Can we make green­ing the film indus­try sexy?

Los Ange­les is the heart of the west­ern film indus­try. Films of vary­ing qual­i­ty have been cre­at­ed as a love let­ter to the City of Angels, nes­tled amongst the hills on the west­ern coast of the Unit­ed States. This year, in ear­ly Jan­u­ary, wild­fires that start­ed in those very hills ripped through the city, killing at least 28 peo­ple, dis­plac­ing thou­sands of res­i­dents and caus­ing hun­dreds of bil­lions in prop­er­ty damage.

The unsea­son­al infer­nos saw hun­dreds of thou­sands faced with evac­u­a­tion orders and forced the shut-down of a num­ber of pro­duc­tions includ­ing Grey’s Anato­my, Jim­my Kim­mel Live and, iron­i­cal­ly, Amazon’s post-apoc­a­lyp­tic dra­ma Fall­out. The impact of the fires was wide­ly acknowl­edged across the cre­ative indus­tries as awards shows, nom­i­na­tion and tour announce­ments were all post­poned. Those who fought the fires were hon­oured at the Gram­mys and Oscars, and a two venue ben­e­fit con­cert raised over $100 mil­lion accord­ing to organisers.

The World Weath­er Attribution’s Los Ange­les wild­fires study found that cli­mate change made the costli­est wild­fires in California’s his­to­ry more like­ly, and much more intense because of fos­sil fuel-dri­ven cli­mate change. Right­ly, much focus is being placed on the archi­tects of cli­mate change. Green­peace UK’s senior cli­mate cam­paign­er Philip Evans told Lit­tle White Lies, ​“The big ques­tion now is who pays for the esti­mat­ed $250 bil­lion worth of dam­ages? The answer should be sim­ple – the oil and gas indus­try. These cli­mate crim­i­nals have spent decades pump­ing green­house gas­es into our atmos­phere, dri­ving the cli­mate cri­sis and cre­at­ing the con­di­tions that caused these fires to hap­pen. It’s time big pol­luters stopped drilling and start­ed pay­ing for the dev­as­ta­tion they’re causing.”

Whilst watch­ing Bey­on­cé accept her Album of the Year award from LA fire­fight­ers (who she went on to thank) was nice, it’s hard to not notice that the fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies that are alleged to have heav­i­ly con­tributed to the con­di­tions were absent from the dis­course. So too, telling­ly, was the impact of the cre­ative indus­tries on the climate.

Film and tele­vi­sion is big busi­ness – in 2018 the glob­al box office was worth $136 bil­lion. The glob­al enter­tain­ment indus­try also gen­er­ates mil­lions of met­ric tonnes of CO2 per year. Large big bud­get pro­duc­tions – the type that dom­i­nate the box office and award sea­sons alike – can emit up to 3,370 met­ric tons of CO2 equiv­a­lent. That’s the same as pow­er­ing 702 homes for one year. Of course this num­ber great­ly increas­es with the use of gen­er­a­tive AI in a film’s pro­duc­tion. Cre­at­ing one image using the tech­nol­o­gy can use as much pow­er as charg­ing your phone.

As far back as 2011, the sub­ject of the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the screen indus­try has been recog­nised by those with­in it. One such organ­i­sa­tion is BAFTA’s albert, who, accord­ing to their web­site, is a BAF­TA owned, indus­try-backed group found­ed in 2011 to sup­port the film and TV indus­try to reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of pro­duc­tion and to cre­ate con­tent that sup­ports a vision for a sus­tain­able future. The organ­i­sa­tion offers and runs online tools, train­ing events and projects with ​“the aim of help­ing screen indus­try pro­fes­sion­als iden­ti­fy and act upon oppor­tu­ni­ties on and off screen that will lead to effec­tive cli­mate action.”

It’s from one of these projects that the Green Rid­er was born. ​“The idea was artists using their con­tracts to nego­ti­ate for more sus­tain­able prac­tices on set.” Actor, writer and cam­paign mem­ber Danu­sia Samal says. ​“Unfor­tu­nate­ly when Covid came along, a lot of this work got side­lined. In 2023, I was work­ing with a bril­liant net­work of cli­mate con­scious actors called ​“Equi­ty for a Green New Deal” and want­ed to do more work around screen and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. So we picked up the idea of the green rid­er, and with BAF­TA albert’s bless­ing, began to build a cam­paign that was actor-led, ambi­tious, and collaborative.”

The cam­paign tasks screen indus­try pro­fes­sion­als with nego­ti­at­ing spe­cif­ic green claus­es – such as sus­tain­able food on set and low emis­sion trans­port options – into their con­tracts to encour­age pro­duc­tions to lessen their impact on the climate.

“Our launch at the Edin­burgh TV fes­ti­val was a great suc­cess. Around 200 actors signed our open let­ter (includ­ing Paa­pa Essiedu, Bill Nighy and Gem­ma Arter­ton). And we received lots of great press,” Samal says. ​“Since then, we’ve tri­alled the Green Rid­er on five TV shows and three films. All the pro­duc­tions made sig­nif­i­cant wins around emis­sion reduc­tion, and big­ger cul­tur­al changes around how ​‘green’ mea­sures are viewed on set.”

Endorse­ments from actors includ­ing Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, col­lab­o­ra­tions in the US and beyond, and the receipt of fund­ing to expand their work has seen the cam­paign trans­form into a long term, sus­tain­able endeav­our to green the indus­try. Here in the UK cam­paign­ers have worked along­side per­form­ers union Equi­ty to nego­ti­ate a Green Rid­er into their col­lec­tive agree­ments with PACT (the UK screen sec­tor trade body for inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion companies).

The trans­for­ma­tive work of the Green Rid­er attract­ed the atten­tion of cli­mate activist and advo­cate Issey Glad­ston who runs the pod­cast ​‘How to Make Cli­mate Change Sexy’. ​“The tagline for this project is ​“serv­ing c*nt in a time of eco­log­i­cal cri­sis,” Glad­ston says over email. ​“I want­ed to cre­ate a space that infused cli­mate con­ver­sa­tions with a bit of humour – some­thing that cuts through the often over­ly earnest, doom-laden tone of envi­ron­men­tal dis­course. A lot of cli­mate cov­er­age feels like it’s com­ing from the same angle, speak­ing to the same audi­ence. But what about those who don’t iden­ti­fy with the ​“crunchy gra­nola” image of a cli­mate advocate?”

The project, which includes a pod­cast and a pop­u­lar meme Insta­gram page, saw its first pub­lic out­ing ear­li­er this year in the shape of a live pod­cast record­ing and screen­ing of Spir­it of Place which imple­ment­ed the Green Rid­er dur­ing its pro­duc­tion. The short film, star­ring Mark Rylance and direct­ed by Jack Coop­er Stimp­son, is a beau­ti­ful medi­a­tion on con­nec­tion and nature, shot entire­ly in Wood­ber­ry Wet­lands in north London.

“The screen­ing came about because Jack reached out to me as he’d seen the meme page and liked the vibe of the project and this was before sea­son two of the pod­cast came out! I liked the work he was putting out in the film world as it also felt a bit more unex­pect­ed and less like cli­mate apoc­a­lypse porn so we decid­ed to co-host this event.”

Before set­ting up the screen­ing, Glad­ston had not con­sid­ered the envi­ron­men­tal impact of film­mak­ing: ​“I imag­ine that’s true for many film lovers. We’re often encour­aged to think about sus­tain­abil­i­ty in terms of food, trav­el, or fash­ion, but we rarely stop to con­sid­er the foot­print of the films we watch.”

Green­ing cin­e­ma is no easy task. As with any mono­lith­ic indus­try there is resis­tance to change – par­tic­u­lar­ly if that change is being read as com­ing with increased cost or as impact­ing cre­ative choic­es. A cam­paign like the Green Rid­er, which focus­es on util­is­ing the bar­gain­ing pow­er of, par­tic­u­lar­ly, actors, in a tra­di­tion­al­ly pre­car­i­ous indus­try. That being said, as Issey, Danu­sia and the oth­er guests on the live pod­cast right­ly point­ed out, the indus­try is no stranger to sweep­ing, rad­i­cal change in short spaces of time. Just ten years ago, the inclu­sion of inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors as a grow­ing stan­dard on set seemed unthinkable.

Whilst the focus of the Green Rid­er cam­paign is on encour­ag­ing big stu­dios and gov­ern­ments to enact change and invest in the sort of infra­struc­ture that will make green­ing cin­e­ma eas­i­er, the role of cin­e­ma lovers in sup­port­ing it can­not be under­stat­ed. ​“I think show­ing enthu­si­asm and sup­port for projects that have been filmed in a green­er way, or actors that make green­er choic­es will help show the indus­try that audi­ences care about this issue.” Samal says.

For Glad­ston, who has set her­self the unen­vi­able task of try­ing to sex up cli­mate change, audi­ences are inte­gral to the mis­sion of green­ing an indus­try increas­ing­ly being affect­ed by cli­mate break­down. ​“By sup­port­ing actors who adopt the Green Rid­er, we can send a clear mes­sage to agents and stu­dios that sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not just eth­i­cal­ly impor­tant, but also a rep­u­ta­tion­al win for those involved, encour­ag­ing more peo­ple to sign up,” she argues. ​“If enough actors get on board, it cre­ates a rip­ple effect — push­ing stu­dios and pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies to make mean­ing­ful changes in response to indus­try and pub­lic demand.”

There are many that wor­ry that the Jan­u­ary wild­fires – unprece­dent­ed as they were in both scale and sea­son – were sim­ply a warm up act for what’s to come. It’s clear the work of green­ing all parts of our soci­ety, includ­ing the enter­tain­ment indus­try, is vital to our sur­vival. The work of the Green Rid­er cam­paign, along with pod­casts like ​‘How to Make Cli­mate Change Sexy’ is an inte­gral part of the solution.