by Thinus Ferreira
"People listen when I talk. But I don't want you to listen to me," says the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg who is the fascinating subject of a new 3-episode BBC series, Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World. "I want you to listen to the science."
In Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World, starting today on BBC Earth (DStv 184) at 16:00, BBC cameras got unprecedented access to the climate change activist who allowed the cameras to follow her around the world for a year.
The result is an astounding documentary programme, showing how Greta crisscrossed the world (but not in airplanes!) to raise awareness among world leaders and the public about the dramatic changes in the world and the dangers of the dramatic changes happening on Earth because of climate change.
In the series, viewers will see Greta as she explores the science - from the melting glaciers of Canada to the coal mines of Europe.
Greta witnesses first-hand the consequences of
climate change and makes clear the reasons why she thinks something must be
done right now.
On her journey she meets climate scientists and confronts the
complexity of what is required to make change happen, along with encounters with
some of the world’s leading scientists and economists as the series examines what the latest science tells us about what can be done to avert the
worst effects of climate change.
I spoke to the executive producer who followed Greta for a year, as well as one of the climate scientists who appears as a contributor in the series.
Can you give some insight as to the origin story and where the idea came from to follow Greta Thunberg for a year?
Rob Liddell, BBC Studios executive producer: As with all television ideas, it came from multiple sources but Greta herself was interested in making a feature documentary about herself and was very keen that her next project was something looking at the science after I Am Greta that was about herself.
So she very much wanted to do a documentary about science. She's been a contributor with us in another programme from a few years ago called Climate Change: The Facts, so we had some relationship with her. And it was a discussion between her and us and we knew she was taking this year off and she wanted to do a piece that focused on the science.
We went back to her with a proposal which is broadly what the programme became which is to follow her for a year and to explore the science.
The BBC has very strict rules on working with children. She's always accompanied by her father or a number of chaperones. I hope that viewers will see some of the elements of her as a child.
She stuck me as a producer of someone wise beyond her years but there are times in the programme where you see her father telling her what to wear, and their relationship also reveals that Greta is a child, no matter how insightful she is and how she talks beyond her years and I was very aware of that throughout the programme.
Did Greta surprise you with what she said in the series?
Rob Liddell: Like many people, I didn't know Greta before I started working with her. I knew her like so many people from the headlines.
Spending time with her was very interesting. She is autistic so the conversations we had she's always very insightful, and she's very funny and very light as well. We became aware in the production that her energy levels are directly related to how much social talking she does.
We were very careful to provide her with as much privacy as we could while we filmed.
What is the aim of the series and how was the experience?
Rob Liddell: From a television perspective it's been really helpful to approach climate science from a more human angle.
The overriding experience was travelling with Greta and trying to do that in a way that minimised air travel, always doing that is as low a carbon-emissions way as possible. So we took lots of car journeys, train journeys, electrical vehicle journeys.
And we had planned to travel much further before the Covid-19 pandemic brought much of the world to a stop. We were hoping to travel all the way to Southeast Asia.
How do you work the science into the series?
Rob Liddell: Greta was the main contributor to the programme but she's not a "presenter". The programme is journalistic independent in terms of where we went for our science sources.
We worked really very, very carefully that everything in the programme is based on the best available science at the time and stuck to that. We also worked hard to try and join some of these concepts together.
It's trying to find a mix of stories that we could do with where Greta was going to be in the world. She gave us a lot of latitude and time to try and fit things in around her schedule but also trying to make sure that we cover all of the topics that we wanted to cover.
Why does Greta cut through and ignite public interest in climate change and climate science?
Dr Tamsin Edwards, King's College climate scientist: Greta has a very particular style of communication. She is very bold and clear and firm and demanding of a response to the problem that we face.
It's a little bit about timing as well. Her concern arose as we as the world finally acknowledge that we have a problem and her communicating it to everyone else. She's a very powerful communicator in her simplicity and assertiveness in which she conveys her message.
Rob Liddell: Greta is part of a generation where the climate change models suggest that those effects are within her horizon as it were, she is helped by being the voice of that generation. You also see that the effects of climate change are already very real today and are affecting people today. It's a problem of today that will certainly be worse in the future.
What new perspectives did you arrive at about Greta?
Rob Liddell: We have been able to spend time to get an understanding Greta and who she is. Many people don't understand her background. I think that it's been very helpful to explore the science to understand what sparked the passion from her.
She talks about her autism as a kind of super power and I think it's the clarity that it has given her to look at the facts that come from the science and to stand up and talk about them.
I think she's a much more nuanced and complex person. She's a human being and that's what the series demonstrates and that's perhaps not always that jumps first into people's minds.
How did you adapt your filming because it started before Covid-19 hit and then it happened, so how did you adjust the production?
Rob Liddell: Like everybody everything was thrown up in the air with Covid. All our plans were put on hold. Initially we weren't sure how to respond the same as the world with everything that stopped.
Lockdown happened but as things began to settle down and we understood where things were, we gradually began to pick up things in a very incremental way, starting with Zoom stuff, starting to send our director to Sweden to do some filming.
As the summer wore on we looked for any opportunity as the world unlocked and tried to react very quickly to those.
Some of the trips you seen in episode 3 to Denmark and so on were made literally as regulations changed. We did our best is what I would say. I think it's been very interesting what we've been able to do in that time, so I'm very happy with how that turned out.
The audience that's receptive to the idea of climate change will watch and feel this remarkable series resonates with what they believe. In the first episode we see Greta in Canada and people who work in the oil industry who are scared and don't believe in climate change. How does the media try and reach these people?
Rob Liddell: In terms of how you reach people who don't want to engage with this material - I find that a very difficult question to answer.
All I think that we can do as programme makers is to make the programmes that try and explain and set out what the science tells us.
My background is in science television production and I think that it's important to showcase and highlight the facts and we have to put out the facts out there for people.
Dr Tamsin Edwards: Over the years I've spent a lot of time to talk to and understand where skeptical people are coming from and I think. One of the powerful ways that Greta talks is that she cannot believe why people aren't taking action on climate change.
And therefore in the 3rd episode she talks to someone in psychology around how do we reach people. The facts are incredibly important and it's so important for people who are on the edge of being concerned and then it's the final thing that helps them understand.
But sometimes you just have to figure out what people's values are and their perspectives.
You have to partner a documentary with other conversations who are skeptical about climate change and you work out what is it that's important to them, and then you talk about how climate change will affect those things that are important to them and that it isn't just a political stance or something that happens to other people and I was really happy to see that that was touched on.
If we think of climate change as being purely something that takes away from our life, then it's understandable that we would be resistant to that.
What the documentary shows is that there are things proven that if we act on climate change can improve our lives - like around air pollution - and that there are positive steps that create jobs and new opportunities as well. So it's also about highlighting those, which the documentary series also does.
What shocked you in making the series?
Rob Liddell: When we were filming and walking on the glacier in Canada and the scientists we were talking with there said that the prediction is that this glacier will be gone no matter what action happens in terms of climate change.
This glacier is a tourist attraction. I, as a 16-year old, went on a holiday to Canada and remember going to visit this glacier. It's just the reality of climate change happening now. It's not a problem of the future, it's change that's happening all around us.
Can a TV show like this help to change people's minds?
Rob Liddell: Yes I think it can. No single thing is a silver bullet. It's about adding to a public discourse.
I find it very striking that in the UK general elections that climate change was a debate. I find it striking that in the US presidential elections that climate change was an issue that was there in the politics as something that was deemed important to discuss.
You are seeing a broader conversation about this. I do hope it makes a difference and I hope that people watch it and hear the messages from the programme.
Dr Tamsin Edwards: I think TV makes a huge difference to changing minds and to creating new scientists and engineers. One of the reasons I'm a climate scientist is watching Sir David Attenborough talk about animals and the environment as a kid.
I know that the documentary series that David Attenborough did on climate change in about 2006 where he showed graphs of temperature change with and without human influence, projected onto the floor of a natural history museum - people were talking about that image for years after as really changing their minds on the impact of human influence.
I think a single documentary can make a big difference. I also think that Greta is really leaving a legacy in particular in cutting through to the young generation.
I have seen young people pressure companies on their sustainability and green plans, otherwise they refuse to apply for jobs there. She's had a huge effect on a generation and that generation is now voting, consuming, taking up jobs, and getting more and more power in influence and leverage.
Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World is on Sundays on BBC Earth (DStv 184) at 16:00, starting 23 May.
