Four time Amnesty International Award Winner and British Foreign Correspondent of the Year. Film Director. Writer. Human Rights and Climate Crisis Storytelling.
Each morning, when I am in Barcelona, I run across a stretch of La Carretera de les Aigües - roughly translated in English as "The road of the waters." The trail floats above this city of red rooftops and reminds me of a smaller version of the Hollywood Hills. In the distance, I can see white sailing boats drifting on the Meditteranean and departing ferries heading out with the gulls to Palma and Mahon. Since I returned from Indonesia in January, the almond trees have blossomed across my mountain route as the unseasonal heat has intensified. A drought has been declared on the road of waters and across Catalonia - we are on notice for worse to come. On the modernist lamposts that dot the Exiample District, signs have been posted in Catalan that declare: "l’aigua no cau del cel" - water doesn’t fall from the sky. No truer word has been spoken. Where is the rain? I travel the world to shoot films and give talks on the climate crisis that intersect my experiences in the most remote corners of the Arctic, the Middle East, the Pacific and Africa. Still, the story is increasingly on my doorstep. It can't only be documented or told through testimony from the earth's extremities. Europe is warming at twice the rate of other continents. Last July, there was a moment I had denied in the previous years when we had to leave because the heat was too severe. For Spain, this is the beginning of the end of a way of life that has celebrated long, balmy evenings and the hedonism of summer. Will we come to dread it like we do winter in Scotland or the far northern Hemisphere? #climatechange #drought #filmmaking #storytelling
Ben W.S. Miller
8mo
Loved that run. Speak soon Dan McDougall spoke to someone the other day who was moved to tears by a talk you gave at Cambridge not long ago.
Oceans | Climate | AI for Conservation | Restoration
8moDan McDougall Barcelona is still a beautiful city, but the Barcelona where I grew up and loved is gone. It was killed long ago by neglect and overtourism. Now the climate crisis destroys what is left. Last summer it was so hot that baby vencejos (swifts) jumped out of their nests in desperation and went from being cooked alive to crash landing and death.