WEATHER STATIONS

AFTERWARDS
Xiaolu Guo, London
A London-based Canadian writer attacked me for being someone who works on a
climate change project but flies around the world in order to do that work. She said that
this was hypocritical and unacceptable. There is some truth in what she said, and I feel
it keenly. But the spirit of her remarks didn’t get to the whole truth of the matter. Say
I hadn’t signed up for this project. I would still have produced a vast carbon footprint
(indeed, probably bigger than the one I actually produced), by flying back and forth to
China visiting my family, and by flying back and forth to Australia in the cheapest season
to see my partner’s family. I am not trying to excuse myself here, I am trying to discuss
the core problem of current reality.
The problem of climate change is the problem of our global economical structure.
Inequality is increasing. Both I and this Canadian writer belong to a group that has the
resources to live a global life to some extent — we use planes to visit family members
and conduct our work as well as spend holidays by flying from one city to another. Some
other immigrants have to jump on a boat, risking their life inside a ship container and
hoping to arrive in a ‘better’ country. Lots of them don’t survive the trip. We human
beings live in an age of ‘life is elsewhere’, the grass is greener in front of other people’s
houses. The global system does encourage people to live in this way - even if you are
poor you will still aspire to become rich and to live that lifestyle. This is the disease of
our age. What’s that big word again? Anthropocene.
Maybe it’s not such a big deal for a Canadian writer, since they have been
enlightened by Naomi Klein for the last 15 years. But for someone like me, without
participating in the Weather Stations project I would have never witnessed how a rural
Irish community has fought for its way of life in the face of terrible urban industrial
developments. It has enabled me to write about them and to tell their stories to other
people. The same goes for my understanding of how acidity and increasing sea
temperatures are killing coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. When I saw and touched
the grey skeletons of dead coral in the ocean I had to write about it. Because of these
72 WEATHER STATIONS: WRITING CLIMATE CHANGE