MOVING MOUNTAINS climate stripes

The Climate Stripes illustrate the global average temperature for every year since 1850 until 2018 in the form of a coloured stripe. Shades of blue represent cooler years and red, warmer years. The overall effect is a striking trend toward hotter temperatures in recent decades, reflecting the compounding effect of using fossil fuels. The biggest threat to climate stability is burning fossil fuels as this contributes to more greenhouse gases and a warming planet – it is essential to keep them unburnt and in the ground.

This graphic is simple and bright, but it’s based on solid science and carries a serious message. The Climate Stripes translate complex data into an easily accessible format that transcends language and needs almost no context to explain it.

The creator is University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins, who made his graphic accessible to the public for any use, and it was downloaded a million times in its first week!

the Climate Stripes Float

Our float entry into the annual Boonah Christmas Festival Parade was so original and bright that we were sure that we would win! The 2019 parade theme was ‘Over a Century buying Local built our Town’, and floats were encouraged to display a ‘Buy Local’ motto. The intent of our entry was to connect with locals, and be the winning float featured on the front page of local newspapers and on social media to reach the wider Scenic Rim business community.

At the time, the Business 4 Climate Action (B4CA) sub-group was just beginning. The parade was just a month after the formation of B4CA in response to the devastating Black Summer bushfires, where Binna Burra Lodge burnt to the ground. The knowledge that future business will have to adapt to a climate change future is reflected in the ‘not business as usual’ tag.

B4CA was conducting town by town business breakfasts for Scenic Rim business owners to educate them about climate change; how to transition away from coal and gas towards a more sustainable business future; and move towards declaring a climate emergency in the Scenic Rim.

More than ten local businesses declared climate emergencies, and B4CA made a formal deputation to Scenic Rim Regional Council in November of 2019, setting out the urgent need for council to declare a climate emergency.

The float was a photographic delight, painted in the ‘climate stripes’ colours. The message was to shop, eat, protect, respect and buy local. Seven local business leaders walked with the float, wearing aprons and colourful helmets decorated with fans representing the gradual warming of the planet. B4CA bookmarks were given away to the crowd. As we were merged into the parade from Church Street behind the Clydesdale float, we were warned by the marshal not to make any trouble or loud noise as we would spook the horses and we would be ejected from the parade. The feeling of being branded as troublemaker activists was familiar. We didn’t win.

The float was later installed at Mt Barney Lodge as part of the month-long 
‘Summer Silhouette Sculptures’ - a recovery from bushfire event. There it enjoyed photographic attention from the guests onsite for another year.