Liz Courtney likes telling funny stories. They lighten the load. There’s the one about camping on ice and discovering the inconvenience of no toilet; the one about getting lost in the Amazon rainforest at night.
And then come the serious ones – the penguins she saw panting because of rising temperatures, the inhabitants of Tuvalu who told their story about how they can no longer grow their own food because of rising sea water, the farmers in India whose crops keep failing.
“It’s important to stay positive. There are solutions,” she says calmly, in the way that makes you feel grateful to have her on side to save the world; in the way that inspires you to look at your own life and want to do better.
Because no less astonishing than any of Liz’s many stories about tackling climate change, is her own. She is a mother of three who gave up a comfortable corporate career to become a climate change activist and is now regarded as one of the world’s most pre-eminent and pioneering climate change film makers.
“If you’d have told me all those years ago when I was working as a general manager in marketing that this is what I’d be doing now, I might never have believed you,” says Liz, who recently directed Changing Ocean Asia with Earth Observatory of Singapore, which was narrated by world renowned marine biologist Dr Sylvia Earle. Liz is also famously known for The Tipping Points documentary series, which gave scientists a voice and showed the impact of climate change across the globe.
Earning the respect of NASA, NOAA, and some of the world’s top scientists and environmentalists, she has produced and directed over fifty films, and since 2010, focused on climate change and sustainable solutions. She has been inducted into the Australian Businesswomen’s Hall of Fame, won Australia’s 100 Women of Influence Award, and is the Artist in Residence at the Earth Observatory of Singapore. She is, without any shadow of a doubt, the kind of inspirational woman the world needs now.
But none of it might have happened if she hadn’t looked in the mirror and, as she likes to say, found herself. “I found a part of me that I’d never met before when I embarked on this journey. In Antarctica, I think I met my true self for the first time.”
It was 2009 and Liz was invited to direct a documentary series in Antarctica, taking 40 teenagers on a three-and-a-half-week trip to record climate change through the eyes of youth. She had made documentaries before, but not like this. “I hesitated because I was fearful of travelling on big seas. I was a mother. I said: ‘I can’t go’. But then I realized it was really my fear that was holding me back. I thought ‘Am I going to let fear define who I am’?”
Liz did not want to be that person. It was the start of her personal journey. Even on the return trip home when the boat hit a massive hurricane and the waves were crashing over, she realised that there was no point in being fearful. “That trip was huge for me. I found a resilience and strength I never knew I had. I had spent a long time in one role, but never really met myself fully.”
Back home in Sydney, having seen the impact of climate change first-hand in Antarctica, she realised how much she cared about the planet and the future for the next generation. She’d always been good at science at school and threw herself into research, finding scientists and travelling to the States to find funding to make more films.
Getting the message out about the vulnerability of the planet consumes her every day. She has travelled extensively to all corners of the earth to record what is happening, describing the Antarctic and Arctic as the canaries in the coal mine. “They are the places where there are the least number of eyeballs, but what is happening there impacts all of us”.
It is easy for any of us to feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the climate change problems, but Liz is optimistic. “My films always have a positive note,” she insists “We know there are solutions. We know there are opportunities to make important changes. We have the technologies. What we need is the human mind to get on board.” She sites Singapore as an example of a country that is making significant change. They are building a vertical farm there, stacking layers to optimise plant growth in a small square footage of land. They also recycle every single drop of water.
She also believes that the next generation, today’s children and teenagers, will be the gamechangers of the future. “They’ve grown up with this reality. They will have the loudest voices.”
Not that saving the planet can be left to them. Promoting what each of us can do as individuals is vital to her work. Her favourite phrase is: ‘In twenty years’ time what will you be able to say you did to reduce our CO2 levels in the planet?’
“All of us can help,” she says. “The sooner we all understand what our own carbon footprints are, that’s when we will see change”.
Next year is going to be a busy one for Liz. She begins filming a new four-part series in Singapore in April focusing on designing future cities. She has an animation series beginning in May. She will be showing her new oceans series at the United Nations Ocean Conference in June and guest starring in podcasts along the way. Then there’s a forthcoming book about her own extraordinary life, juggling motherhood and trying to save the planet called Changing Shoes, Changing Worlds.
And most pressingly of all, she is now raising funds for Beyond The Tipping Points, revisiting her Tipping Points series and looking at the planet ten years on from when she first filmed it.
Never has the subject been more relevant. Never has there been a better woman to lead the way.
For further news about Liz Courtney: https://www.thetippingpoints.com/news-2/ | www.unboxedmedia.com.au | https://www.thetippingpoints.com/