기후 변화와 부정의 역설: 한 극작가의 여정

### 도발적인 연극: 기후 변화, 거부, 그리고 예상치 못한 대화
* 🎭 응운나왈 출신의 극작가인 데이비드는 2014년에 **'기후 거부자들을 죽여라'**라는 연극을 집필하여 **환경 테러리스트들이 국회의사당을 점령하는 풍자적인 서사**를 통해 기후 변화와 정치의 교차점에 대한 대화를 촉발시켰습니다.
* 📉 연극의 제목은 의도적으로 도발적이지만, 데이비드는 이 연극이 특정 개인을 겨냥한 것이 아니라 **20세기 중반 석유 회사들이 기후 과학에 의문을 제기하면서 시작된 기후 부정의 기원에 대한 논평**이라고 해명했습니다.
* 📰 기후 부정론자들의 반발을 예상했음에도 불구하고 **일반 대중의 강력한 반발**에 놀랐고, 기후 과학을 진정으로 의심하는 **열정적인 사회 구성원**이 있음을 알게 되었습니다.
* 🚫 초기 논란 이후 안전상의 이유로 연극은 취소되었고, **데이비드와 그의 음악가 친구는 이를 앨범으로 각색**하여 나이트클럽과 국회의사당 도보 투어 등 색다른 방법으로 홍보했습니다.
* 🌍 결국 이 연극은 **2018년에 무대에 올려져 국제적인 공연**으로 이어졌고, 실제 기후 거부자들과 소통의 물꼬를 트며 **데이비드가 그들의 동기와 신념을 되돌아보게** 했습니다.
* 💬 데이비드는 기후 과학을 거부하는 사람들과의 대화를 통해 **그들이 기후 과학을 거부하면서도 환경 영향으로 인한 식단의 변화, 지역 사회 재배치 등 기후 변화의 결과**를 정확하게 이해하고 있다는 사실을 발견했습니다.
* 🔍 그는 많은 사람들이 기후 변화의 과학을 받아들이지만, 사회는 종종 그것이 현실이 아닌 것처럼 행동하여 **행동이 신념과 모순되는 일종의 '부드러운 부정'**으로 이어지며 개인이 기후 현실에 참여하는 방식에 대한 재평가를 촉구한다고 결론지었습니다.
* 🤔 데이비드는 사회가 기후 변화의 현실을 부정할수록 궁극적인 결과는 더 심각해질 것이라는 점을 인정하면서 **기후 변화 거부자들의 신념을 구현하고 싶다**는 바람을 표명했습니다.

데이비드의 연극은 많은 사람들이 기후 과학을 받아들이면서도 그 결과를 부정하며 살고 있다는 사실을 드러내며 예상치 못한 대화를 촉발시켰습니다.

Hi, I’m David. I'm a playwright from Ngunnawal country, the unceded lands of the Ngunnawal people in southeast Australia. I come from a family of climate scientists, and in 2014 I wrote a play entitled Kill Climate Deniers. (Laughter) The play follows the story of a group of eco-terrorists who take over Australia's Parliament House during a Fleetwood Mac concert and hold the entire government hostage, demanding an instant end to climate change. So the story is ridiculous, but I wanted the play to start a conversation about what happens when the unstoppable force of climate change meets the immovable object of politics. OK so obviously the title “Kill Climate Deniers” is provocative. But just to be clear, when I wrote it, I wasn't targeting anyone real. Now thanks to the work of journalists and scientists like Naomi Oreskes, we know how climate denial began.

Oil and gas companies recognized the issue of greenhouse gas emissions back in the 1950s and '60s. They set out to cast doubt on the science. They funded lobby groups, marketing firms, politicians. They astroturfed an entire climate denial movement into being. So now there's this industry of pundits and journalists who make a living denying the reality of climate change. When I made the statement Kill Climate Deniers, I expected outrage from these people. But I did not expect pushback from the general public. I figured there are no real climate deniers. If there are regular, normal people who don't believe in climate science, they can't be that passionate. So I was very wrong. (Laughter) Now to begin with, the play received exactly the attention I expected from exactly the people I expected. When the first production was announced in 2014, a conservative politician in my hometown of Canberra

called for the play to be shut down. There were angry articles in the Murdoch press, Breitbart, Infowars, all the usual suspects in the right-wing media machine. Some of these pundits accused the play of being an incitement to terrorism, and they referred me to the police. Their argument was that people would see the show and be inspired to take an entire government hostage to end climate change. Now the theater company didn’t have money for lawyers or a crisis communications team, so out of concern for the actors' safety, the production was cancelled. But I didn't like backing down. It didn't feel good. I felt as if giving up on the project was like agreeing with the people attacking it. And I did not agree with them. The play was not an incitement to terrorism. But no theater company was willing to take the risk of being referred to the police. I couldn't get it up as a show.

So instead, my musician friend Reuben Engel turned it into an album. Reuben sampled dialogue from the play and wove it into a series of original electronic tracks. We toured that record around Australia. We couldn't get into theaters, so we went to nightclubs, we held dance parties. Then we launched an unauthorized covert walking tour of Parliament House. People downloaded a special version of the album on headphones and listened to the music and the story while walking around the real-life setting of Australia's halls of power. Like so. (Applause) (Music) (Music ends) Now all of this helped to build up an audience for the project. But even more importantly, there were no real-life copycats. Not one government building was taken hostage by eco-terrorists during a Fleetwood Mac concert. So four years after the original production was canceled, the play finally made it to the stage in 2018 at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney.

followed by productions in Prague, London, Los Angeles, and so on. Obviously, I was very happy. And in one version of the story, that's where it ends. This project just joins a long list of things right-wing commentators have found to be outraged about, alongside Elvis, smartphones, twerking, Miley Cyrus, Fortnite, the Beat Generation, skateboarding, Woodstock, Woodstock '99, sugary cereal, TikTok, gay marriage, NWA, feminism, the Twist, Dungeons and Dragons, LiveJournal, shopping malls, and women reading novels. (Laughter) But as the play made its way into the world, something else started happening. I started hearing from climate deniers. And not fossil-fuel pundits or right-wing journalists, real climate deniers. Regular, normal people. And I couldn't get my head around it. Like, why did they care so much? Like, if you're an ExxonMobil executive,

then you have a financial incentive to downplay climate science. But if you're a high school teacher in Queensland or a massage therapist in Massachusetts, why would you spend your nights and weekends desperately trying to debunk Earth science research? Now it turns out that although climate denial began as an astroturfed movement created by fossil fuel companies, it caught on because it connects with a certain group of people in a very real way. I got emails, I got physical letters, I got phone calls. They started showing up to performances of the play. And as the show got bigger and bigger, there were more and more of them, and they were passionate. I wanted this play to start a conversation, and it did. It just was not the conversation I thought I was starting. I ended up speaking with hundreds of climate deniers over the course of this project. Now some of them wanted to insult me and threaten me. Some of them wanted to tell me variations on the same gag,

like, What if I wrote a play called 'Kill Climate Scientists?' But some of them were interesting. These deniers wanted to explain to me why climate science was wrong. They had a whole worldview. They said, The reality is, David, that climate change is a made-up excuse for a huge program of top-down intervention. What climate activists really want is to stifle our freedoms. They want to control what we eat, they want to choke the life out of rural communities, and they want to throw the doors open to massive global migration. Now I wanted to respond to these people and say, I'm sorry, you're wrong. That's not what it's about. But the more I talked with them, the more I realized... They're right. They are completely correct. I mean, they're not correct about climate change being a made-up excuse. That, sadly, is not true. But the consequences of climate change?

Yes, diets are going to change. Yes, a lot of communities in exposed locations will be forced to leave. Yes, there will be huge movements of people within and between countries, they're right. And we don't even realize how right they are. I believe in the science of climate change, and so do probably most of the people in this room. But more often than not, we go about our lives as if it's not real. We plan our careers, we build houses, we educate our children as if the future will look like the past. But the world we're educating them for no longer exists. At one degree warming, we are already on a planet unlike anywhere humans have ever lived in the past, and our systems are starting to buckle under the strain. Now whether you believe that we are sleepwalking into disaster or if you think we're going to turn things around through high-tech solutions or massive social movements,

Whatever climate future you believe in, our lives are going to radically change. Our future will not look like our past. We accept the science, but we haven't processed the consequences. We don't explicitly deny climate change, but in our actions, we're like soft deniers, stealth deniers. I'm one of these people. Maybe you are too. I keep my carbon footprint as low as possible. But then I got on a plane to give this talk. I read research reports about which cities will be vulnerable in future decades to climate shocks, resource shocks. And then I forget all that and think, I just want to buy a flat in my hometown. If you believe something but you act like you don't believe it, do you really believe it? Now climate deniers understand the consequences of the science, so they don't accept the science. They know what it means if it's true, so they won't allow it to be true.

I think we can learn from climate deniers. I want to be more like that high school teacher in Queensland, that massage therapist in Massachusetts, because they live what they believe. You and I, we think we know better. We are the ones in denial. And I know deep down that the longer we deny reality, the harder the shock when it hits. Thank you. (Applause)

A Controversial Play — and What It Taught Me About the Psychology of Climate | David Finnigan | TED

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기후 변화에 대한 데이비드의 도발적인 연극

응운나왈 국가 출신의 극작가인 데이비드는 기후 변화와 정치 사이의 충돌에 대한 대화를 촉발하기 위해 2014년에 "기후 거부자들을 죽여라"를 집필했습니다.

환경 테러리스트들이 의회를 점령하는 도발적인 제목과 스토리를 담은 이 연극은 기후 부정을 둘러싼 이야기에 도전하는 것을 목표로 했습니다.

예상치 못하게 데이비드는 기후 부정론자뿐만 아니라 일반 대중의 반발에 직면했고, 이 문제에 대한 열렬한 분열을 드러냈습니다.

논란의 여지가 있는 플레이와 그 여파

이 연극은 테러를 선동한다는 비난과 함께 우익 언론의 반발에 직면했고, 배우들의 안전을 위해 경찰에 수사의뢰되어 결국 공연이 취소되었습니다.

극작가의 친구는 이 프로젝트를 앨범으로 제작하여 나이트클럽을 돌며 호주를 순회하고 국회의사당을 비밀리에 도보 순회하는 투어를 시작했습니다.

4년 후, 이 연극은 2018년 시드니의 그리핀 극장에서 논란이 되었던 주제를 모방하지 않은 채 마침내 데뷔했습니다.

기후 변화 연극에 대한 예상치 못한 대응

여러 도시에서 공연된 이 연극은 재정적 인센티브를 가진 사람들뿐만 아니라 일반인들을 포함한 기후변화 거부자들의 예상치 못한 관심을 이끌어냈습니다.

이 운동의 성장은 특정 개인과의 진정한 연결이 연극에 대한 열정적인 참여로 이어지면서 이루어졌습니다.

이 프로젝트는 궁극적으로 수백 명의 기후 거부자들과의 대화를 촉발시켰고, 그 결과 모욕과 위협, 농담이 섞인 대화를 나누게 되었습니다.

저자는 기후 운동이 자유를 통제하고 공동체를 혼란에 빠뜨리는 것을 목표로 한다고 주장하며 설득력 있는 세계관을 제시하는 기후 변화 거부자들을 만납니다.

저자는 기후변화가 지어낸 변명이라는 부정론자들의 관점에 동의하지 않지만, 식습관 변화, 강제 이주, 지역사회 혼란 등 기후변화로 인한 결과의 타당성은 인정합니다.

저자는 우리가 이미 전례 없는 변화를 경험하고 있으며 현재의 시스템이 대처하기 위해 고군분투하고 있다고 지적하며 상황의 시급성을 강조합니다.

기후 변화가 우리 삶에 미치는 영향

기후 변화로 인해 우리의 미래는 크게 달라질 것이며, 우리는 과학적 사실을 받아들이면서도 종종 이를 부정하는 행동을 합니다.

탄소 발자국을 적게 남기면서도 우리는 여전히 우리의 신념과 모순되는 선택을 합니다.

연사는 미래의 충격을 완화하기 위해 현실을 인정하는 것이 중요하다는 점을 강조하면서 자신의 신념을 실천하는 기후 거부자들으로부터 배울 것을 제안합니다.