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David Finnigan discusses humankind's reaction to the climate crisis

As an artist, the Scenes from the Climate Era author believes nothing like this has ever happened to humankind before.

Video transcript

- Do you see an article about climate change and want to read it?

DAVID FINNIGAN: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. And this is my-- OK. So obviously-- I'm obviously I'm a broken human being. But I just find this stuff so fascinating. You know, I've got no intention of trying to-- I'm not an activist I'm not trying to, you know, demand a certain change or kind of push for a particular political outcome. That's sort of my private life.

But as an artist, I'm just so-- it's just extraordinary, like, this moment in history that we're existing in. Like, nothing like this has ever happened on the Earth before. And we're alive during it, and we're aware that it's happening. And we can be part of it, and we can be kind of part of the solution as much as part of the problem. Like, it's just so strange and weird, the [MUTED] that's happening in the world right now.

The biosphere is kind of unraveling and transforming around us. And society is sort of trying to catch up. Our whole world is changing. Like, I can't-- I-- the feeling that-- I have all of the feelings, like, all the kind of classic feelings, all the dread and the fear and the guilt and the anger about all of the horrible aspects of it. But it's also just-- it's just fascinating as well. I just find myself so curious about it. I kind of want to know how it turns out.

- So you're more interested than in how people are reacting to climate change as an artist.

DAVID FINNIGAN: I think it is-- I think that's maybe the space that I found myself in, yeah, that we're all going through this huge experience. And we're all kind of undergoing our own sort of emotional journey in relation to climate. We're all kind of traveling through this experience. And we're all at different stages on that journey, and there's no end to that process. And so every one of us is kind of at our own emotional point on that journey and particularly in theater, because you bring together, like, 100, 200 people in a room.

And you've got 100 different emotional responses to the same material. So I find that fascinating. I find the fact that, you know, you can show one show to a group of people, and some people will be like, that made me feel absolute despair. Some people are like, I feel really hopeful and inspired. Some people are like, I just feel angry. Yeah, you can't actually-- you can't create a particular feeling in an audience because we're just talking about the world. So how people feel about the world, you know, isn't up to us as artists. But it is extraordinary to see it, and theater lets you see it live in front of you.