Reflecting on: Imagining a future just transition in Aberdeen
6 November 2024: Writers, poets and activists gathered at Aberdeen Maritime Museum to imagine compelling stories for a future without fossil fuels.
This Green Tease was organised in collaboration with Paperboats, a collective of writers focused on nature and environment in a time of climate and ecological breakdown. Writers from a range of genres – poetry, creative non-fiction, fiction and journalism – connected with those working in communities or campaigning for climate justice to create compelling stories for a future without fossil fuels.
There were three overarching questions framing the workshop:
- What does hope mean to us and our communities?
- Who controls the narrative of hope?
- How can we stay hopeful in the climate crisis?
Hope is a thing with flippers
After having an opportunity to explore Aberdeen Maritime Museum, the workshop kicked off with a performance of ‘Hope is a thing with flippers’ from poet, environmental writer and campaigner Matt Sowerby. The piece wove together the story of Hope, a blue whale whose skeleton is displayed in Hintze Hall in the Natural History Museum, London. The central hall was renamed Hintze Hall after a £5 million donation to the Natural History Museum by Michael Hintze. Hintze is a key funder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK-based climate denial think-tank. Matt’s performance cleverly explores the role of activism in challenging the fossil fuel narrative that dominates our cultural institutions through corporate and private sponsorship.
A further three performances by other activists and community organisers related to aspects of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative – a campaign to end the expansion of new coal, oil and gas projects and manage a global transition away from fossil fuels. At the heart of the initiative is a commitment to a just transition, which means equitably transitioning away from fossil fuels in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating safe work opportunities and leaving no country or community behind.
Local activism
Chris Aldred and Orla Shorthall are both members of Friends of St Fittick’s Park, a local group campaigning to save the only green space accessible without public transport or a car in Torry, Aberdeen. St Fittick’s park is under threat from the new ‘Energy Transition Zone’ (ETZ), which plans to transform green belt land into an industrial complex designed to attract renewable energy businesses to the area.
Chris read a poem originally written for a public hearing on the development, which describes the thriving biodiversity of St Fittick’s Park.
‘The ETZ spokesperson they asked of me
Oh where is the profit in your patch of green?
I answered them back with a tear in my eye
Oh where is the hope in your profit?
There have always been flowers since the start of the year
Marsh marigold sparkling through grey winter showers
Gold in March sunshine, white blossom in May
Will anything flower under concrete?
The blue tit, the robin, the heron’s weird cry
The chaffinches, greenfinch and bullfinch fly by
Pigeons and magpies, moorhens and ducks
Will anything fly past your concrete?
Fruit from wild cherries and red rowan trees
Brambles and berries, hazelnuts green
The fruits of investment are nothing to these
Your profits sour fruit of the concrete
Generations from Torry have looked out to sea
From the graves in the kirkyard no waves can be seen
Heritage lost and the money moves on
Will our ghosts have to walk on the concrete?’
Orla then read an excerpt of ‘How to steal a public park in 8 easy steps’ from her satirical blog, Saint Fittick Speaks. Both pieces highlighted the unique role of creative climate action in making issues visible, comprehensible and relevant, while reaching new people in new ways.
The day after our event, Aberdeen City Council’s planning committee approved the development of the ETZ. The planning application will now go to the Scottish Government after an objection was lodged by SEPA regarding significant flood-risk issues.
‘This is the exact opposite of what a just transition looks like; where we have big corporations being funded by the public purse with so little regard for local communities and their needs. Imagine if we used the money instead to insulate people’s homes.’
Chris Aldred
National activism
Nat Gorodnitski, Uplift’s Network Co-ordinator for oil and gas phase out, screened a short film about creative and collective climate activism in Scotland. The video featured footage from the Stop Rosebank campaign and protests organised by the North Sea Knitters.
The North Sea Knitters is a campaign group that knit ‘hold the red line’ scarves to represent the 1.5 degrees of climate warming. The threshold, as enshrined in the Paris Agreement, was agreed by the global scientific community and the United Nations as being the upper ‘safe’ limit of climate warming, which if crossed, significantly escalates the risk of catastrophic climate breakdown. The red-line campaign, now backed by many Holyrood MSPs, highlights the value of creative and accessible approaches to inspire climate action.
International activism
Cathy Allen shared stories from the frontlines of the StopEACOP campaign. Oil giant, Total’s proposed East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) would span nearly 1,445 kilometres from Uganda’s Lake Albert oilfields to the port of Tanga in Tanzania, threatening to displace thousands of households and farmers from their land and posing significant risks to water resources and wetlands in Uganda and Tanzania – including the Lake Victoria basin. It is estimated that the oil transported by EACOP would generate over 34 million tons of carbon emissions each year.
The StopEACOP campaign takes a two-pronged approach of lobbying investors, banks and insurers to pull their support for the pipeline, while supporting frontline communities by funding grassroots organising and the costs of any legal defence.
Imagining a future without fossil fuels
During the second half of the workshop, Sandy Winterbottom invited participants to imagine the Aberdeen Maritime Museum in 50 years’ time and the exhibitions they would like to see there. Sandy posed the question: what stories need to be told in the future? A collective vision emerged from breakout discussions: the year is 2074 and Aberdeen Maritime Museum now tells the people’s story of a community-led just transition away from oil and gas production. Participants imagined that in 2074 the model of the Conoco Murchison oil production platform, which stands 10 metres tall at the centre of the museum, would be a relic of bygone times.
You can read the shared vision of Aberdeen Maritime Museum in 2074 in this letter addressed to Scotland’s First Minister.
‘It’s clear from the outcomes of this workshop, that the hope of a just transition must now lie squarely in the hands of communities. We have put our faith for far too long in corporations that promised over and over to spearhead the transition but have done so little that we now find ourselves on the brink of the 1.5 degree warming threshold.
In Scotland, real hope lies in a just transition driven by communities, and with the dedicated campaigners and activists fighting an industry intent on maxing-out oil and gas reserves regardless of global consequences. Hope is only found in action and it’s high time that the narrative of hope changed hands.’
Sandy Winterbottom
Further resources
- Following our event, Matt Sowerby spoke to Helen Needham on BBC Radio Scotland about finding hope in a crisis.
- In each episode of the Paperboats podcast writer and researcher Ian Grosz talks with a different writer from the Paperboats collective – a group of writers working across Scotland and beyond to highlight the impacts of climate change, the ecological collapse we are witness to, and the creative ways we can bring about positive change.
- Throughout the final half of the workshop, we collectively reimagined Aberdeen Maritime Museum. The Mobilising Museums for Climate Action toolbox brings together information on climate change policy, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and a number of approaches that museums can draw on to inform their activities.
About Green Tease
This event took place as part of the Green Tease events series and network, a project organised by Culture for Climate Scotland, bringing together people from arts and environmental backgrounds to discuss, share expertise and collaborate. Green Tease forms part of our culture/SHIFT programme.