Anthropocene, the human epoch has arrived in cinemas. For the occasion we interviewed photographer and co-director Edward Burtynsky, who told us about the journey behind the documentary.
At the end of watching Anthropocene, the human epoch, which arrived in Italian cinemas on 19 September, you are left with a sense of disorientation. There emerges that feeling of nostalgia and anxiety that comes when you perceive the environment around you to be undergoing an inexorable decline. This "climate anxiety" has been rendered in Italian with the term "solastalgia". And it is above all younger generations who are affected. A recent report argues that 45 per cent of children suffer from prolonged depression after experiencing extreme weather events or natural disasters. Yet the so-called "grown-ups" — parents, adults — stand by and watch.
The documentary is divided into chapters that recount the various degrees of exploitation, of inexorable transformation that the Earth is undergoing at human hands. A transformation that has ushered us into a new era: the Anthropocene, precisely. Directors Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, accompanied by photographer Edward Burtynsky, take us to places far apart from one another, yet united by the disaster we are inflicting on the Earth's ecosystem. Every location shares one common feature: what we are doing to the Planet takes the form of an open wound on a battlefield. Anthropocene, the human epoch is a difficult watch, but a necessary one in order to move to the next level of awareness. We asked photographer Burtynsky to tell us about this experience.
The documentary shows the slow, inexorable decline of the Planet at human hands. What struck you the most?
Seeing in person an enormous coal-extraction machine in Germany was an experience that left its mark on me. As did what I witnessed in Norilsk, a city of 200,000 inhabitants located 400 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. Life there revolves around a single industry: nickel. Norilsk was built above one of the largest metalliferous deposits in the world. For eight months of the year the city is submerged in perpetual night. It seems almost impossible to me that so many people manage to live in such conditions — in darkness for eight months, in one of the most remote and polluted places on the Planet.
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It was truly striking to descend into the Siberian subsoil, into a mine where one of the greatest concentrations of potassium carbonate is found. Or indeed Lagos, in Nigeria, a city growing at an extraordinary pace. Or Nairobi, in Kenya, where we watched the burning of the tusks of 10,000 elephants. You can imagine the horror — the tusks belonged to the largest elephants they had managed to kill, because when poachers go hunting they always try to target the specimen with the biggest tusks first, as these fetch the highest economic value.
You mentioned Norilsk in Siberia. But in the documentary, the people working in those conditions are proud of what they do. Why is that?
I think human beings are very resilient — they adapt to everything, to any condition. Perhaps you suffer in the first week, but then you get used to it; terrible circumstances become normal, as they do in war zones, for example. Whether the change is for better or worse, we manage to adapt very quickly, and tied to that is the survival and "success" of our species. That is how the people living on a plastic dump survive — they know no other world and try to adapt as best they can. Their concerns, however, remain universally human: educating their children, making sure there is enough food, a good shelter. For us in the West this idea is almost unbearable; we cannot understand how a life like that is possible, but there it is the only option.
How did you avoid falling into depression while making the documentary?
I think there is time to talk, time to understand, time to decide and make the next move. I believe hope comes from action, from asking ourselves what we can do, how we can change our behaviour. And in many ways that is where the positive drive comes from: when many of us start moving in the right direction, that is where we can change the world.
"Change" is perhaps the most overused word of recent years, but is it possible to change — to return to essentials — in order to save the Earth?
What does returning to essentials really mean? It doesn't seem to me that there is any possibility of going back to a hunter-gatherer life. We live in urban centres where technology is necessary for survival. I think it is more possible to replace the Western idea of satisfaction and value with an "experiential" conception. I think the new generations are already doing this: they seek to draw value from experiences rather than material goods. Value is knowledge, friendship, psychological wellbeing. I hope all of this can become the foundation of a new value system.
What kind of reaction do you expect from audiences?
We want to engage those who do not believe in the climate crisis, who do not think that human beings have a significant impact on the planet, and say to them: "Take a look at this and reflect." And if we could convince these people that there really is a problem, perhaps they would go and check what their political representative says about climate, perhaps they would change the way they handle plastic, what they eat or the cars they drive. I think the way the environmental message has been expressed up to now has created a polarity: today those on the left are environmentalists, while those on the right are anti-environmentalists. All of this is absurd because when nature strikes back it makes no allowances for anyone — left or right, believers or atheists, rich or poor: it hits us all.