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Stanhope Dene, Weardale For a few moments the falling rain became a silver sunlit curtain as it swept across the canopy

We knew we were going to get wet, probably very wet, but it was the kind of morning that turns landscape into dramatic theatre; dark clouds unleashing torrential showers, then sunshine breaking through gaps in the clouds, sweeping across fields and fell side.

The first downpour arrived just as we made our way along the footpath that skirts the edge of the dene, a steep-sided cleft in the hillside cut by Stanhope burn, clothed with ash, Scots pine, oak and beech. The impact of heavy raindrops loosened leaves from the canopy above, sending them spinning down to join a carpet of wet beech autumn foliage, as shiny as polished copper, under our feet.

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s new climate change documentary, Before the Flood, began streaming online this week. As a disaster risk scientist, I watched with intrigue.

While it doesn’t cover a lot of new material for those familiar with the topic, DiCaprio will undoubtedly reach a new audience given his star power and access to figures like Pope Francis and US President Barack Obama.

At the time of writing, the film has been watched more than 6 million times on YouTube alone. Clearly, it will make a significant contribution to the contemporary discussion around climate change, much like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth a decade ago.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest work.

Coming in the same week that the Paris Agreement enters into force, the movie helps to set the stage for action to prevent the worst impacts of a global environmental crisis that is already well under way.

But as exciting as it is to see an A-list Hollywood star train his celebrity spotlight on this issue, it is important to critique some of the film’s underlying assumptions. Chief among these are the idea that “green growth” will allow us to have economic growth without environmental damage, and the notion that the politicians and corporations who helped compromise our planet can now be trusted to save it.

Denial and overconsumption

In making the film, DiCaprio spent three years travelling the globe to see the most severe impacts of climate change. He also discussed climate change’s causes, impacts and mooted solutions with leading environmentalists, scientists, innovators and politicians.

He found overwhelming scientific evidence that disaster is imminent. He also found a lobby that is determined to deny that humans are responsible, and a near-universal commitment to technocratic solutions.

While talking to climatologist Michael Mann about the denial movement’s well-funded and effective campaign to confuse the public, DiCaprio remarks: “If I was a scientist, I would be absolutely pissed every single day of my life.” (Presumably he means “pissed” in the American sense, rather than the UK/Australian usage.)

He goes on to trace the corporate sector’s funding of alternative and contrarian climate research, as well as the partisan politics at play in this movement.

One of the film’s most poignant moments takes place in India. DiCaprio’s discussion with environmentalist Sunita Narain turns to the issue of overconsumption in the United States, while poor countries are told they must embrace renewable energy. She insists:

Your consumption is going to really put a hole in the planet. We need to put the issue of lifestyle and consumption at the centre of climate negotiations.

Narain is left shaking her head as DiCaprio argues ruefully that Americans will probably never accept a change to their “standard of living”, a concept that is unavoidably linked to consumption.

Can green growth really save us?

A visit to the Tesla Gigafactory gives us a look at what is possible with today’s technology. Chief executive Elon Musk shares his vision for a clean energy transition, claiming that 100 Gigafactories could power the planet. However, he warns that:

…the fossil fuel industry is the biggest industry in the world. They have more money and more influence than any other sector… [but] if government sets the rules to favour sustainable energy, we can get there really quickly.

While the film captures the jubilant atmosphere at last year’s Paris climate negotiations, DiCaprio is clearly sceptical about the level of political will to challenge corporate power. The film argues that politicians generally follow public opinion, the implication being that they will only take on the fossil fuel sector if and when society demands it.

Yet sections of society have been demanding it for decades, and their outrage has routinely been dismissed. At this moment, protesters at Standing Rock, North Dakota are in a protracted standoff with police and private military over a planned oil pipeline that Native American tribes fear will harm local groundwater. President Obama’s suggestion of allowing the situation to “play out for several more weeks” speaks powerfully of the political establishment’s willingness to give armed backing to corporations.

Before the Flood lines up a series of leaders, scientists and innovators to tell us that we need to move faster towards sustainable energy. But their implied backing of the economic status quo of indefinite growth goes unchallenged, because DiCaprio sees such a challenge as impossibly radical. We therefore leave ourselves at the mercy of a technocratic response that has failed time and again.

A robust critique of “green growth”, and of the growth paradigm in general, would have been well within this film’s remit. Instead, it is presented as our only hope.

Likewise, the film neglects to challenge the implicit suggestion that the current crop of leaders and corporations are the best people to lead us into this green utopia.

Radical change

The film’s message is that we simply need to educate, organise and take action in our communities, and then politicians will follow suit. This downplays the influence of money in politics, and the reality that voting in many countries is an exercise in futility. Rhetoric aside, can we really trust the same political elite that have allowed such destruction on their watch?

The film’s intention to reach a mass-market audience might explain the editorial decision to sidestep the uncomfortable issue of economic growth. But this is to shirk a crucial responsibility. Less developed countries experiencing rapid growth are looking to the United States for leadership, but finding only hypocrisy.

DiCaprio tells a story that pins humanity’s hopes on cheaper, high tech renewable technologies, alongside political will. In a speech to the UN General Assembly, he pleads:

No more talk, no more excuses, no more ten-year studies. This is the body that can do what is needed, all of you sitting in this very hall. The world is now watching. You will either be lauded by future generations or vilified by them.

I wonder whether we have mistaken our wishes for reality – that we can just will an energy revolution into being without making any hard choices. Why else do we defend a system where multinational corporations’ right to profit comes before our health, livelihoods and environment?

Before the Flood offers us a choice between planetary destruction and the promised green tech revolution. But it doesn’t tell us about the third option: radical system change. Its advocates are vocal, but repressed. I, for one, am convinced that the scientific community must now rally to their cause.

Jason von Meding receives funding from the Australian Government.

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These stunning aerial photos capture the extraordinary colours and painterly flows of Kati Thanda – aka Lake Eyre – in central Australia. The images by Adam Williams, Luke Austin, Ignacio Palacios and Paul Hoelen of the Light Collective depict a remote and pristine landscape few will ever see. They were taken for a new book and exhibition, which opens on Thursday at the Depot Gallery in Sydney

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Coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish are helped by nutrient runoff. Crown of thorns image from www.shutterstock.com

The most recent report card on the Great Barrier Reef’s water quality highlighted major changes that need to be made to meet targets by 2018. Sediment and pollutant runoff from land use have increased 2-3 fold since 1850, largely driven by agricultural land clearing and grazing, while fertiliser used in sugar cane farming contributes to nitrogen runoff.

Runoff increases coral’s sensitivity to bleaching and disease, shifts the balance between coral and algae, leads to a build-up of pollutants in marine species that are long-lived or high in the food web, and increases the chances of crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks.

Improving water quality will likely increase the health of reef organisms, and help reefs to bounce back from disturbances.

Government investment plans need to account properly for the total estimated value of the Great Barrier Reef and past progress in reducing runoff. An estimated A$500 million per year is needed to improve management action.

So what’s the best way to meet these targets? You won’t be surprised to find that scientists are working on the answer. But innovative projects fusing art and science are also appearing in north Queensland.

The problem of collective action

Like many environmental issues, runoff on the Great Barrier Reef is a classic example of a collective action problem. Collective action is at the heart of this issue in two ways.

First, the alongshore transport of sediment and runoff pollutants by currents means that the effects of managing runoff along one section of coastline may be felt elsewhere. The condition of the reef adjacent to a particular river mouth may not, therefore, necessarily reflect the land management within that river’s catchment.

Second, the health of the reef is dependent on other factors, such as bleaching driven by increased sea surface temperatures related to climate change. These are caused by many geographically remote activities (for instance, someone burning coal in London).

Collective action problems can be understood through US academic Garret Hardin’s famous “tragedy of the commons” theory. This theory states that self-interested individuals acting rationally may not behave in the best interests of the whole group.

Hardin used the example of a group of herdsmen allowing their cattle to graze a pasture that is running out of fodder. For an individual herdsman, the cost of removing cattle exceeds the benefit of leaving some pasture for the future, unless other herdsmen also agree to remove cattle.

Similarly, it takes an exceptional individual to reduce their runoff impacts, in light of the agricultural benefits to be gained from activities that increase runoff volume and decrease its quality (such as land clearing and use of fertilizers). This is particularly the case when others are not acting to abate their own activities.

Many farmers say that the Reef 2050 target to reduce runoff by 80% by 2025 is not economically viable. But without acting now, our metaphorical common (the inshore Great Barrier Reef) will continue to degrade.

Best environmental practice

Agriculture is a social and cultural activity, just as much as it is a process of environmental engineering, and the push to transform farming practices needs to recognise this. Top down incentive schemes do have some impact, but could there be a better way?

For instance, for sugar cane growers, the Smartcane Best Management Practice (BMP) Guidelines are an attempt by the industry to shift farming practices towards compliance with government directives to reduce run-off impacts on the reef.

The Smartcane BMP guidelines aim to improve farming practices through seven principles:

1. Soil health and plant nutrition management

2. Pest, disease and weed management

3. Drainage and irrigation management

4. Crop production and harvest management

5. Natural systems management

6. Farm business management

7. Workplace health and safety management

As with many corporate social responsibility initiatives, growers who volunteer for Smartcane BMP are required to assess their current practices and set benchmarks for improvement in order to receive accreditation that indicates good environmental practice. There are clear marketing and, in many cases, cost-cutting benefits that motivate farmers to participate.

This has driven some examples of good practice within the farming community. However, as the 2015 report card shows, “only 23% of sugarcane land was managed using best management practice systems”, which is inadequate for achieving the Reef 2050 goal of an 80% reduction in dissolved nitrogen loads from agricultural runoff by 2025.

Motivating farmers

One project which engages with this problem is Sugar vs the Reef? by artists Lucas Ihlein, Kim Williams and Ian Milliss. This project is based on the idea that there is a greater chance of influencing farming practices if the desire to improve environmental performance comes from within the farming community. Innovation is celebrated from below by staging public collaborative events to generate dialogue about agriculture’s complex social and environmental interactions.

Innovative Mackay farmers Simon Mattsson and Allan Maclean in a dual crop of sugar cane and sunflowers. The sunflowers shade out weeds, break the sugarcane monocrop by diversifying soil biology, and attract a lot of attention, triggering public discussions about the crucial role of soil health in reducing runoff to the Great Barrier Reef. Photo by Lucas Ihlein

For example, over the next two years, the project will coordinate a collaboration between Mackay Botanical Gardens, sugar cane farmers and community members to plant a dual crop of sunflowers and sugar cane as a highly visible work of “land art”.

This crop - whose cycle of planting, growth and harvesting will exceed the minimum standards of BMP - will stretch over four hectares near the centre of Mackay. Over two years, the project will engage sugarcane farmers, artists, high school students, members of the Australian South Sea Islander community, the Greater Whitsunday Food Network, soil and reef scientists, as well as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

While it is easy to point the finger at agricultural practices as a major cause of poor water quality in the inner waters of the Great Barrier Reef, change will be slow until the complex social factors that shape modern farming are recognised. This requires deeper engagement with the varied cultures of farming.

Sarah Hamylton is a council member of The Australian Coral Reef Society

Lucas Ihlein receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for his DECRA project "Sugar vs The Reef?: Socially-engaged art and urgent environmental problems."

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