How the Beast from the East crumbled our project about climate change

Climate change has over the last couple of years grown to be a major concern for me, but I had never made a project about it...

So I headed to Wales to create some compositions in nature, I wanted to portray the effect of our beloved metropolitan lifestyle that we are utterly addicted to, on the health of our planet. We brainstormed and brainstormed until we were happy with a forward looking, poetic concept. Then came shooting day and everything fell apart, we were defeated by the Beast from the East. Temperatures in Wales on the last day of February were abnormally low, -10°C on top of Pen Y Fan and the wind, coupled with the snow it was blowing into our faces, was tormenting. Our concept was impossible to execute in this condition. However on the way down the mountain we started thinking about it and realised that the irony of this was quite beautiful. We set out to make a project about climate change and were unable to do so because of the abnormally extreme weather for this part of the year and this part of the world. The average temperatures for that part of Wales have historically been 15°C to 20°C higher than what they were now and many scientists believe that this weeks storms were another example of more irregular and extreme weather patterns which are caused by climate change.

The irony of our plans being rendered impossible because of the weather was however not the only thing that dawned on us as we walked down the mountain. It also made us recognise how in many ways, we as humans are quite insignificant on this planet. For days now the UK news has blasted nothing but panic about the weather, which to be frank, was not that severe. But it goes to show how fragile we as humans are to the will of nature. It also made us realise that whatever we do or don't do about climate change is kind of irrelevant if our motivation is to "save the planet", because it's really only the people who are in trouble, the planet will be fine, the planet will heal, it's the people who should be afraid of their cushy consumerist lifestyles being quite literally stormed off the rails. Whatever you make of the pretty unusual weather caused by The Beast from the East and storm Emma, one things for sure, the people cried about it like babies looking for their mummy in a supermarket. If this is all it takes to bring an entire country to a halt then we should be very worried indeed for what is still to come.