Interview: Emergency Weather Author Tim Jones

Emergency Weather is Tim Jones’ debut novel, his previous literary outings have included releasing several acclaimed poetry collections and editing award -winning science fiction short story collections.

Emergency Weather is a powerful, prescient and compelling climate change thriller set in Aotearoa, and more precisely the Wellington region. The novel focusses on three very different people who have to face the climate crisis head-on, when a giant storm builds and then hits our capital city.

Tim Jones. Photo Copyright: Ebony Lamb.

Wellingtonian Tim Jones was awarded the NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010. He co-edited Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, which won the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collected Work. His recent books include poetry collection New Sea Land (Mākaro Press, 2016) and climate fiction novella Where We Land (The Cuba Press, 2019). He is also a climate change activist.

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Everyday Sustainability: Recent picks

What can we do to help fight climate change? It’s a very daunting question for anybody! We may not be able to solve it overnight, but by making small changes in our day-to-day life and being aware of what’s going on in the world, we can feel less overwhelmed. These new books cover a variety of climate actions from cooking sustainably or making your own clothes to learning from the Dalai Lama and Greta Thornberg.

A good appetite : eating for planet, body and soul / Chandler, Jenny
“A Good Appetite is packed with practical information and recipes for making the way you shop and cook more planet-friendly. There are brilliant bite-sized guides to everything from eating with the seasons, batch cooking and the best ways to use your freezer to foraging and growing some of your own food. By avoiding food waste and stretching expensive ingredients, there’s a payoff for your pocket too.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Great stories of New Zealand conservation / Froggatt, Alan
“New Zealand has an extraordinary range of plants and animals, yet a great many species are trending towards extinction. Great Stories of New Zealand Conservation tells 50 inspiring and thought provoking stories, covering all matter of conservation and ecological projects from right across the motu. Some of the projects have been driven by national organisations, such as saving the kakapo and the yellow eyed penguin.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

A future we can love : how we can reverse the climate crisis with the power of our hearts & minds / Bauer-Wu, Susan | Also available as an eBook
“Filled with the Dalai Lama’s hard-earned wisdom, Greta Thunberg’s piercing focus, and dozens of accessible practices of climate activism and personal resilience, this book offers a path not just out of inaction but toward a future we can love.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

 

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Strange Weather: Recent climate books

We have a huge number of books on environment and climate in our collection, and new titles are being published at an astounding rate as the science develops and as the reality of climate change sets in. It can be tempting to pass over these books, especially for those of us already experiencing climate grief or anxiety – the content is confronting and frankly scary. But the authors below are not here to bog us down in hopelessness. The facts they present are undeniable and their writing is urgent, but what they are offering us is a deeper understanding, showing how we might face our fears and channel our actions, and reminding us of the other paths that we – as individuals, as communities, as countries – can take.

There are all sorts here: poets and weather experts, gardeners and journalists, and between them all they cover a vast swathe of topics. If you want to understand the nitty-gritty science, then Under the Weather and Heat are the ones for you. To focus in on particular case studies, check out Fire Weather and Wasteland. For practical advice, Milkwood from Tasmanian-based permaculture experts looks fantastic, while Re-Food offers a road forward grounded in the Aotearoa context. Lastly, the philosophically-minded will enjoy the poetic Soil or the determined essays in Not Too Late. 

Under the weather : a future forecast for New Zealand / Renwick, J. A.
“A warmer world will change more than just our weather patterns. It will change the look of the land around us, what grows and lives on it – including us. Drawing on climate models that can travel to ice ages and hothouses of the deep past, Professor James Renwick untangles how we know exactly what the future holds and why it matters to our everyday lives. He looks at New Zealand’s more frequent natural disasters, warming and rising sea levels, and the ways that the changing weather will affect our agriculture, lifestyle, food security and economy. Arresting, galvanizing and clear-sighted, Under the Weather is a picture of a miraculous planet in danger, a stock-take on what it means for this small country, and a reminder that the shape of our future is up to us.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Re-food : exploring the troubled food system of Aotearoa New Zealand / King, Emily
“In “Re-food”, Emily King advocates for a food systems approach to help the troubled food networks of Aotearoa New Zealand. She looks at the best ways forward to address challenges we face with soils, waterways, climate change, food waste, packaging, unhealthy diets, and a lack of access to food. Written in three parts, “Re-food” traverses the full food system and unpacks its issues along the way while providing timely and relevant ideas and inspiration for readers to solve these problems themselves. It offers tools, insights and mindset changes that chart a path towards a healthier, more sustainable food future, one which incorporates Te Ao Maori and our strengths as a top-quality food-producing nation.” (Catalogue)

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Vanishing Ice: Our interview with author Lynley Hargreaves

Lynley Hargreaves is a science writer who lives with her glaciologist partner and two children at Te Tai Poutini on the West Coast of the South Island.

After gaining a mathematical physics degree and working for a United States physics magazine, she completed a journalism diploma. She now works in communications at Forest & Bird.  Lynley has spent much of her life exploring New Zealand’s mountains. Her debut book  Vanishing Ice: Stories of New Zealand’s Glaciers took many years to research and write .

Vanishing Ice brings into sharp relief the dangers our glaciers face as the  world warms and our glaciers  disappear at an unprecedented rate.

As Vanishing Ice reveals this unfolding disaster, it tells the stories of our glaciers through the lens of human interaction, the book carefully moves through time from first Māori discoverers to colonial explorers, mountaineers, and modern glaciologists. To do so the book investigates the way science, nature and culture interact and sometimes collide.

As well as being an important work, the volume is also very beautiful; containing numerous stunning photographs of our glacial landscapes.

Vanishing Ice joins an ever-growing canon of important and poignant modern books about Aotearoa’s natural world.

We wish to extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Lynley for taking the time to answer our questions, and for providing such an illuminating insight into her world and work.

This interview was done in conjunction with Caffeine and Aspirin, the arts and entertainment review show on Radioactive FM and was conducted by Tanya Ashcroft.

 

Vanishing Ice : Stories of New Zealand’s glaciers / Hargreaves, Lynley
Vanishing Ice brings into sharp relief the dangers our glaciers face as the  world warms and our glaciers  disappear at an unprecedented rate. As the book reveals this unfolding disaster,  it  tells the stories of our glaciers through the lens of human interaction, the book carefully moves through time  from first Māori discoverers to colonial explorers, mountaineers, and modern glaciologists. To do so  the book investigates the way science, nature  and culture interact and sometimes collide.” ( Adapted from Catalogue)

 

Cop26: The UN Climate Change Conference

In just under two weeks, 30,000 people from across the globe will descend on Glasgow for a meeting that’s been called “the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control.” But what exactly is it?

What is Cop26?

Cop26 is the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, with 197 countries coming together to work out how to tackle the climate emergency. These meetings have been happening every year since 1995, with the most well known being the 2015 Cop21 in Paris, which resulted in the landmark Paris Agreement.

Why is the Paris Agreement important?

The key to the Paris Agreement is the commitment to keep global warming below an average of 2C, with efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5C. To reach this goal, each country has decided on its own target of greenhouse gas reduction, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Countries are required to update their NDCs every five years, which is one of the reasons this year’s conference is so significant.

What should I look out for?

The biggest questions at Cop26 will probably revolve around updated NDCs–how much more greenhouse gas reduction will countries commit to? However there are a lot of other vital areas of discussion, including international funding to help developing countries reduce their carbon emissions.

The New Zealand delegation to Cop26 will have several areas of focus, but two to watch out for are the amplification of Pacific voices and also discussions around methane.

How do I find out more?

Cop26 will be covered by news outlets around the world, although the only New Zealand journalist going to the conference in person is business and climate reporter Rod Oram. The official Cop26 website is available here and the action can also be followed via Twitter.

Books:


This changes everything : capitalism vs. the climate / Klein, Naomi
“In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

All we can save : truth, courage, and solutions for the climate crisis
“Women are on the front line of the climate-change battle, and are uniquely situated to be agents of change. Today, across the world, from boardrooms and policy positions to local communities, from science to activism, women everywhere are using their voices to take leadership and call for action on climate change. This anthology is a collection and celebration of these diverse voices, asking critical questions and providing invaluable insight and solutions.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Drawdown : the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming
“In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here–some are well known; some you may have never heard of.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

The uninhabitable Earth : life after warming / Wallace-Wells, David
“It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Doughnut economics : seven ways to think like a 21st century economist / Raworth, Kate
“Kate Raworth sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.” (Catalogue)

Braiding sweetgrass : indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants / Kimmerer, Robin Wall
“As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Adapted from Catalogue)

The new climate war : the fight to take back our planet / Mann, Michael E.
“Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the tactics that we’ve been told can slow climate change. But most of these recommendations are a result of a multi-pronged marketing campaign that has succeeded in placing the responsibility for fixing climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals. Fossil fuel companies have followed the example of other industries deflecting blame or greenwashing.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Library Databases:

NZ Geographic: NZ Geographic has been celebrating our people, places, wildlife and environment for two decades. Its archives hold more than 600 in-depth features about our country, natural history and culture.

Gale Environmental Studies in Context: The Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources focuses on the physical, social, and economic aspects of environmental issues.

LinkedIn Learning: LinkedIn Learning is a video tutorial service providing access to over 12,000 instructional videos on many topics, including several aspects of the climate emergency.

Stories Below Sea Level: Climate Authors in Aotearoa

men say that one day
that lagoon will devour you”

dear matafele peinam, by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

Up until surprisingly recently, climate change was a neglected topic in the world of fiction. Environmentalist Bill McKibben addressed this in his 2006 essay What the Warming World Needs Now is Art, Sweet Art, pointing out the lack of impact climate change had had on fiction and art compared to previous societal challenges.

However over the last few years things have changed: books focussing on the climate emergency are being published faster than ever, including in New Zealand. Authors have taken up McKibben’s challenge to use fiction to examine the changing world around us, to spur us into action. This undertaking has extended to organisations such as Track Zero and Verb Wellington, both of which have promoted the transformational power of literature.

Yet despite climate change’s more prominent role in local fiction, another question stands out: exactly whose climate stories are being published–and whose aren’t? As Lani Wendt Young recently pointed out, in 2015 only one percent of fiction published in New Zealand was written by Pasifika writers, and only four percent by Māori. And yet Māori and Pasifika communities are disproportionately affected by climate change.

Over the next few weeks Wellington City Libraries will be releasing a series of interviews with publishers, editors and authors whose work has addressed the climate emergency in Aotearoa and the Pacific. Their work spans different genres, languages and formats, but all of them tackle climate change and its complexities. To get things started we’ve got a booklist of local climate fiction and non-fiction for you to browse–and if there’s an author or work you’d like to see included, please let us know!


Where we land / Jones, Tim
“A New Zealand Navy frigate torpedoes a boat full of refugees fleeing a drowning country and Nasimul Rahman is one of the few survivors. First he has to reach the shore alive and then he has to avoid the trigger-happy Shore Patrol, on alert to stop climate change refugees entering the country. Donna is new to the Patrol. When word comes through that the Navy has sunk a ship full of infiltrators and survivors might be making their way ashore, it sounds like she might be put to the test.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Melt / Murray, Jeff
“This novel is an urgent, crushing observation of adaptation and exclusion amidst preparation to settle Antarctica as climate destruction starts to bite. New Zealand in 2048, gateway to the melting continent, is thrust into the centre of the climate crises. Vai Shuster, the Advocate of a tiny, broken island, must find a place for her community in a world that’s not sure it needs the poor.” (Catalogue)

So many islands : stories from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific Oceans
“Giving voice to challenges and triumphs, these writers paint a vibrant portrait of what it is like to live, love and lose the things most precious to them on the small islands they call home. Voicing global issues such as climate change and nuclear testing in the Pacific – a fight close to the heart of these precariously poised islands – to petty politics and the gaps between generations, readers will find universal connections with these worlds and words.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

High water
“Eleven of New Zealand’s best cartoonists take a speculative stab at the looming threat of climate change in this thoughtful, provoking and sometimes hilarious collection. With tales ranging from washed-up celebrity polar bears, to giant post-apocalyptic crabs, High Water takes the reader on a thrilling romp through one of the most important issues of our time. Contributors include Dylan Horrocks, Sarah Laing, Chris Slane and many others.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Sea change : climate politics and New Zealand / Hayward, Bronwyn
“The scientific consensus is clear: our climate is changing and action is needed urgently. Yet at the same time, it can seem that the solutions needed are too large and the problem too insurmountable. Bronwyn Hayward is an international expert on sustainability, youth politics and democracy. In Sea Change: Climate Politics and New Zealand she lays out what New Zealand and New Zealanders could do to keep the average global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Ruby and the blue sky / Dewar, Katherine
“Grammy night: Ruby wins ‘Best Song’ and makes an impulsive acceptance speech that excites nature lovers across the world. While Ruby and her band celebrate, an extreme evangelical sect, funded by covert paymasters, dispatches a disciple on a ruthless mission to England. As the band plays its sold-out tour, Ruby is pursued by eco-groupies insisting she use her new fame to fight climate change. Back home, Ruby must confront a challenge not even tea, beer or her mum’s veggie lasagne will make go away…” (Catalogue)

Star sailors / McNaughton, James
“In the not too distant future, the effects of climate change devastate the world and New Zealand becomes a haven for elites. When a young couple from the wrong side of the tracks gain entry into Wellington’s most exclusive gated community, it appears their troubles are over. But they find themselves divided over the identity of Sam Starsailor, an alien prophet who has washed up on a beach near New Hokitika and is said to bring warnings from another planet.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Towards a warmer world : what climate change will mean for New Zealand’s future / Meduna, Veronika
“The year 2014 was the hottest on record since we’ve begun collecting global temperature measurements in 1880. As new thresholds are breached, acclaimed RNZ science writer Veronika Meduna explores our future in a warmer world. Beginning with lessons from our ancient geological past, this BWB Text draws on current observations and increasingly sophisticated climate models to describe possible end-of-century scenarios for New Zealand.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Mistory : a novel / Temple, Philip
“Following Annie’s strange death, her partner is forced to think about what he has allowed to happen to his life, his community and his country. His diary, kept during the year of The Change, reveals how the example Annie left him, and the mission of his young sister Sophie, drive him to escape the life of a bureaucratic cipher and work with the Movement in its fight to bring back a free and fair way of life.” (Adapted from Catalogue)