Why you should submit to Oceanic Global’s short film festival – Screen Shot
Deep Dives Level Up Newsletters Saved Articles Challenges

Why you should submit to Oceanic Global’s short film festival

70 per cent of our planet is oceans, and yet it is the one place that remains hugely disregarded. 93 per cent of our fisheries are completely fished out or overfished, every 60 seconds a truckload of plastic enters the ocean, 90 per cent of coral reefs are projected to die by 2050 and only 5.3 per cent of our ocean is currently protected.

Raising awareness of these pressing issues is key to driving an urgent change. If these problems go unchanged for much longer, marine life as we know it will never be the same, or healthy again. That’s why Oceanic Global, a leading charity in ocean conservation and sustainability has launched a platform for filmmakers to submit their short films, win competitions, and in turn, raise concern and change around the world.

The project, which was created by Oceanic Global London Hub members Elizabeth Aisher Crespi and Carlotta Bianchi, has partnered with MATTE Projects, EarthX, Convicts NYC, The Klosters Forum and Ocean Culture Life. Those platforms are asking you to submit your films on the current ocean situation, especially now that, due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, plastic waste has accelerated with the increase of single-use products and PPE kit such as non-reusable masks. Most of this waste is, unfortunately, ending up in our oceans.

How can I enter the competition?

Oceanic Global is accepting submissions until 13 September 2020, on their website. To enter the competition you must be the director, lead producer or a core team member of the film that you submit. The films submitted need to be from 3 to 15 minutes long, they must be in English or with English subtitles, hosted on an online webplace such as Vimeo or YouTube, and have to be related to themes that honour and support our oceans, such as:

The current state of the ocean

The beauty of the ocean

Marine plastic pollution

Innovation for a sustainable ocean

Human interaction with the ocean

More information on the competition is available on Oceanic Global’s website, but we hope that some of our future thinking and talented artists and readers will take part in not just this competition but the collective drive towards a better planet. The ocean depends on us.

Opinion

Climate change therapy: dealing with climate fear

By Eleanor Flowers


Climate change

Mar 6, 2019

It is a warm, bright day in early February. I am indoors on a Skype call with Nadine Andrews, an eco-psychologist and psychosocial researcher, discussing climate change and food security while she makes pancakes for her family. The sizzle of batter on the pan is a comfort where the reality of our current CO2 emissions trajectory is not. Andrews used work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and she is not afraid to tell me how it is. “Climate change is happening faster and on a greater scale than scientists were anticipating from the models and that’s partly because IPCC goes on the more conservative end. All of this stuff is already happening. We have to deal with it, this is reality. We might be able to delay some stuff but actually we’re not in control of it.”

Perhaps had I wanted this pancake flipping researcher to go easier on me? Andrews tells me we must either face our fear of climate change now, “design our way into it”, or wait until we no longer have the privilege of ignoring what has already begun. She recounts an analogy about a therapist with a sign on their door which says, “either way it’s going to hurt”.

For decades, climate scientists have worried that people did not know or understand enough about climate change and that this was the reason for sluggish public and political action. What social researchers are finally beginning to understand is that it is not a lack of knowledge, but in fact too much knowledge about climate change which is the problem. What has been assumed to be a moral failure to act fast enough is now being reframed as a deep-seated psychological trait. The sociologist Kari Marie Norgaard, who wrote a book called ‘Living in Denial’, thinks that people know too much about climate change. Norgaard wonders if the root of much climate inaction is not a lack but surplus of empathy, and calls climate apathy “the mask of suffering”.

It is true that when one is faced with a disturbing reality, which contradicts the business-as-usual discourse to be found everywhere else, it is easier to focus on current pancakes rather than future crop failure. It is not only that we know too much and feel too helpless, but that we also do not have the language to help us digest our profoundly modern disconnect from nature. Andrews herself is not sure which words are best to describe how we should relate to climate change.

Apparently, The Guardian uses the word “fight” a lot. To “fight” climate change is to cast nature as an enemy, when we should by now have learnt that nature is an entity to be protected, not overcome. Clearly, when we talk about fighting climate change, we mean to launch a battle cry against our own systems of excessive resource consumption. Nature does not care whether we win or lose a fight against ourselves.

If I accept the seriousness of the information about climate change with which I am presented, then I have to imagine a radically different future for myself. It makes me panic. Climate researchers I have spoken with tend to be glad that Greta Thunberg, the famous sixteen-year-old climate activist currently leading school strikes across Europe, has called for people to panic. Andrews and I both agree, though, that panic is not a universally useful term to employ, as it is not a sustainable state of emotion and is no good for building policies upon.

Andrews assures me that she, too, felt afraid before, but that now she feels profound grief about the ecological crisis. “I feel sadness now,” and she does indeed look very sad about it all. I, on the other hand, feel afraid. Seeing a climate scientist look upset is rather like seeing a parent or teacher cry when you are a child.

To write this article, I have had to face these unpleasant emotions. I have sat for hours and transcribed interviews with scientists whose courage to continue on with this emotional and political monster astounds me. My exercise has been challenging but therapeutic. It is impossible to write well in a state of panic. Instead, I have had to work through fear and helplessness in order to reach a state where I am able to articulate the emotional complexity of facing a future for which humankind is miserably maladapted. People with low incomes are especially vulnerable, although climate change does not discriminate, and the rich will not be able to buffer themselves so easily, either.

It is difficult to find the right words to describe how we are feeling about our future. Norgaard notices that people are normally unable to discuss climate change beyond a few lines of conversation. I have noticed this too. What else, beyond “it is warmer, we are fucked, fancy a pancake?”, is there to be said?

Perhaps there is a way for us to begin to move deeper into climate conversation and action once we acknowledge that fear is a powerful enabler of procrastination. Of course, it is not only fear of climate change we experience: it is a fear of economic transformation too. It is guaranteed that the more climate change activists push to halt our accelerating consumption, the more the powerful will push back and persuade us to keep on buying. It is true that when we finally do curb our consumerism, the economy will suffer and then, so will we. Either way, it hurts.

Because humans are creatures with a capacity for nuanced emotions, it seems fair to end on a positive note. We are able to hold two conflicting emotions at once. We live in fear and hope; we probably cannot live well without both. Here is how Nadine Andrews spoke to me about hope that warm day in early February. “The sorts of transformational changes that are needed offer opportunities to rethink how we want to live in the world and how we want to live with each other and how we want to live with nature. It offers the possibility for a better way of life which serves us and other beings better than the existing world.”

There is much to discuss, after all.

Thank you to Scott Bremer, Karen O’Brien, and Nadine Andrews for advising research for this article.