of water in UK rivers. For many, many years now, these levels are always too low, and so are the water levels in the aquifers. Some of the rivers end up being maintained by sewage effluent during the summer. Which is to say, we fish for trout in sewage effluent. We canoe on sewage effluent, we swim in sewage effluent when it gets hot. We prefer not to think about it. We also still celebrate when it doesn’t rain. In 2022, though, I was sure the message that something had gone badly wrong with the water cycle (amongst a range of other problems) must finally have been visible to everyone.
During the summer months my local park got completely scorched. One day, on my way from some A to some B, I saw a photographer with a young woman and her child, crouching down in one of the last remaining green corners of the Park. A bit of shaded grass, surrounded by conifers. Probably not a spot the photographer would have chosen at any other time, but now they had set up shop with balloons, cake and toys, with a wall of evergreen behind them to do a photoshoot. I had many feelings watching them – frustration amongst them, but also empathy, especially with the child which was being steered away from a sad reality nobody had ever wanted – and nobody had done something about. ‘Mommy, me and Climate Change’ was born from that encounter. Together with Anya Gleizer and her daughter, I explore the complexity of feelings and thoughts I had when watching the young mother and the photographer, as they tried to ‘make memories’ in a less than picture-perfect world.

Season 1 – Dry/Wet