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Green Fix
Welcome to the Green Fix, the climate & sustainability podcast for Australian corporations and their ESG practitioners. We explore the top challenges and opportunities in the industry, how they are impacting your business and your work, so that you can keep your sanity.
Green Fix
S1 E9: Translating Science into Hope: How Stories Can Drive Climate Action with Liz Courtney, Award-Winning Filmmaker
What happens when you trade corporate success for climate advocacy? For Liz Courtney, award-winning filmmaker responsible for 55 climate documentaries, it began with a crucial "sliding door moment" – choosing courage over fear to join an Antarctic expedition despite her doubts. That decision launched an extraordinary career documenting climate systems across the globe, from dog sledding across Greenland's melting ice sheets to researching atmospheric microbes in Antarctica.
Liz shares her profound insights on effective climate communication, developed through collaborations with leading scientists worldwide. She's identified that successful science communication requires simplification, relatable analogies, connecting research to local impacts, and showing how data can drive better planning. Her experience reveals how sustainability professionals can bridge the gap between complex environmental science and everyday understanding, making climate issues accessible and actionable for broader audiences.
Your Hosts:
Dan Leverington
Loreto Gutierrez
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I really think positive stories make us more hopeful. When we feel more hopeful and we also see, by taking certain actions, what we can achieve, we know through data that we can actually accelerate change faster.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Green Fix, the climate and sustainability podcast for Australian corporations and their ESG practitioners. We explore the top challenges and opportunities in the industry and how it impacts your business and your work. So that you can keep your sanity. I'm your host, Dan Leverington.
Speaker 3:And I'm Loretta Gutierrez. And I'm Loretta Gutierrez and today we are in conversation with Liz Courtney, an award-winning international film director responsible for 55 climate documentaries. A trailblazer in the climate education space, liz has lever World in Media presented by the Duchess of York in London.
Speaker 2:We're thrilled to have you with us, Liz, for a deep dive into how we move the action needle. Incidentally, in the week leading up to World Oceans Day 2025, the theme of which is sustainable fishing means more, which is a good jumping off point. Can you share with our listener your journey from corporate leader to being one of today's leading climate communicators or, as you have described it previously, switching your stilettos for snow boots?
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Dan and Loretta. I didn't expect to be in this position and I'm sure a lot of people listening will have had that opportunity in their life where they've kind of been really questioning what they were doing and wanting to do something that they felt was meaningful. And I think that when I was in my corporate role which I absolutely loved for nearly 20 years and I built and sold two companies I just had that moment where I thought, wow, I really love what I've done, but I feel like I'm at a crossroads and where do I want to go next Around? The same time, I had gorgeous three children who are now in their early 20s. I thought, what do I want to do Having children? And had that mindset of thinking about their life and what was in store for them. I thought I wanted to do something a bit more meaningful. I didn't actually step into climate straight away. I wanted to always work in film. So everybody has those big ideas.
Speaker 1:When I was young, I wanted to be an astronaut. When I got older, I wanted to work in film. I thought, why don't I just try seeing if I could do something with film? And that took me into this amazing first step. I got a contract with ABC to make Sculpture by the Sea and I was like it can't be that hard. But then they said we want it in two languages. We want it in English and Chinese. And I was like, hang on, a second, I'm having trouble just thinking about the English bit. That was a big step. And I got a few other contracts after that. And then an opportunity came along to take a step and go on an expedition to Antarctica, direct a film down there with 40 teenagers and it was United Nations Year of Youth with Professor Robert Swan.
Speaker 1:I actually remember very clearly being at the dining room table talking to the three kids and my husband about this opportunity but saying, no, I don't think I'm going to go, and they're like but why. And I was like you know, no, I don't think I'm going to go and they're like, but why? And I was like you know who's going to do the lunchbox, who's going to do the school run, who's going to sort out the soccer gear? I thought actually what is my reason for not going? And I realized it was really my fear.
Speaker 1:You have these sliding door moments in life. It's actually finding that courage to step through them, and I thought I don't want to define my life by fear anymore. I want to define my life by the things I want to do. And so I said yes to going, yes to getting the crew together. And the next thing I knew I was on this expedition ship, a Russian icebreaker with 40 teenagers, and I thought I don't know what's ahead of me, but I know it's going to be exciting, and I know it's going to be exciting and I know it's going to be adventurous.
Speaker 1:And for me. That was my really big sliding door moment in life because if I hadn't have done that, I know I wouldn't be here talking to you today. I know I wouldn't have ended up having the privileged adventures that I've had and places that I've been and the frontline of the climate systems that I've gone to. That was really my sliding door moment and I'm so grateful that a part of me found that courage to say yeah, I'm going to go. There were lots of things that happened on that trip and I thought maybe I'm not going to actually get back alive when we hit a category five hurricane coming back on the Drake Passage. I laugh when I think that I'm called home and my husband's a rusty sailor and I said I don't think I'm going to make it. His reaction was just pull yourself together. Of course you're going to be fine. You're on an icebreaker.
Speaker 1:The 40 teenagers were all up on the bridge. It was the middle of the night and they had three big spotlights on looking for icebergs. They were saying to me this is awesome. This is actually better than going on the Big Dipper. This is better than going to Disney World. There was a really big lesson on learning perspectives. They saw it as this amazing adventure. I saw it as my life passing before my eyes. But, to answer your question, that was my big change from my corporate world, which I'm very grateful for having. I think the skills that I learned in running businesses pitching for business, partnerships, collaboration the things that are really important in business and also being able to read the room and to look after the younger staff that are coming up you take all those things in your kit bag and you say how can I apply those now to something that I'm really passionate about doing? And I really believe that those foundations and that business acumen that I had and all those experiences really helped me in that next chapter of my life.
Speaker 3:I love hearing how you've discovered the adventurous side of yourself through all of these experiences. I wanted to ask you how you have used adventures and the experiences that you have been living in the last few years to develop a mindset of curiosity and resilience whilst working in what is very challenging topics Over the time.
Speaker 1:My resilience has had challenges, but you take those challenges into the next chapter and the next chapter. My first resilience was being told that I would never be able to do a big series called the Tipping Points. Like I was so determined that I actually jumped a plane to the US, Washington DC, pitched it to about five different broadcasters because the broadcasters here in Australia thought probably I was a bit green, I hadn't had the experience. I was a female going into very hadn't had the experience. I was a female going into very off the edge places on the planet. My determination took me to go fish in bigger ponds and I had two callbacks and within 48 hours I had a first offer which was just under a million and it was my first big chunk of money into the series. That actually acted as a domino effect and brought the other international broadcasters on board. My first step in resilience was realizing how important it is to believe in yourself and, when people say no, to say thank you, because it actually just fueled my rockets to actually want to do what I was trying to do, and it wasn't from an egotistical point of view, it was because I had come across this amazing professor in the UK, Professor Tim Lenton, and he had explained the tipping points of the climate system and at the time Al Gore had done a big series Leonardo DiCaprio, James Champion and I wanted to see what could I do and what could we do from Australia to look at this story. I was really fueled by the narrative that I had discovered that nobody else had done yet and I thought we need to explain actually what the climate is as a system. And like a car has a system under the bonnet, an air conditioning system has all these things that make it work. The climate is a very integrated system but it's of things that are in different parts of the world whether it's oceans, current, the Greenland ice sheet, the monsoonal systems. Everything works together and I was so curious to find out what that was and it made me very determined to get the project off the ground.
Speaker 1:On that project I learned a lot more about resilience, particularly my first expedition. We wanted to get onto the Arctic ice sheet off the top of Greenland before it broke up. So there was this pressure, pressure, pressure. I've got to get there because it's actually warming. It's going to break soon. We've got to be able to get the dog sleds on there. Eight or nine weeks later I found myself landing in Kangaluswak. It is the place that you land when you come into Greenland, usually through Denmark, and it's amazing because you actually have to do this huge U-turn and you come in to land on this runway, which was built for World War II and it was an air force base at the time for landing refueling, but now there's just research stations that are there and it's the hub that you can come into and from there we were able to then fly on to Kanak, which is about five hours north and it's the furthest town, I think maybe in the world 480 people. That's where we stepped off.
Speaker 1:But anyway, we did have moments where we had to jump a lee in the ice and, being the film director, I said I'm gonna go first with my, my sled and my driver. I know people say never work with young children. It's quite tricky, but let me tell you, never work with dog sleds, because the dogs have one idea of what direction they want to go and even if you've got your cameraman positioned, they'll actually just run through the cameraman, they won't run around him. So that was a lesson I learned. Anyway, we actually jumped the Lee, and when we got on the other side it was just moving, it was like marshmallow.
Speaker 1:We just knew that we were on very unstable ice. We very quickly had to turn my sled around with my Inuit hunter and get the hell out of there. That seemed like an inordinate amount of time and everything goes in slow motion. But we got back to the other side and everybody's like good job, good job. Oh my God, that was crazy. All these little things that come along. It doesn't matter what you're doing, you get challenged. It's not so much how you fall, it's how you deal with it and how you get out of it.
Speaker 2:And so I think I learned a lot about resilience starting on the Greenland ice sheet. How fascinating that you can really learn those lessons by putting yourself in those situations to be able to learn them right. I want to go to the opposite pole of the planet. I was wondering if we could talk about your latest film that you won multiple awards for in London. Would you be able to give our listener an overview of Antarctica the giant awakens, before we delve into how it came about?
Speaker 1:The thesis about going to Antarctica was to actually participate in scientific research. We actually took one of the leading sea level experts in the world and two emerging female PhD students who are looking at sea level rise and also studying atmospheric change. The reason that we went down there was to have a look at what microbes are traveling in these atmospheric superhighways that have been created. You can imagine that before we had so much moisture in the atmosphere, it was really hard for microbes to travel around the world. They didn't really have anything to latch on to. But the atmosphere has changed and we have big water molecules that are traveling around the world. We call that the new superhighway for microbes. They can just latch on and go traveling as far as they want around the world. Now we wanted to know what microbes are now reaching Antarctica and are those microbes things that will impact the natural world down there? Will it impact the ocean? Will it impact areas where there are some plants and biodiversity? Will it impact the dolphin colonies, the bird colonies? It was very exciting to be part of that research.
Speaker 1:I felt that it was really important to have a look at the roles that young people can play in the future. Only about 32% of the entire STEM workforce in the world are females. I wanted young women particularly to see that there are career paths that they can follow and to see two young women, one from America and one from Asia, fulfilling those roles and follow their journey. I felt that that would also make for another layer of storytelling. Also, the two PhD students and our scientists wrote letters back to their students in their classes to tell them what it was like, what they were seeing, how they were feeling, and express it on a different level. That wasn't a scientific level, it was a very personal level.
Speaker 1:At the very end, our two youth scientists talked about what that lived experience really brought to them and how they had studied it for years and years in data and on their computer and in textbooks. But now they were actually living it and they realized what a privilege it was and how they wanted to take that back. And they were actually living it and they realized what a privilege it was and how they wanted to take that back, and they were determined and optimistic that they could share their knowledge and that could actually help other young people make a difference to the world as well. So it's not a film that I went down there to make for doom and gloom. I went down there to show the human experience, but also show the hopeful side of that human experience. When you have it, how it can actually empower you to want to be part of that change.
Speaker 2:I wanted to hear what compelled you to do it and then why you think it's resonated with the audience so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for those listening, antarctica is twice the size of Australia, so you can get an idea of the size. The second thing is Antarctica is originally part of Gondwana. Like the big group of land, it went south, but it's only been frozen for 20% of its known lifetime, so 80% of the time it's been a tropical rainforest and it's now so far south that it is frozen. East Antarctica is the main continent and it sits quite high up above the ocean, but West Antarctica is like little Maldive islands that all smash together and they sit very low at the level, close to the ocean. So when you think about impact because of its different makeup geographically, west Antarctica is being smashed much harder because it has this direct impact of oceans and the oceans are warming, whereas East Antarctica is a little bit higher, it has very high plateaus and it has a different geographical makeup, which means that it doesn't have the same impact at the moment to these warming oceans as West does. But why did we go there? That's a good question.
Speaker 1:In my role as artist-in-residence at the Earth Observatory of Asia for the last four and a half years, we were very much focused on communications about how the climate system was changing and what those impacts were having on Southeast Asia, oceania, and a lot of those were flowing into Australia. One of the areas that became very focused was Antarctica, because it is changing three times faster than most other places on the planet and it has so much water frozen in it. Up to 60% of fresh water on the planet is frozen in Antarctica. So the curiosity and the concern was to really understand why Antarctica could be the biggest existential threat to climate change in the world, and we're talking about the sea level rise and sea level rise. There are different variations of what it could be by the end of this century, but that is all determined on how quickly the climate heats up, how quickly the oceans heat up and how fast those two things combine in the melt that's happening down there, which is really quite extensive.
Speaker 1:So our trip was to participate in global scientific research projects and also to have a look at what is happening in Antarctica. That will impact islands in Oceania, that will impact Southeast Asia and this whole region. 80% of all people who have a coastal dwelling live here, not around the world. 80% live in coastal habitats across Southeast Asia and Oceania. So on our back doorstep is a whole area of the planet that is going to be tremendously impacted by sea level rise. So we want to understand it, we want to try and mitigate it and we want to try and mitigate it and we want to try and plan for it.
Speaker 3:I want to ask you about something you mentioned earlier, which is science communications, the importance of science communications, but also what was the gap that you saw that needed to be serviced when you started making documentaries and when you decided to make this your life journey, that's?
Speaker 1:a great question, loretta. When I first started, I have to say I was pretty green. I really am so grateful for all the global scientists who took that step to work with me and I'm talking about leading scientists in the world, people who flew to the Amazon to film with us, and India and Nepal and all sorts of places. In those early days I was really like a sponge, but the one thing that stood out from that was that there is a gap between the scientific knowledge and then how you translate that so that the everyday person can really understand and appreciate what it is they're trying to tell us. And so translational science needs a number of elements. One it needs to be broken down so it's easier for us to understand. Second, we need analogies, because if I say to you, the climate system's like lifting the bonnet of your car and pulling a few things out, draining the oil, putting the lid back on, do you still think it's going to perform the same way? It's a good analogy, because I've not yet had anybody said, yes, of course it will, of course not. I'm like, well, this is what is happening. So analogies were the second thing that I learned. We've got translational science using analogies.
Speaker 1:The third thing I discovered with the scientists is that they're so passionate about their work that they forget to tell us the purpose of it. Sometimes They'll tell us all the answers that they got, but then they don't relate it back to how does that impact this geographical area? And then how can we talk about how it will impact other geographical areas differently? The third thing was closing the loop. I said to the scientist I've got to work on closing the loop. Tell us what it is and how it's going to impact the East Coast of Australia or Northern Territory, or how it's going to impact people in Tasmania, as an example. You've got to tell us that, otherwise, if I'm reading the story, you're not talking to me because I live in Tasmania. It really doesn't have a relevance to my life, my work, the future of my children or my family.
Speaker 1:And then also talking about the impact that data-driven science can have on helping governments and helping business create better models and mitigate and plan for what the scientific evidence is telling us is actually coming our way. Those four key things were what I realized we needed to do more of in science, including training, because I found some people spoke with passion, some people spoke with a flat voice. Some people spoke very quietly. Some people didn't quite know how to handle those questions. So I really enjoyed and loved working with scientists as well, to help them share their story in a way that we will understand it, we will hear it and we will act on it.
Speaker 2:I really like your framing of that, because we've gotten so used to public communications being quite negative and fear-based and there's clearly an appetite for the more aspirational approach to life and the sense of agency that people get In your experience. Why is it important for those climate narratives to be positive and solution-oriented?
Speaker 1:That is a really great question. I am very passionate about how we start to tell stories differently. I think, dan, this came from really questioning myself why there was a story that came out and I was trying to work out about a year ago to do with Antarctica actually, why it didn't really make any headlines and I realized it didn't have any doom or gloom in it. I went to a workshop that Exeter University ran last year. I was very excited to be invited and we were talking with some key scientists around the world about the narratives that were happening around climate, and if somebody hears that word climate, they just switch off. It's a worn out word. It is a word that carries a lot of heavy weight with it, and so we were talking about how do we change that, because we do want people to understand and know, but we want to frame it differently. What came out of that was the exciting stories about positive tipping points. We know there are tipping points in the climate system. We talk about tipping points, we talk about planetary boundaries. There's a little bit of confusion because they're two different things, but now we have this kind of new operating conversation which is about positive tipping points, and it's incredibly important for us to start to seed positive, tipping point stories into the media Because, at the end of the day, a lot of people don't know that there is a major energy transition happening in the world.
Speaker 1:I'm very excited that the UK turned off its last coal plant. We know that our neighbor across in New Zealand is on around 84% renewable energy already. We know Uruguay has been on renewable energy for a number of years. Morocco just built the largest solar farm in the world. We know that the Scandis are doing extremely well on their energy transition, using solar, using wind, using hydro, using geothermal. There are countries that are really doing amazing work. If you have a look at the energy transition in Africa that is actually allowing a new mode of transport, which is two and three wheeler cars. That's really a big change, a real mind shift change, because they're actually able to recharge using solar and they're actually driving where there are no fumes now in towns. The air is starting to clear. It's starting to become healthier for them. If we start to look at firstly, wow, there are countries that are doing extremely well in this transition. Let's have a look at how they did it and how mandates helped and how also people got behind, accepting and accelerating change.
Speaker 1:When we hear positive stories, I really think positive stories make us more hopeful. When we feel more hopeful and we also see, by taking certain actions, what we can achieve, we know through data that we can actually accelerate change faster. For me, this whole sort of movement we need to demand of the media to tell us the stories, the positive stories of how well we are doing and where different organizations, companies, communities are actually really innovating. At the moment, a lot of our social media algorithms are all built around drama. They're all built around fear, they're all built around negative. We see those things more frequently. They're used as hooks for us to hook onto and while we still live in that sort of mindset and the media keeps us in that mindset, it's really hard to make the transition. I encourage everybody look for the more positive stories, look for the innovation, read the achievements that are happening around the world and I know it's hard to find those stories.
Speaker 1:There are some amazing things happening Even the first ship to try sailing from Miami across to China using wind sails, wind turbines. Japan is looking at creating a road system that will be like a conveyor belt between Kyoto and Tokyo. So in the future they'll be able to actually move cargo on a big conveyor belt. Get rid of all the trucks you know 2035, you won't be able to buy fossil fuel cars anymore in the UK. 40 or 42, you won't be able to drive industrial fleets trucks in the UK unless they're renewable energy. I mean. Countries that are putting mandates in are making great strides. So I'm excited and I think that the more positive movement towards change that we can get in Australia, the faster we can accelerate.
Speaker 3:Could not agree more, liz. I want to talk a little bit about the other side of your work and, speaking of the positive impact that you're creating. I want to hear a little bit about the other side of your work and, speaking of the positive impact that you're creating, I want to hear a little bit about your experience at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, in particular, about the partnerships that you're creating with scientists from Singapore, but also from Norway, in polar impact Asia.
Speaker 1:The Earth Observatory of Asia and organizations like this. We focus very much on building partnerships and those partnerships around the region have been very beneficial. We were planning on the UN conference in Portugal a few years ago to do with oceans and wow, the oceans events coming up this week. We were looking at how we could bring people together and the Portuguese embassy created on the road, the blue road to Portugal, and so we collaborated to work with the ambassador and we created a webinar series and a podcast series. But we actually bought scientists working on oceans in from around the world who were actually then going to be in Portugal so we could actually have a better understanding of the deep ocean. We could have a better understanding of seismic gaps and needing to map those across Southeast Asia oceans, the Great Coral Triangle, which sits on our back doorstep, where about 75 or 80% of the nursery of the planet exists. We talked about so many different areas to do with oceans, but it was a collaboration of scientists, a collaboration of countries and it was a partnership that we all built to go to Portugal. Another example is working with Resort Worlds in Singapore, because they obviously have a very big marine park there, but they're moving more and more to make that marine park a research park, and so that's been amazing to be able to have a collaboration with big business starting to focus on how to support that ocean research that's so important to be done, and particularly around resilient corals. In Singapore there's about a thousand ships that come through there on a daily basis, but they found a whole coral reef there and everybody's like how does that coral reef survive? The coral reef has literally taught itself to be resilient and it's made very flat arms to capture as much sun as possible and it's created little tentacles that reach up and can actually grab little filaments and use and convert those to energy. It's just this amazing way to see how nature, over a long period of time, has worked out how to be resilient.
Speaker 1:I want to put a little preface there to say that nature needs time to become resilient. It needs time over hundreds of years and thousands of years to adapt. I think we need to be mindful that we are looking at losing up to 60% of the biodiversity on the planet by the end of this century, because biodiversity just cannot keep up with the pace of change and the heat and it's not just the heat but it's the low and high temperatures. So the variance between the highs and the lows is getting greater. And even across the Asia region the variance in temperature in the atmosphere between day and night that heat and the cold is far greater than what it has been in the past. So where in the UK they're used to all these different variances in temperatures?
Speaker 1:Nature's learned to have gray days, cold days, wet days and every now and then a bit of sun. Everybody always complains about the gray skies there. I'm sure nature complains about it as well, but it's learned to deal with it. If you think about in that whole tropical sphere around the equator, it's only used to heat and warm. When you start to put some variances in there, even half a degree, that's a big variance for that tropical region. So we were so interested to find out how these corals had adapted, and that's a partnership with Resort Worlds and the aquarium and the universities. That's just another example. I think collaboration is so important and I think that when we collaborate together whether it's in business and business also collaborates with science I think then when you bring that into an organization it just gives you a deeper understanding and a deeper appreciation of how the two of you can work together.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's such a good point. We have a very strong follower base of sustainability professionals that listen in to this podcast and they're constantly having to justify business cases to execs, give presentations to boards and speak the language of business and how a changing climate and an impacted nature is going to impact the business. How have you observed the benefits of bringing these real world impacts into these scientific reports in terms of educating, then also seeing that needle move?
Speaker 1:I think that this is a whole super interesting area of conversation to have because, firstly, I just want to say thank you to all the sustainability managers that are listening for the work that you're doing like truly, and how, how needed you are in organizational structure, and I want to encourage as many sustainability managers as possible to try and get some lived experiences under their belts. You can actually bring your own lived experiences within the organization, not just from textbooks and videos, which are very important, but also to have a lived experience whether it's with the ocean or rainforest or the Arctic. There are just lived experiences that really help cement the knowledge bank that you carry with you, and the sort of people that you meet on those journeys can really enhance the internal work that you do. There's an interesting example of a building actually in Singapore at 88 Market Street. It was built by Capital Land a few years ago. What they put was a business case to say we are building a 52-story building and you know real estate in Singapore every half an inch is worth a lot of money and they decided that they want to dedicate five stories of this building to just being a tropical rainforest and they had to go and pitch this to the investors in the US. And the thing that they pitched, which I thought was very interesting, was we have ESGs and we have all these goals. But they said we realize that nature is such an important part of our mental health and anxiety and areas that we feel concerned about in life. When we're sitting with nature and we're in nature, there is a very interesting relationship that happens a level of endorphins that happen within our body and how it also nourishes us.
Speaker 1:So they actually got approved to have a building that didn't have five floors of revenue. It was created as a tropical rainforest and it's still, to this day, one of my favorite places to go because it's got a yoga center, it's got eggshell chairs that you can sit in. You can get a good coffee on one of the floors and you can sit and have a coffee. But you're in a tropical rainforest and that built the soil deep enough to actually carry big trees and you just walk around it and you just feel so relaxed and it's that aha moment and I think that you know sustainability, however, you bring it into the organization.
Speaker 1:You need to bring in the environment into the organization. You need to bring in the environment into the organization. You need to bring the knowledge in, you need to bring the passion in and you need to bring a really clear direction of what you and your company are going to do to deliver not just on the ESGs, but to deliver to the people within the organization and what that ripple effect is going to be for your business. Now more than ever, it's such a critical time to bring that to life and to get others within the organization engaged in it. So, um, I think very important to be a sustainability manager at this time.
Speaker 3:Definitely is. Let's pivot. We touched at the start of the podcast about tipping points. You have been working closely with Professor Tim Linton. He's a professor of climate change and earth system science at the University of Exeter. Why is the tipping points project so important to you?
Speaker 1:When I was looking for the narrative to create a big series and I have to say thank you to Screen Australia for encouraging me to do this back in 2010, 2011, to do the tipping point series. I looked and looked and looked for about six months until I actually read a research paper by this scientist who I'd never heard of, professor Tim Lenton. I saw he was at Exeter University. I was so excited by the storyline and the thesis that I just picked up the phone at about 10 o'clock at night, australia time, and I thought I'm just going to randomly call the number. And randomly he answered it was hello, professor Tim Lenton. I'm just like, oh my God, what am I going to say? And I was so gushy and I was like I'm calling from Australia, I'm a film director. Anyway, we ended up having a great conversation and he was so thrilled that I was interested in his story, which now has become a very much a framework for how we talk about climate.
Speaker 1:Over the time, tim had seen that the words around climate change and even tipping points were kind of getting lost in the quagmire of people's anxiety and people's minds and we weren't able to have the same open and enthusiastic conversations with people. And also there's a wear and tear on something when you just hear it so frequently. This particular word climate and the word change have really been used a lot and I think when we first heard those words, we kept thinking it was about the planet getting hotter and there were a lot of stories around that. But if we look back on it now, the vernacular really is about a climate system becoming unstable and that means it's getting hotter and colder and we're getting fires and droughts because the stability of the system has been damaged. Last year, when we had this workshop, it was Tim who said you know, we have to do something about the vernacular of what we're talking about. And he said I really want to focus on positive tipping points. That big swing and that big change has really started me on my own journey, loretta, to really understand how do we bring positive tipping points into the storytelling world and how do we take people on that journey to really see what's happening around the world. And when you get to around 20% adoption of a new technology and you get over that 20%, you're already on a runaway train that starts to get its own momentum and keeps going, if you have a look, by 2030, the major energy source on the planet will have shifted already to solar. You have the sort of last bastions of the fossil fuel industry and the gas industry who are desperately trying to hang on to what is left of their crumbling world. And I just say to them embrace the change. The world is changing and we are moving.
Speaker 1:I had a gorgeous conversation with an architect recently who said I loved everything you had to say. He said but I just have a problem when I see wind turbines on mountaintops. And I said that's so interesting because that's a mindset. And I said if you had been born at a time where all you ever knew was wind turbines on a mountaintop? And somebody said to you we've decided we're going to put these poles and wires in and have poles and wires running down every street, you say I don't want poles and wires running down my street, I don't want to see that. It's just a mindset. We become very used to our mindset and our mindset can get a bit stuck and we're at a time in the life of the world and this crossroad in our planetary systems where we have to sit behind and adopt change and we have to move to change that is actually going to support the future generations of our planet and that change is going to make us see things differently, but the next generation will say that's how it's always been.
Speaker 2:I remember Tim's presentation at Climate Action Week. Two of the stats that jumped out to me were 83% of countries around the world, renewables are now the cheapest form of electricity massive and the other one was exactly to your point of once you get to 20%, it's a runaway trade. I think he used Norway in EVs in 2014. It was like a blip in like very low on the chart and from that moment, the usage just exploded. It was very cool, and Loretta and I often talk about.
Speaker 2:You don't have to convince everyone at the same time. You just need to convince the people who are open to learning and who are curious, and then the rest will follow. It's human nature. It's the adoption curve. It happens time and time again. One of the things that is very obvious within your career is you've helped those adoption curves mature through collaborations and partnerships and with people from all over the world, and so we're keen to hear how can the sustainability professional who's listening in today, how can they bring what you've learned through building these collaboration and partnerships into their sustainability practices and operations?
Speaker 1:I'm sure many of them that are listening have all got masters and PhDs and have probably learned so much. My learning has been lived experience and also been privileged to work with some of the greatest minds on the planet in the climate sector, so I've learned a lot from them and I'm extremely grateful when we are now and where we need to go. Firstly, the sustainability officers and the financial teams have to work together, because the financial teams are all about bean counting and the sustainability team is about trying to reduce the carbon footprint. That collaboration is a really important one, and I use the word collaboration rather than one be dominant over the other. And secondly, every company will have its own unique sustainability angle that it wants to follow. That is usually to do with its brand.
Speaker 1:You need to make sure that what you're doing is actually going to have real traction, and I encourage them to think about what they're doing and actually bring it into the organization so it becomes a living, breathing part of the organization, and whether that's how you spill it out into family, how you do events that people can attend. There's nothing better than walking into an organization from my perspective, and I either see a living wall, which I think, wow, they've brought nature into the organization. Or I see something that is their goal, and I see it on a wall at reception that says our goal is to do something with a particular rainforest in Australia, or is to support deep ocean research, or it's to support the Great Barrier Reef and its regeneration program. I really want to walk in and see what is your organization doing and I want you to hit me in the face with it, because I want to know.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I love that. As we are getting towards the end of today's episode, I was wondering where a listener can find your documentaries, where they can find you in the Amazon, Greenland, Antarctica, for example. Where should they be looking for your work?
Speaker 1:It depends on what country they're in, but I would presume most people are in Australia. My most recent work is on Apple TV, amazon Prime. It's on CuriosityStream. There are about 40 different streamers around the world. Antarctica has just been in cinema so it's just gone on to streamers. They can also find Unbox Media, which has lots of trailers and information about the work that we do. I must have been terrible at keeping my own website up to date, but I'll work on that harder.
Speaker 1:Antarctica is also a really interesting documentary, because we spent all our time on the ocean and I was totally reminded again and again that the only reason we really have life on this planet is because of the ocean. And I was amazed because I was with some friends recently and I said to them the ocean is so important for oxygen and they said, yeah, it's important, but you know, rainforests are very important, they're the most important thing. And I said why do you think that? And they said, oh, because that's where we get all our oxygen from. And I was like, well, I hate to sort of dismantle that thought process, but actually up to 60% of our oxygen comes from the ocean. And rainforests are beautiful and I love them, but we get about 15% of our oxygen from rainforests.
Speaker 1:I think it's really important for people to remember that the reason that we do have life on this planet is because of our ocean and the things that are very important in our ocean, particularly plankton, the whales, things like whale poo is very important. It provides all the fertilizer for the ocean. So there are reasons why a healthy ocean is incredibly important for us to remember and celebrate as we come towards Ocean's Day, because our planet is a blue planet and it's a blue planet because it has oceans. We are the only blue ocean in our entire solar system and I want to remind people as they're sitting and listening to this is like just remember, we're actually on a planet and, as Dan Loretta and I are sitting here, we're actually moving through the solar system with you and the only thing between us and space is that thin blue line and we are putting a mega amount equivalent to nuclear bombs in every second of every day. We really have to modify our behavior and we have to do it quickly.
Speaker 3:What a way to end the podcast, Liz. You have been wonderful today. We are so inspired by your work and so inspired by everything you shared today.
Speaker 2:Before you go. As always, we like to end on a high note, so we're going to ask you the two final questions that we ask all of our guests. So we're going to give you the green fix magic wand. And what would you like to create or see happen in the next five years?
Speaker 1:Okay, if I had a magic wand, I'm going to think about Australia, because I love Australia I would create an entity that sat alongside government, that wasn't government, that would actually allow us to plan for the next hundred years, because the climate system moves in a 20-year lag.
Speaker 1:Everything we're doing now will impact around 2045, 2050. Everything we're feeling now is from what we did 20 years ago. So my big frustration is that we don't have a vehicle and we don't have the infrastructure to actually plan for climate change in Australia, because at the moment, it's governed by oh, elections and changeovers and things that are out of our control, and every time we have a change, we actually change our plans or we delete our plans. So there's no structure that is allowing Australia to have any long-term planning and it's not allowing us to plan for our future generations. So if I had a magic wand, I would want to help create something like that so that we can plan and we can know that we're doing our very best to hand the baton over to the future generations, of whose decisions we're making, for now, wonderful use of the magic wand.
Speaker 3:Let's end with some positivity, which I think you have carried throughout the interview. Take us out by telling us one piece of positive climate news that you've heard recently.
Speaker 1:So there's one thing I heard recently. So Australia congratulations. We in the last quarter hit 46% renewable energy across Australia and we think by August, september, we'll be halfway there. I think that is the most exciting thing I've heard recently about. Australia is actually nearly halfway to being across the renewable energy transition and that means that once you hit that path, as we talked about before, it just gathers speed. I am incredibly excited. That's for using solar, wind and hydro. I'd like to end on that note and say congrats to all the people that are working so hard to help us with the energy transition.
Speaker 2:And thank you to you, Liz. I mean we're so thrilled to have you on the podcast. You do so much for the climate cause and also you bring so much joy to so many people. As your good friend Christiana Fugueras once said, optimism is hope. With your sleeves rolled up, and I think you absolutely personify that. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3:This was Green Fix with your hosts Loretta Gutierrez and Dan Levington. You can get your Green Fix every two weeks on Apple Podcasts, spotify or Pocket Cast.
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