Climate change is not a reason to use
sensationalist images and language that would be unacceptable in any other
public exhibition
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/oct/27/london-futures-climate-change-exhibition
An image from the London Futures exhibition showing
Buckingham palace surrounded by a vast shantytown. Photograph: Robert
Graves/Museum of London
The effects of climate change are so
hard to imagine that we should welcome an exhibition of Postcards from the Future that promises
"Images that bring ideas to life and frame the climate debate in a way
that everyone can understand". Unfortunately the debate it frames is
dangerous and the main reason that it can be readily understood is that it fits
all too easily with existing prejudices.
The pictures are artfully composed photomontages that juxtapose iconic
London landmarks with eye-catching climate impacts – for example the Household Cavalry ride down a sand-strewn Whitehall on camels; an oil palm plantation grows in Hyde Park; and people skate on the Thames after the Gulf Stream packs in.
The creators, Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones, assure us that they
"researched different scientific projections". Really? Not one of
these images reflects any real climate scenario for London. They are pure
science-fiction.
Certainly they are striking and win attention, but at a price. Public
acceptance of climate change is still weak and 55% of people believe that
climate change has been exaggerated for political ends. Fantasy images actively
feed that public denial and with it the widespread assumption that climate
change is conjectural and without firm basis in fact.
However the greatest concern with this show is not that it parts with
reality, but that it speaks all too well to real prejudices against immigrants
"swamping" British culture. This is a recurring theme. One postcard shows Asian peasants working in paddy
fields in the shadow of Big Ben. Two postcards in the series show shantytowns
around Nelson's Column and Buckingham Palace.
These images cause deep disquiet for those who work with refugees and
immigrants. Jonathan Ellis, policy director at the Refugee
Council, calls them "lazy and unhelpful" at a time when "we
need fresh and creative messages, and a fair and rational debate based on the
facts".
"Producing sensationalist pictures which fall back on cheap stereotypes
of refugees do not help anyone's cause," says Vaughan Jones, the chief
executive of Praxis, a
London-based charity that provides practical support for refugees and asylum
seekers. "The issue is too serious for this inaccurate treatment."
Hannah Smith from the Climate Outreach Information
Network runs a programme that brings together over 30 refugee, human rights
and environment organisations. She argues that the images give an entirely
erroneous impression and that "the actual patterns of migration are far
more likely to be the movement of people inside existing national borders, or,
in the case of the UK, from within the European Union. To suggest that there
will be mass migration from the [global] south is misleading and feeds
xenophobia."
These concerns are exacerbated by the language used in the captions. The
caption for the Buckingham Palace shantytown talks of the royal family being
surrounded by "overwhelming numbers of immigrants". Another caption,
for a picture of monkeys on the balustrade of St Paul's Cathedral describes
them as "a new breed of tropical immigrants reminiscing about equatorial
days". This is a misapplication of language that Hannah Smith regards as
deeply insulting.
When I look at the postcards from the perspective of refugee organisations
these criticisms seem entirely sensible and self-evident. And they raise a
fascinating question: why did the cover story of "climate change"
permit the enthusiastic promotion of images and language that would be normally
be considered unacceptable in a public exhibition?
One reason is that we have already come to "frame" climate change
in this way. Impacts are invariably presented as the crude data of square
kilometres flooded or numbers of people displaced. There is still a painful
lack of elaboration or analysis of the real political and social impacts of
these changes – who will be affected, how will they adapt and where will
they go.
This in turn reflects the disturbingly limited range of voices that can be
heard talking about climate change. While environmentalists have dominated the
public discourse from the outset, it has only been in the past five years that
development organisations and unions have become involved.
Human rights and refugee organisations are only now fully recognising the
importance of climate change and they are struggling to find their niche and be
heard on the issue. "We operate under such constant pressures, both
internally and externally, that we have been in the bunker for far too
long", says Jonathan Ellis.
Even the core term "climate refugee", used universally by
environmental organisations and throughout the postcard captions, is
inaccurate, argues Vaughan Jones. It took decades of hard campaigning to get
refugees protected under international law and "the term must be preserved
as a legal status for those fleeing persecution".
None of this is to doubt the sincerity of the photo-artists or those
organising the exhibition. Nor does it imply that climate change is so complex
that it cannot be communicated to the general public. All it shows is that
climate change is a challenging area, framed by denial, guilt and
discrimination, that requires the same intelligence and sensitivity as any
exhibition on gender, race or class.
• London Futures are
showing at the Museum of London until 6 March.
• George Marshall is the founder of the Climate Outreach Information
Network and writes on the Climate Change Denial blog