Jim Rolon

Climate Change Portraits is a personal project about the climate movement and our fragile Earth.

I have been photographing environmentalists, advocates of sustainability, people affected by the fossil fuel industry and climate change activists since February 2016 in a series. Each portrait subject has been asked to provide me with a statement or quote that sums up what they are thinking about in their sphere of expertise.

All the portraits are produced in black & white and are presented as squares. The provided quote is also presented as an adjacent square and provides context to the image. These pieces have been posted as banners on social media. 

As I have been executing this series the story being told to me, about global warming and rapid sea rise, is worse than most inhabitants of the developed world, or for that matter the globe, care to know about. Here are some of the portraits. 

Robyn Williams:

I broadcast Science Show No.1 in August 1975 and it contained a remarkable statement from Lord Ritchie Calder a British Energy expert. He told me that they were extremely worried about the vast volumes of waste gases from burned fossil fuels being poured into the atmosphere. He said there was a real danger of catastrophic effects on weather systems – and then he added “we’ve been warning people about this danger since 1963 and here we are in 1975 and STILL nothing has been done!”

And here we are 41 years later.

Dr Elizabeth Farrelly:

Many people consider me forthright, provocative and (worst of all) brave. That’s not how I feel. I’ve always felt stamped with a yearning for truth and beauty, from which I think justice, the third principle, flows. I think we’re born to love these things.

So when – as with climate change – we willfully and collectively destroy them, it strikes me as a spiritual malaise. We are, all of us, constantly torn between our primate self and our angel self. I believe we’ll need to address climate change at the level of spirit that finds some access to our angel selves, or face catastrophe.

Simon Letch:

Twenty five years ago I dated a woman who had one take-away container, she reused it for all he take-away meals. It made me realise I wasn't thinking. I've always enjoyed repairing, reinventing and reusing things; it came from my Grandfather through to my Mother and I'm passing it to my daughter. Relating value to objects is part of the answer to consumption.

Doug Burnett:

Our family have farmed on this property for over 100 years. We now face our biggest challenge yet, with a thermal coal mine set to cut our farm in half, destroying productive farm land and threatening our livelihood like never before.

The sick irony for me surrounding the energy crisis, is that our farm is about to be destroyed by a thermal coal mine and our power bills will keep on rising!

Do we really need more coal mines? I don’t think many Australians think we do; yet after 105 years it looks as though I’ll be the last of our family to farm this land. If the coal miner’s flagship project is granted approval, our family farm will never be the same again. 

In an age of such heightened awareness of the environmental impacts by fossil fuels it seems crazy that this could actually occur. 

Unfortunately, it is all too common in this part of Queensland.

Dr. Charles Massy:

As we confront the Anthropocene epoch we need to recognise that we co-evolved on this Earth. The overwhelming issue, therefore, is about managing ourselves; about being able to change and transform; about truly coming to ‘know ourselves’ so that we can regenerate our sustaining Earth.

Chris Darwin:

I believe that most of our global problems will simply disappear, when enough of us love ourselves, others and our planet.

Marshall Glickman:

I published an environmental journal for 15 years and have tried to take the environment into consideration in the way that I live. But in the big picture, my personal actions feel more like gestures than being truly meaningful. It’s hard not to feel despair about global warming—which, in part, probably accounts for why it isn’t discussed more. Naturally, though, there are many and much more powerful forces at work than guilt and sadness: the most obvious is that extractive conglomerates are much more attached to profits than to the earth’s health—and those companies have spent considerable fortunes spreading disinformation about the issue to sow political gridlock. It is hard to be optimistic.

Kate Marshall:

I recently saw the most moving film, 10 years in the making, called The Ancient Woods. It made me think about all the woods of my childhood, all the animals, trees and forests I’ve ever read about in books and seen in documentaries. If I didn’t realise it then when I was a child, when I took so much for granted, I know now that if we are to have anything left of this creation we call Earth we need to do more than admire nature. We need to act, and act fast, to save what’s left. That is my profound hope, that we can save what’s left and our children can regenerate it. Hope springs eternal, and that is why I believe we can do this.