Climate change isn’t taking a break
Even though we are in the midst of every freaking thing, designers will make the difference
Dear Designer,
I’m taking a break from writing about design and AI this week because, well, there are equally important things to discuss than the slow burn of our existing careers and the glib divinations of our technology overlords.
For instance, there is this thing called climate change.
And I think it’s important not to just talk about the climate crisis but to talk about how and why we designers are not talking about the climate crisis.
Yes, we are facing a massive transition to AI-driven design and content creation. Yes, agencies like the one I am helping to lead are likely going to feel the brunt most fully in the next few years, as the three most core endeavours of agency work — design, writing and coding — will be transmogrified by the systemization of visual production, the emergence of not just good but excellent copywriting, and the creative mechanization of development tools for coders. And, yes, as I have written previously, independent designers are well positioned to move into better or adjacent positions when the time comes.
The conversation around AI and the slowing economy, while extremely important, is also, yet again, another distraction — not unlike what the fossil fuel industry has been foisting upon us over the past 50 years.
Truly, the timing of global authoritarian impulses and the rise of AI couldn’t be worse for climate communications and addressing the crisis that is underfoot.
Wait wait, why is climate important again?
There are so many reasons. Among them, climate change will:
Herald the spread of more infectious diseases around the world.
Create more extreme weather events like forest fires, floods and storms.
Accelerate the mass loss of thousands of species. Polar bears included.
Change agriculture patterns, changing how food is grown.
Produce heat waves, pollution and smog, increasing respiratory illnesses.
Potentially derail a future where AI abundance can actually help all of us.
So, how has the climate crisis been brushed under the bed by us designers, developers and communications folks?
First, there is a fever chill around truth-telling in North America. The oligarchs that assumed power are rolling the snowball down the hill and it’s picking up speed and volume every month. Policies from the previous administration — and in fact, the great climate bill that was passed by Congress a few years ago — is being dismantled or pushed aside.
Scientists are losing funding to continue their research around weather patterning, green energy, and urban conservation. Social justice and community initiatives related to climate are being shelved. Projects in academia related to climate, including studies of climate migration, agriculture, and water security, are being reduced or eliminated.
The chill is real. Just talking about it can put one’s federally-funded work in the U.S. in jeopardy.
Here is the current White House on protecting us from green energy:
My Administration is committed to unleashing American energy, especially through the removal of all illegitimate impediments to the identification, development, siting, production, investment in, or use of domestic energy resources — particularly oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, geothermal, biofuel, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.
In Canada, climate is technically on the present government’s agenda but provinces are more excited about new pipelines, jobs, and money than adaptation and migration initiatives. The Liberals’ on this subject:
From the mining of minerals and metals, to harnessing clean energy, fueling oil and gas production, harvesting forests sustainably, and advancing aquaculture, the workers and businesses in these sectors are the backbone of our economy.
Second, in addition to the chilling effect from governments and the fossil fuel industry, we are now encountering complexity on an order that was unseen just a few years ago.
Again, it’s not just corporations and governments changing the language of the game — it is an acceleration of age-old industries that are newly converging under the sign of market capitalization. This includes the interpenetration of technology, education, politics and culture in ways in which new meaning cannot be made fast enough for us to understand, let alone communicate, its effects.
In other words, we are part of an ever faster moving ship, driving us to who-knows-where.
The disorientation you are feeling, that head-spinning momentum of our collective capture, is real.
But we designers have it figured out, right?
Designers, like most ordinary folks who want to see the world improved during their watch, require consistency, regularity, and stability in order to embark upon concerted changes that require concrete and communal effort.
As information becomes more widely unverifiable, as knowledge becomes increasingly commodified and confounded within private AI platforms, as expertise moves from a valued composite of earned knowledge and dedicated service, we are beginning to live in a rarified ideational environment in which everything is everywhere all at once.
Designers, as rational actors, are having a difficult time professionally conversing because the public conversation itself is becoming either too complicated or irrational. Even mainstream liberal media are not addressing climate and the number of folks searching for these terms has decreased.
Finally, designers are not talking about climate change because we don’t have the communities of interest required to embody and advance those conversations.
I am a new and proud board member of the RGD (a Canadian association of graphic designers) and I am honoured to serve in that role; and yet, climate is rarely a topic of conversation of late. The AIGA, its larger American counterpart, barely scratches the surface, with the last online communique about climate occurring in 2021. On the AIGA’s online journal called Eye on Design, here are the core featured topics:
Zero mention of climate, environment or sustainability.
Why does climate change matter for designers anyway?
But also, who cares? Why are we even talking about climate change? We are facing technological and economic upheaval — shouldn’t we designers let climate activists deal with climate change?
There are three very practical reasons that climate matters to us, or should.
First, designers — as the artists of the everyday — have outsized influence on what we make, buy, trade, own, collect, eat, and communicate. We have untold and unsung impact on consumerism, public safety, media and information sharing. We are the first responders when it comes to making ideas public — for and by our employers, our communities and ourselves.
Second, designers — as motivators, marketers and communicators — have outsized capacity to change the way we work. We do have power. Most of us are young and advantaged by education, access to information, and the capacity to share our stories. Many of us are independent, motivated by social progress, and find ourselves connected to narrative and making things plain.
Finally, wherever there is a dearth of truth-telling and conversation, there is opportunity. The climate crisis is, unfortunately, an entity manufactured by the great powers of modernity — national governments, fossil fuel industries and public complacence. But there are also ground-level actions that you can do to make a difference now, to distinguish yourself, to advance your career, to add to the conversation, and to support a cleaner future.
How can our design consciousness extend to climate? And what can we do to focus on climate conversations? That’s for next week.
Please let me know your thoughts about climate in the comments below?
Yours,
Image of the week
Last week, firefighters were putting out horrendous forest fires across Canada. Their equipment has not changed tremendously in a few hundred years. Before the shell shaped helmets of today, individual fire fighters would paint their own hats using all kinds of religious, allegorical and unique fire company iconography. Here we have a fire hat from the early 1800s with a hand-painted “eye of providence” — an all-seeing eye that is truly “vigilant” (and a tiny bit scary). Here the word refers to the Vigilant Fire Company in Philadelphia. It doesn’t look like much in the way of protection but I am sure that any old hat offers some defence to brave folks who rush into buildings.
Quote of the week
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
~ Jane Goodall
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