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Ray Lawler, who died this week at 103, was one of the artists responsible for establishing the first non-commercial repertory theatre in Australia – the Union Repertory Theatre Company, now Melbourne Theatre Company – and the writer of its best-known play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

It is impossible to think of the two achievements separately. So pronounced was the Doll’s success, it cemented the position of the company. The story of the production of the play is the story of the rise of the Union Theatre.

Both are inception events for the structure, outlook and values of Australian theatre today.

The ‘non-existent’ Australian plays

Lawler was born in Footscray in 1921, leaving school when he was 13 to work in a factory. Taking acting classes whenever he could, he started writing plays during the war after being rostered on night shift.

His first job in theatre was on the vaudeville circuit, playing “straight man” to American comedian Will Mahoney. In 1953 came an all-important meeting with John Sumner, founder of the Union Theatre, and the man who would lead it for 35 years.

Sumner persuaded Lawler to try directing, and Sumner prevailed upon Lawler to let the Union Repertory Theatre Company produce the Doll.

The Doll was not an obvious choice. In 1954, it shared first prize with Oriel Gray’s The Torrents in a playwrights competition. But this meant little. Australian plays often achieved literary recognition. It was getting them staged that was the problem.

Ray Lawler, right, on stage in The Doll, with June Jago and Lloyd Berell.
© Commonwealth of Australia (National Archives of Australia) 2023., CC BY

Challenges continued into rehearsals. In 1965, Niall Brennan, the Union Theatre’s front of house manager, recalled:

The theatre in those days was an imported thing; Australian plays, in commercial terms, were virtually non-existent […] The play was set in Carlton, literally almost over the road from the theatre. It was very hard for everyone to realise that we were so close to home. Was it a play about shearers and wombats, muttered one critic?

On November 28 1955, the Doll opened. There had been successful Australian plays before this time, notably Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection (1912) and Sumner Locke-Elliot’s Rusty Bugles (1948). It is the extent and penetration of the Doll’s impact that makes it such a signal work, as well as the quality of its dialogue, characters, and comedio-tragic narrative.

An Australian classic

Lawler’s tale of the deterioration and collapse of the unconventional relationship between two Queensland cane-cutters and their off-season, Melbourne-based lovers was both an assault on the wowserism of the times, and a clear-eyed dissection of values we would now call masculinist.

Unlike other plays of the 1950s, it retains its force and appeal. It is one of the few we can justly call an Australian classic.

Supported by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (predecessor to Creative Australia), the Doll toured nationally, Lawler playing the role of Barney.

The national tour’s final curtain call in Darwin Town Hall, 1960.
© Commonwealth of Australia (National Archives of Australia) 2023., CC BY

With the help of Lawrence Olivier, the production then transferred to London’s New Theatre, where it had a similar seismic impact on British audiences, running for over eight months, and winning the Evening Standard Award for Best New Play.

Ken Tynan, the rising star of theatre criticism, wrote of Lawler’s “respect for ordinary people”, amazed at his ability to portray working class characters who were neither incidental nor the butt of class humour. Not until John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and Shelagh Delaney did English drama manage a similar feat.

In 1959, the Doll was turned into a film by Hecht Hill Lancaster. In 1996, it was adapted as a chamber opera by Richard Mills.

A singular event

Lawler had a long career in theatre, but never repeated the triumph of the Doll. In 1957, he left Australia to live in Denmark, Britain and Ireland. Returning in 1975, he rejoined Sumner at the Melbourne Theatre Company until both retired in 1987.

Ray Lawler with his twin sons Martin and Adam, June 12 1957.
Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 1975 and 1976, Lawler wrote two prequel plays, Kid’s Stakes and Other Times. Together, they make up The Doll Trilogy, complementing other trilogies in the Australian repertoire such as Peter Kenna’s Cassidy Album (1978), Janis Balodis’ The Ghosts Trilogy (1997) and Jack Davis’ The First Born Trilogy (1988).

In retrospect, two things can be said about the Doll’s success.

First, it is easy to take for granted and fall into rote deprecation of its influence, like the theatre critic Harry Kippax when complaining about a rush of subsequent plays he dubbed “the Doll clones”. Playwrights are not responsible for the drama they inspire, only the work they create. The Doll remains a singular event for Australian theatre, and for Australian culture more broadly, as it has tacked away from its British colonial origins.

Second, while many Australians have heard about Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, and a good proportion have seen it, the play remains largely unproduced overseas. Here, the drama’s strengths may count against it. The authenticity of language and character that grabbed audiences in the 1950s, and remains impressive now, is hard to reproduce for non-Australian actors.

The power and the challenge of the Doll is that it resists globalised interpretation: it remains supremely and stubbornly an Australian play.

The last word can perhaps be given to Brennan about that opening night audience:

None of us could understand it. The jinx [on Australian drama] had just gone! They clapped the house curtain when it went up, and they clapped the set. They clapped every actor who came on and the roars which greeted Ray’s own entrance were tremendous. When the curtain came down at the end, the theatre almost shook. Läs mer…

There has never been an opening ceremony quite like it.

For the first time in Olympic Games history, the ceremony took place outside a stadium arena. Despite a rainy and miserable Paris evening, enormous crowds – most who paid no fee to attend – lined the banks of the Seine to witness this outdoor promenade of history, art and sport as 100 boats carrying 10,500 athletes sailed down the river.

Designed to showcase the depth of French culture and celebrate the Olympics as a source of human greatness and unity, the ceremony combined the traditional and the irreverent.

Paris featured as the unmistakable backdrop. The ceremony marked the first since 2018 that has not had to work around COVID restrictions. As the world watched, it took place amid a global context of war, invasion and genocide. Within the performances and speeches featured in the ceremony, there were aspects designed to address and acknowledge this, and promote peace and inclusion.

A mission across Paris

The ceremony was divided into thematic chapters, including Fraternite (fraternity), Sororite (sorority), Sportive (sportsmanship), Solidarite (solidarity), Solennite (solemnity) and Eternite (eternity). These were used as prompts to underpin each section of the sprawling, epic ceremony.

Thousands of spectators lined the Seine to watch the procession of athletes.
Richard Heathcote/Pool Photo via AP

Across the three hours, we travelled throughout Paris. Artists and sportspeople from across the broad spectrum of each of these fields were featured and celebrated.

All was underpinned by an amazing soundtrack featuring French electro-pop bangers, classical music and opera.

The ceremony was anchored by a masked torch bearer who initially arrived at the Olympic stadium only to realise they were in the wrong place. They embarked on a Parkour-like mission across the rooftops and streets of Paris with the torch held aloft.

A masked torch bearer embarked on a Parkour-like mission across the rooftops and streets of Paris, including the Musee d’Orsay.
Peter Cziborra/Pool Photo via AP

Kicked off by a short film featuring French soccer star Zinedine Zidane, followed by a performance from Lady Gaga, the ceremony brought together the iconic and the unexpected.

Images of beret-wearing accordion players under bridges and the high kicks of 80 dancers in hot pink performing the can-can were interspersed with tributes to the French revolution and the contemporary rebuild of Notre Dame.

The boat carrying the Olympic Refugee team passes in front of the can-can dancers on the banks of the Seine.
AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson

There were stylishly considered moments. A single opera performer sung the French national anthem on the roof of the Grand Palais, as tribute was paid to the history of women in France. During this moment, ten golden statues featuring prominent French female political advocates, anarchists, explorers, botanists, intellectuals, journalists, artists and writers from across history emerged from plinths situated in the river.

The moment ended with a soaring rendition of the anthem as the singer on the roof was accompanied by a chorus of children on a bridge across the river.

The ceremony brought together tradition and contemporary performance. In a stunning moment, French-Mali singer Aya Nakamura performed with 60 musicians of the Republican Choir Guard dressed by Dior (obviously).

For the first time, the opening ceremony took place outside of the Olympic stadium.
EPA/MOHAMMED BADRA

Profoundly stunning images such as a concert pianist playing on a bridge over the River Seine on a raindrop covered piano were juxtaposed with an animated film featuring the beloved Minions (created by a French animation studio).

BMX riders, breakers and circus performers on large pontoons performed death-defying stunts in front of illuminated fountains. A fashion parade on a bridge across the river featured up and coming French designers and included a demonstration of Eurodance styles including krumping, vogueing and breaking. DJs on decks and drag performers turned the Seine into Paris’ largest outdoor nightclub.

The Seine became Paris’ largest outdoor nightclub.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Peace, inclusion and solidarity

Toward the end of the three hour extravaganza, Paris was plunged into darkness as a singer standing near a burning grand piano floating on a barge delivered a poignant version of John Lennon’s Imagine.

The words “We Stand and Call for Peace” in both English and French appeared on screen. This elicited an enormous cheer from the crowd, and underscored a theme appearing in speeches and theatrical images throughout the ceremony: inclusion, respect, solidarity and the role the Olympics can play in supporting these notions across global borders.

“In our Olympic World we all belong,” claimed the International Olympic Committee chair Thomas Bach in his speech.

A horse carrying a rider wearing the Olympic flag appeared to gallop down the river.
Clive Brunskill/Pool Photo via AP

Taking this idea further, as part of Solidarite, an illuminated silver mechanical horse carrying a rider wearing the Olympic flag appeared to gallop down the river. We watched images of Olympic moments over the years that united the world – and at times challenged dominant thinking.

The rider emerged from the river on a dappled grey horse at the Trocadero at the base of the iconic and resplendent Eiffel Tower. A parade of flag bearers from all countries assembled behind the rider as they walked together through the streets of Paris to raise the Olympic flag and sing the Olympic anthem.

It was magnificent and humbling.

The rising of a balloon carrying the Olympic Cauldron concluded the opening ceremony. (R)
Richard Heathcote/Pool Photo via AP

Zidane returned in person near the end of the ceremony to meet the masked torch bearer and was handed the Olympic torch. As the Eiffel Tower lit up with a jaw-droppingly spectacular laser display illuminating across the city, the torch travelled back down the river on a boat with athletes Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams and Carl Lewis. It continued its journey toward its final destination with a sign-interpreted electronic dance banger in the background.

A parade of extraordinary French athletes completed the torch’s journey to the Olympic cauldron – a hot air balloon, a tribute to daring French inventors.

The cauldron was set aflame and the balloon lifted into the air above Paris to the cheers of the crowds.

Celine Dion performed on the Eiffel Tower, under a raining night sky.
Olympic Broadcasting Services via AP

Underneath the illuminated Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tour, Celine Dion sung Edith Piaf’s Hymne A l’amour. Dion’s journey to this performance has been publicly marked by illness.

Her stirring and flawless performance against the odds speaks to the Olympic spirit of perseverance and witnessing superhuman feats of the extraordinary, reminding us sport and performance have much in common.

Let’s hope the rest of the sporting event can match this creative beginning. Läs mer…

Hundreds of firefighters from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Africa are being deployed to western Canada to help fight wildfires while a major fire has damaged a third of the structures in the picturesque town of Jasper.

Australian fire managers have arrived in Lac La Biche, Alta. while other experts from Australia and New Zealand were deployed to British Columbia to assist with wildfires there. Meanwhile, over 200 firefighters and two helicopters from Ontario headed to Alberta to lend a hand. But, why do these kinds of exchanges happen and how are they co-ordinated?

The answer to these questions provides some fascinating insights into both the dynamics of Canadian wildfires and the nuances of global disaster relief efforts.

Read more:
The 2024 Jasper Fire is a grim reminder of the urgency of adopting a Canadian national wildfire strategy

Uneven cycles

Wildfire managers in Canada face a significant problem. In some years, a province will experience massive wildfire activity, while in other years, very little will burn. In a year like 2023, B.C. burned an area more than five times the size of Prince Edward Island — while in 2011, it burned less than three times the equivalent size of the city of Charlottetown.

Total hectares burned in British Columbia between 2008 and 2023.
(Eric B. Kennedy, Author provided (no reuse)

This creates a “peak load problem.” Fire management agencies need to be able to manage the worst of years, but also risk being the target of criticism for being overstaffed or too expensive during quieter ones. Yet, staff need to be hired and trained, equipment needs to be purchased, and aircraft must be procured before the season even begins.

To solve the peak load problem, Canadian fire management relies on a system of mutual aid.

Fire agencies across Canada staff at a roughly appropriate level to the requirements of their ‘average’ fire season and if a province experiences lower-than-average fire loads then they are able to lend personnel and equipment to those that may be experiencing higher than average fire activity. This exchange is typically co-ordinated through a small but essential group of experts within the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) who co-ordinate potential exchanges between its members.

An exchange begins with the agency in need making a request. This request is transmitted to CIFFC, which looks for availability among the other members. For example, if Alberta needs a waterbombing aircraft that Ontario is willing to share, or if Nova Scotia requires incident management personnel that the Yukon can make available then the CIFFC can help facilitate such efforts.

A report on the 2024 Jasper wildfire produced by CBC News.

These exchanges are governed by the Canadian Interagency Mutual Aid Resources Sharing (MARS) agreement which addresses the legal issues, procedures and costs involved in these collaborative efforts. In making a request, the receiving agency agrees to repay the costs of these resources, and in offering to fulfill an order, the sending agency agrees to provide staff and equipment that are up to the standards of the MARS agreement.

Collaborative efforts

CIFFC’s role in fighting fires in Canada is absolutely crucial. Not only does it move thousands of personnel and pieces of equipment per season, but it also helps to ensure firefighting infrastructure is in good working order outside of the fire season.

How do you ensure every hose in the country can connect to every pump, so that it can all be exchanged? How do you ensure that incident management teams will be able to slip into their role seamlessly and work well with counterparts across the country? CIFFC brings member agencies together year-round to negotiate these painstaking details so that pumps from Ontario coming off an airplane in Alberta can immediately be plugged into hoses from Manitoba by firefighters from Saskatchewan.

When Canadian resources are fully exhausted the provinces can also turn to CIFFC to broker international requests. This is done in much the same way: a request is made, CIFFC seeks available resources from international partners and the requesting agency repays the costs.

Some patterns may emerge, such as a tendency to only bring incident managers from expensive destinations like Australia, while bringing more firefighters from closer locales like the United States and Mexico. Moreover, these international exchanges haven’t been without controversy, with recurring disputes around the relative wages paid to international partners being a common theme.

Firefighters from Brazil sit on a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft at Abbotsford International Airport, in Abbotsford, B.C. in July 2023 as they wait to be deployed to assist in firefighting efforts in Prince George, B.C.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

It is impossible to overstate the degree to which Canada depends on mutual aid — both from within Canada and from around the world — to manage a country increasingly ravaged by wildfires. Fire managers routinely talk about the “Spirit of the MARS,” or the shared commitment in Canada to manage our fires together, and this collaborative spirit is in many ways our greatest asset in the fight against wildfires.

That being said, the mutual aid system is also not without challenges that must be addressed.

One challenge is climate change. As the wildfire seasons lengthen, it will become more and more difficult to draw resources from the southern hemisphere. As fires drag into Australian autumns and emerge earlier in Canadian springs, it will become more difficult to rely other countries during their traditional quiet periods. Additionally, as the fire load rises across the whole country and whole season, it becomes harder to find resources in quiet times elsewhere within the country.

Read more:
As wildfires become more frequent and intense, how will persistent smoke exposure affect long-term health?

These pressures mean that it’s critical every member agency continues to increase their capacity as their fire load increases, rather than relying only on other provinces to backfill. The variability of the “peak load” problem will continue, but as the wildfire season grows, Canada’s provinces and territories will need to be prepared not just for their own needs but to be on hand to help their fellow Canadians as well.

Unexpected benefits

Canada depends on mutual aid to manage its fire. Moreover, mutual aid brings all sorts of other benefits.

Mutual aid in firefighting efforts build trusted relationships and professional exchanges as firefighters collaborate across the country. The very practical exchange of learning, knowledge, and experience beyond what a firefighter could ever hope to acquire working within their province alone is itself a huge asset to Canadian firefighting efforts.

Confronting the challenge of a future in flames requires investing in the “Spirit of the MARS,” and continuing to lean on mutual aid rather than attempting to go it alone. Läs mer…

The Canadian women’s soccer team has become the centre of controversy after reports from the 2024 Paris Olympics revealed the team used a drone to observe the New Zealand soccer team’s training sessions. That has led to New Zealand’s team lodging a formal complaint with the International Olympic Committee.

Canada’s Olympic committee has since apologized for the incident and removed the head coach of the women’s soccer team, Bev Priestman, from the Canadian Olympic team. Two other team staffers have also been sent home and one has received a suspended prison sentence.

This is not the first time in history that an incident like this has occurred. Further reports indicate this incident is part of a broader pattern, suggesting that Canada’s national soccer teams have a history of using drones and other spying techniques to observe opponents’ training sessions. Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue recently revealed that the men’s team also attempted to use drones to spy on other teams at the recent Copa América championship in the United States.

This practice highlights the urgent need for comprehensive ethical education and stricter regulations to prevent such breaches in sports.

Unethical behaviour in sport

The “win at all costs” mentality pervasive in sports competitions has driven several organizations to commit similar infractions.

In the 2019 “Spygate” scandal in English football, Leeds United’s then-manager Marcelo Bielsa admitted to sending a staff member to spy on Derby County’s training sessions.

During the 2007 Women’s World Cup in Wuhan, China, Denmark officials requested FIFA investigate after discovering men with cameras at a closed training session. Despite the Danish team’s complaints, FIFA chose not to take further action.

That same year, the New England Patriots’ “Spygate” scandal involved the organization videotaping the New York Jets defensive signals during a game, resulting in significant fines and the loss of draft picks.

Similarly, the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal from 2017-2018 involved the use of a camera system to record and steal signs from opposing teams, leading to heavy penalties and the firing of key personnel. Additionally, in 2018, Barcelona Football Club faced accusations of hiring a company to create fake social media accounts to criticize players and opponents.

These ethical breaches, driven by the intense pressure to succeed in professional sports, are just the tip of the iceberg. What sets the Canadian soccer scandal apart is that it occurred on the world stage, causing reputational damage, not only to women’s soccer and soccer overall, but also to the Canadian Olympic team.

This incident raises questions about Canada’s commitment to ethical standards in sports, potentially impacting the nation’s international reputation and trust in Canadian athletes.

These kinds of incidents can damage a country’s image and credibility. Recall the outrage when Russian figure skating judges rigged the results during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Canada women’s soccer coach Bev Priestman looks on during a training session at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Melbourne, Australia, July 30, 2023. Canadian Olympic Committee CEO, David Shoemaker, has said Priestman ‘was highly likely’ aware of the drone incident.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Scott Barbour

Lack of ethical sensitivity

Unless foundational changes are made, these infractions will continue to persist.

What is often lacking in competitive sports is ethical sensitivity among its participants. This includes the inability to interpret a particular situation as an ethical issue and a lack of awareness of the possible actions and their effects on the concerned parties.

The prevailing approach to unethical behaviour in sports often involves investigating, fines and firing personnel. That is quickly followed by forgetting about the incident. However, this pattern of actions fails to address or rectify the underlying causes of unethical conduct in sports.

There are several reasons why sports infractions continue despite the significant consequences. Business management and psychology experts have explained how the ability to recognize and correctly evaluate ethical dilemmas is essential for making good ethical decisions.

They identify that the degree of moral intensity — how personally invested one feels — as well as organizational barriers and cultural norms, determines the likelihood of recognizing unethical behavior.

Comprehensive ethics education

Several factors in professional sport culture numb our moral intensity. In competitive sports, the pressure to succeed and the culture surrounding it can often cloud a person’s ethical judgment, leading to decisions that prioritize winning over ethical considerations. The drive to win overshadows the ethical implications of certain behaviours.

There are also cultural norms embedded in sport organizations that can make certain competitive behaviours seem acceptable, even if they border on unethical.

In addition athletes and coaches might believe their actions are unlikely to cause harm. That is particularly so if the immediate reward, such as winning a game, diminishes the perceived ethical implications. Additionally, in sports, the focus on team success can create a sense of distance from those who may be harmed by unethical actions.

There is a crucial need for comprehensive ethics education. This education should empower sports professionals to navigate ethical quandaries, enhance their decision-making skills and understand the incentives and organizational pressures that can impair their judgment.

With national pride, coaching careers and athletes’ futures on the line, it is crucial we truly embrace and teach the values that embody good sportsmanship. Läs mer…

Hollywood screenwriters went on strike in May 2023. Two months later, actors joined them on the picket line. Those strikes ended later that year with historic deals that included, for the first time, protections regarding the use of artificial intelligence. Now it’s video game actors’ turn.

After nearly two years of negotiations with gaming companies, video game performers, who are represented by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union, announced that they would go on strike due to an impasse over protections from generative AI. The strike began at 12:01 a.m. on July 26, 2024.

The Conversation U.S. asked James Dawes, a scholar of video game narration, about the role voice actors have traditionally played in this industry and the threat that AI could pose to these performers.

What is this strike about?

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists voted to authorize a strike, with an overwhelming 98.32% of the union’s members voting “Yes.”

SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 members will refuse to work on video games produced by the industry’s major developers in support of the union’s more than 2,500 video game performers, which include voice actors and those who use their bodies to bring video game characters to life – often referred to as “mocap,” or motion-capture actors.

A key sticking point appears to involve the AI protections offered to performers.

SAG-AFTRA charges that gaming giants such as Activision, Disney and Electronic Arts have refused to “plainly affirm, in clear and enforceable language, that they will protect all performers covered by this contract in their A.I. language.”

Representatives for the industry counter that they have already agreed to historic wage increases and meaningful AI protections that include consent and fair compensation.

How has voice acting in video games evolved?

The video game industry has gone from a niche form of entertainment to a force that rivals Hollywood, with estimated revenues exceeding US$200 billion in 2023.

Voice and mocap acting have evolved along with it. For the 1983 classic Dragon’s Lair, game developers did the voice acting themselves to keep costs low, which means that among the first voice actors are Vera Lanpher Pacheco and Dan Molina, the game’s head of assistant animators and sound engineer, respectively.

The jump from that cringey-but-beloved amateur work to the voice acting of today represents one of the most rapid advances in any modern aesthetic medium.

Now performances like those of Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson are drawing the attention of major film and television studios. Their work in the 2013 action-adventure title The Last of Us earned them honorific cameos in the smash hit HBO series adaptation of the game.

How crucial are actors to video games?

Put simply, voice and body acting are as essential for a video game’s success as they are in movies and TV shows.

Immersion – that magical state in which gamers lose themselves and feel transported to more exciting, more fulfilling worlds – depends upon soulful and persuasive performances.

I’ll never forget the moment when I walked into the family television room and saw my hyperactive, 12-year-old son sobbing as he listened to the final voice-overs of Red Dead Redemption 2. Now a college student, he remembers that performance like my parents remember the death of the dog starring in “Old Yeller” and I remember E.T. phoning home.

Gamers may come for the hacking and slashing, but many of them stay for the characters.

Is performing in video games lucrative?

Compared with their film and television counterparts, video game performers are still relatively invisible. But their fan bases are rapidly expanding. When Amelia Tyler, the dungeon master narrator for Baldur’s Gate 3, released clips of her outtakes and bloopers on YouTube, they became viral hits, garnering more than 2.5 million views.

A behind-the-scenes look at Baldur’s Gate 3 thrilled fans.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the earnings go to established movie stars.

When publishers and studios seek to generate excitement about forthcoming games, they’ll recruit actors such as Keanu Reeves, Kiefer Sutherland or Patrick Stewart to voice characters.

According to one agent, a big-name movie star can garner upward of six figures for a single recording session.

However, SAG-AFTRA points out that at the low end of the pay scale, performers are paid as little as $902 for four hours of work. Legendary voice actress Jennifer Hale recently revealed that she was paid just $1,200 for her first voice-acting gig in the Metal Gear Solid series.

Will AI be able to easily replace voice actors?

Video games present special aesthetic and technical challenges. Performers need to differentiate death by a knife to the throat from a bullet to the chest. They need to protect their voices while recording screams over background gunfire. And they also need to authentically capture the vulnerability of romantic and sexual relationships. For its recent smash hit Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios set an industry precedent by hiring intimacy coordinators for its performers.

At the extreme ends, there are two ways of thinking about the effect AI will have on any industry: You are either an AI boomer or an AI doomer; you either believe the technology will usher in a new era of creativity and possibility, or you believe it will destroy everything we hold dear.

I became involved in AI research by way of drones and the global weaponization of artificial intelligence – literal end-of-the-world scenarios – so I tend to focus on the risks. And the risk here is that large corporations will purloin the creative work of artists to reap even more profit and, eventually, displace them altogether.

At its core, the strike is an attempt to protect some of the most essential but least compensated and least protected workers in a multibillion-dollar industry. Läs mer…

Wildfire smoke has become a common feature of Canadian summers, fuelled by bigger, more intense and more frequent wildfires. In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record, with many communities contending with weeks of hazy, orange skies and frequent air quality alerts.

The 2024 wildfire season started early, with fires currently burning across much of western Canada. Ongoing wildfires near Jasper, Alta. have prompted widespread evacuation and blanketed the province in smoke, triggering air quality advisories.

Read more:
The 2024 Jasper Fire is a grim reminder of the urgency of adopting a Canadian national wildfire strategy

As climate change increases temperatures, dries out forests and exacerbates drought conditions, our exposure to wildfire smoke is likely to increase.

Air quality impacts of wildfire smoke

Although Canada has seen notable improvements in air quality over the past 30 years, increasingly frequent and intense periods of wildfire smoke threaten to undo this progress. In the last two decades, while emissions from most pollution sources declined, Canadians’ exposure to wildfire smoke has increased by approximately 220 per cent.

A view of the Shetland Creek wildfire is shown in a July 17, 2024 handout photo provided by the B.C. Wildfire Service.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/B.C. Wildfire Service)

As a result, in places impacted by wildfires, the annual average concentrations of PM2.5 are now increasing for the first time in several decades. PM2.5 (particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5 micrometers diameter) are the tiny particles in smoke that impact our health.

As emissions from other sources of PM2.5 continue to decline, wildfires will become the dominant source of particle pollution in Canada, changing when, how often and how much people are exposed to pollution, and how air quality is managed. For many, checking the local air quality will become as routine as checking the weather forecast.

As communities are exposed to wildfire smoke more regularly and over longer durations, year after year, it is critical to consider what these changing exposure patterns mean for our health.

Longer-term health implications of wildfire smoke

Wildfire smoke has historically been considered by public health professionals and air quality managers as a sporadic, short-term exposure, given the previously intermittent and infrequent nature of wildfires. Research on wildfire smoke reflects this, with most studies focused on the influence of exposure over days to weeks on acute health outcomes such as asthma exacerbations or cardiac arrests.

However, as wildfire smoke becomes a more frequent and persistent feature of summers in North America and around the world, researchers have begun to consider the longer-term health implications.

Heavy smoke from wildfires in northern Alberta and British Columbia fill the air at 9 a.m. in Yellowknife on Sept. 23, 2023. Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record in 2023.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill Braden

There is growing evidence that exposure to wildfire smoke over the course of a year or more is linked to premature mortality, with one study estimating that long-term exposure causes 570 to 2,500 early deaths per year in Canada. Wildfire smoke may also reduce lung function in the years following exposure, and living near wildfires may increase the risk of certain lung and brain cancers.

Prolonged exposure to wildfire smoke has also been linked to poorer standardized test performance among students and increased risk of dementia in older adults. Exposure during pregnancy may also increase the risk of pre-term birth and low birthweight, both of which are threats to health and quality of life throughout childhood.

Decades of research on the chronic health effects of PM2.5 from non-wildfire sources support this emerging evidence for wildfire smoke. In fact, there is some indication that the particles in wildfire smoke may be more toxic to human health than the particles from other sources, potentially due to differences in particle composition or the combined effects of wildfire-generated particles with other pollutants in smoke.

While it is increasingly clear that exposure to wildfire smoke poses a threat to our long-term health, more research is needed to address unanswered, but critical questions, such as:

If a child is exposed to wildfire smoke summer after summer, what does this mean for their health in adulthood?
Which poses a greater risk to our health: shorter periods of extreme smoke or longer periods of mild smoke?
What are the best strategies for reducing the long-term health risks of wildfire smoke, which unlike other sources, cannot be controlled directly through legislation or technology?

As researchers continue to investigate the implications of prolonged and repeated exposures, there are steps Canadians can take to reduce health risks. Pay attention to local air quality alerts, understand your personal risk and know what actions you can take on smoky days. These measures will mitigate the immediate health risks of exposure and may play an important role in protecting your health years down the line. Läs mer…

The UN’s climate science advisory group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is currently meeting in Bulgaria to decide on a timeline for its next “cycle” of reports over the rest of this decade. That decision should have been taken in January, but government divisions arose over aligning IPCC outputs with UN climate negotiations, at a meeting that the IPCC chair described as “one of the most intense” he had experienced.

Political struggle over the final wording of IPCC reports is well known, but this division at the start of the process reflects the organisation’s achievements. The more successful it becomes in disseminating climate knowledge, the more deeply imbued in climate politics it becomes.

I have studied the IPCC for 15 years and think these political factors are often overlooked. For instance, though the reports are written by scientists, governments play an integral role throughout the process. The IPCC is after all an intergovernmental body – it’s governments that decide to produce the reports and give the final approval, not scientists.

Most notably, this involves the final line-by-line approval of a report’s key findings in the “summary for policymakers” (the only bit most people read). Media reporting and accounts by IPCC authors frequently reveal the extent of negotiation over how the latest knowledge of climate change is presented to the public. This has lead to whole sections being deleted and open conflict between scientists and government delegates.

The US pushed back against the IPCC using the term ‘loss and damage’ in one recent report.
Camera Kidd / shutterstock

However, decisions made at the start of an assessment cycle are equally fraught with politics. These include electing the bureau and approving the report outline. The politics sometimes come to light, as it did when Wikileaks revealed US manoeuvring to secure the election of the US co-chair candidate for a previous round of reports which were published in 2013 and 2014.

These struggles indicate the impact that IPCC reports can have on official UN climate negotiations, where its reports provide the knowledge base to inform a collective response.

Climate negotiations are characterised by major divisions between developed and developing countries and these same political issues have shaped the IPCC too. For developing countries, climate change has never been a purely scientific issue. It is a question of development, and participation in the IPCC reflects levels of economic development.

Economic resources and long-term investment are required to produce the sort of globally-recognised climate research that leads to a country becoming an influential member of the IPCC.

Although the IPCC funds the travel of some developing country authors and one government representative, developing countries remain dramatically underrepresented. At the same time, the IPCC’s reports and global climate policymaking dramatically shape how a country can develop in future.

IPCC reports can also support the goals of climate negotiators and accelerate climate action. This was evident in the IPCC’s special report on 1.5°C, which made world headlines when it was published in 2018, and which had challenged scientists to investigate a lower temperature target than the 2°C they had been working with.

The report legitimised the lower temperature goal and applied further pressure on governments to decarbonise faster. Concerned that their collective approval of the IPCC report would signal official endorsement of the 1.5°C goal, the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait prevented official recognition of the report at COP24 in Poland later that year.

A direct input into negotiations

The political stakes have also been raised by the IPCC being specified as a source of the “best available science” for the global stocktake as part of the Paris agreement. The global stocktake, first completed at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, is the mechanism to assess progress on climate change and increase ambition as necessary.

Serving as a direct input into the negotiations increased the political wrangling over every word in the approval of the IPCC reports’ summary for policymakers. This was particularly the case for the report on mitigation, where the approval meeting ran over by two days and was branded as the longest session in the IPCC’s history. The summary for policymakers grew substantially through government attempts to elaborate and re-word the report’s key findings.

Sofia, capital of Bulgaria and host of the IPCC’s latest meeting.
trabantos / shutterstock

As co-chair of the mitigation working group, it was Professor Jim Skea that chaired most of this approval session. This is a man that knows intense meetings. This makes his comment over his experience at the IPCC meeting in January (which he also chaired) particularly noteworthy.

The success of the IPCC’s previous assessment cycle (its sixth) is already marking the seventh. At the current meeting in Bulgaria, which runs until August 2, governments need to decide a timeline for the seventh assessment cycle – its next major round of reports. The reports will need to be completed by 2028 at the latest to inform the second global stocktake.

If the timeline is delayed, and the seventh assessment cycle does not inform the international response to climate change and increase collective ambition, what is its purpose? Establishing this in Bulgaria will be central to determining the success of the IPCC in future. Läs mer…

Business and economics books have influenced business managers, CEOs and, in some cases, entire political economies. But they have also propelled us forward blindly at an ever-increasing pace towards ecological destruction.

The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken tips the scales the other way. The environmentalist and entrepreneur joins the dots between our production and consumption activities and the destruction of the natural environment that enables them. I chose it partly because its influence on CEOs of large corporations is well documented, but also because of a personal connection.

The Ecology of Commerce was originally published in 1993, and a revised edition was published by Harper Business in 2010. Its easy-to-read and non-judgemental style makes it accessible to business students and managers.

Hawken sets out the facts about our planet, the climate and the precious ecosystems that every human activity depends upon, whether we realise it or not. He also shows how business-as-usual is destroying the very foundation of our success. Then, and most importantly, he suggests ways we can turn this around and make business part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Welcome to our new series on key titles that have helped shape business and the economy – as suggested by Conversation writers. We have avoided the Marxes and Smiths, since you’ll know plenty about them already. The series covers everything from demographics to cutting-edge tech, so stand by for some ideal holiday reading.

The take-home points are that the “make money and waste” mode of business, which places no value on the environmental costs of production, is leading to the destruction of our planet. Hawken promotes the idea of regenerative business and advocates mimicking nature by adopting circular economy principles, whereby all energy is renewable energy and waste can be reused.

He also suggests we use the power of the market to internalise environmental costs of production. While he suggests we make use of market dynamics, he is against unbridled capitalism. In the recent UK election, economic growth was the mantra across all main parties. Hawken was one of the first of a growing cohort of scientists and academics to point out, in the first chapter, the unpalatable truth that ever-increasing growth on a finite system will destroy its host.

A spear to the heart

Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface, a multinational carpet company, read the book when it first came out and proclaimed it to be a “spear to the heart”. Following his epiphany, Anderson was one of the first to adopt a net zero strategy, building sustainability and zero waste into every aspect of the business.

Anderson went on to write his own book, Mid-Course Correction (1999), which in turn influenced many others. It was certainly a book I included on the reading list for my sustainable business module. Another famous convert is Rick Fedrizzi, who quit his executive position at UTC’s air conditioning company Carrier Corporation to found the US Green Building Council.

Not every convert is a famous CEO. Kevin Bryan, from Southampton UK, saw Hawken speak at an event in London back in the 1990s and was inspired to do what he could to make a difference. Bryan was a co-supervisor to TV presenter and nature champion Chris Packham at the University of Southampton, where they shared their concern about nature’s destruction.

He set up a green garden consultancy in 2019 and I was one of his first clients. His frustration that, as one person, he could only rewild a few gardens inspired me to write the eco-themed rom com Habitat Man. Like Bryan, the protagonist retires early to help people make their gardens wildlife friendly, except in the fictional version he falls in love and digs up a body.

Research I conducted on 50 readers of Habitat Man showed that almost all had adopted at least one green alternative one month after reading the book, for example by choosing pollinator-friendly plants, home composting and avoiding pesticides. Several, inspired by a natural burial scene, even changed their will to ensure a natural burial.

The big changes never happened

The Ecology of Commerce sets out what we need to do, and there’s no way we can know how many others it inspired. However, sadly, the big changes needed on a governmental level have not yet happened. For example, Hawken advocates Pigovian taxes that tax the producer of harmful externalities, such as pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, to incentivise more environmentally-friendly practices.

This isn’t something governments have chosen to do in any significant way, possibly due to business lobbying. “Green taxes” can also be politically dangerous if costs are passed downstream, and are often retracted after strikes.

Another proposal is to ration what is scarce (carbon) and allocate personal carbon allowances, also known as personal carbon trading. This is a more egalitarian solution and would drive innovation into low-carbon products and services. But such concepts are also politically hazardous.

Like Hawken, I write books to raise awareness of the solutions that will work. Unlike him, I write them as fiction to reach a wider audience.

I’m hoping my upcoming book, also adapted as a play, Murder in the Climate Assembly, will raise awareness of solutions politicians don’t talk about, such as citizens’ assemblies. These assembles would be better able to think long term and avoid vested interests than governments tied to electoral cycles and businesses driven by quarterly earnings.

I await with anticipation Hawken’s next book, Carbon: the Book of Life, coming early 2025. The book draws on indigenous worldviews that see humankind as part of nature and the carbon cycle, not separate from it. What that means for business and economics, I look forward to finding out. Läs mer…

In June, the Brazilian artist Ilê Sartuzi removed a historical coin from its display case in the British Museum in London and deposited it in a donation box in the museum’s lobby. The footage of the performance piece, called Sleight of Hand, was shown as part of his graduate MFA thesis exhibition.

The event has highlighted issues relating to heritage, access to collections, and the safety and security of museums.

Sartuzi, a student at Goldsmiths, University of London, spent a year working on his plan to “steal” the coin, developing his technique and observing the museum and its staff. He worked with a lawyer from the conception of his idea to ensure that no laws were broken. Sartuzi was assured that he was safe from a legal standpoint but, especially as the performance was designed to draw attention to the ethics of collecting, is he morally in the clear?

The role of performance art in highlighting social and cultural issues is significant, often used to draw parallels between the two sides of an issue. As it is generally staged in public, it can reach a wide range of people. Performance art may be accompanied by text, but the focus is naturally on the visual aspect. This is where Sleight of Hand becomes ambiguous – by definition, it seeks to create a false impression.

The artist is aware of this paradox. Indeed, it is the central tenet of his project – to highlight the “hidden” nature of museum collections, held in trust by self-appointed cultural stewards. There is a deliberate irony in the choice of a British coin for the substitution, given the current focus on the historic acquisition of objects from around the world, especially by European collectors. The artist says he chose an English civil war-era coin because “it is one of the few British things in the British Museum”.

The British Museum has been increasingly under scrutiny regarding the acquisition, retention and repatriation of objects from around the world. While the institution has, of late, been making attempts at reparation and holding inclusive dialogue on the ownership and care of collections, Sartuzi’s work underlines the fact that the discussio is, rightly, far from over.

Read more:
The Parthenon marbles evoke particularly fierce repatriation debates – an archaeologist explains why

However, aside from the core statement behind this performance piece, there are other aspects to consider. The central focus of the project was the coin, its removal from its display and its deposition in a donation box at the museum. Sartuzi has described the practicalities of the project, which included preparing a replica of the coin to replace the original, and the focus of reporting has been on the objects. But it should not go unnoticed that people were (unknowingly) drawn into the performance.

The museum worker from whom the coin was unknowingly “stolen” during a session when the public were allowed to handle museum objects was a volunteer and, the day before, another volunteer guide stopped the previous attempt. These types of sessions are built on trust. Staff have the right to not be put in a difficult position, and the public (including artists and other professionals) have the right to continue reaping the benefits of direct engagement with artefacts.

Where does this leave that relationship if access has to be withdrawn or restricted due to extra security precautions which, for the most part, should not be necessary?

The installation of Ilê Sartuzi’s thesis exhibition, at Goldsmiths.
Courtesy of the artist

Theft from public museums is relatively rare, but the seeming ease of the coin switch implies otherwise. Various media reports on the performance used the word “stole”, despite emphasis that the coin never left the building – perhaps an indicator that despite the legality of the deed, the optics are saying otherwise.

The original coin was uncatalogued, but as part of a collection that the public is allowed to handle the guidelines for storage and use are different. Much has been made of the recent losses from the British Museum’s department of Greece and Rome, and this new “loss” has been added to the mounting pile of negative press. (Sartuzi asserts that the timing of these cases was an unfortunate coincidence.)

Nevertheless, at a time when many museums are understaffed or underfunded, and rely heavily on volunteers who generously offer their time and knowledge, such scrutiny places the heritage sector under even more pressure.

Historically, artefacts have not always been acquired or managed ethically, but contemporary museums adhere to a common code of practice, with the Museums Association producing and regularly updating a sector-wide code of ethics. Most museums deal with a large amount of retrospective documentation but have plans in progress to manage it – this is also a condition of accredited status, which is awarded for achieving the industry standard and is also subject to regular review to ensure continued accountability.

The audience for Sartuzi’s exhibition has broadly applauded his performance, hailing it as a strong statement on the acquisition and ownership of heritage. Others have been more critical, while the British Museum has expressed its “disappointment” at the deception involved.

Some have questioned the museum’s integrity and whether it has the right to feel that way, in light of its controversial history of acquisition. Sartuzi’s project seems to have been a success as this debate was part of his objective, and it is crucial that we have these conversations – but all discussions must come from a place of mutual transparency and trust.

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You don’t need to read the news or scroll through Instagram for long to stumble across the latest example of a rare and beautiful species that has gone extinct. Since AD1500, at least 705 vertebrate species and 571 plant species have died out.

Humans have now appropriated over half of the Earth’s surface for farms and urban areas, and this is primarily to blame for these recent declines in global biodiversity.

But humans didn’t suddenly appear in the year 1500. Early humans were burning the African savannahs from about 400,000 years ago, and possibly much earlier.

There is evidence that Neanderthals altered the plants and landscapes of Europe about 125,000 years ago. And while there is still some debate, humans were probably the decisive factor in the extinction of most of Earth’s once-widespread megafauna over the past 100,000 years.

Then, about 12,000 years ago, the most recent ice age ended and a new geological unit of time, known as the Holocene, began. This marked a major shift in human-environment relationships, as people independently transitioned from foraging to farming in many different places around the world.

Whether this transition looked like rice paddies in China, wheat fields in the Levant or maize and squash production in Mesoamerica, humans were modifying the landscape more and more. Domesticated livestock soon followed in many places.

All this had a surprising impact on biodiversity. Our latest research shows farming and other human-driven ecosystem changes increased diversity as often as they reduced it.

Fossil pollen tells us about past vegetation

To reconstruct how vegetation has changed over many thousands of years, scientists look at fossilised pollen grains contained in layers of sediment and organic matter (such as decomposed twigs and leaves) in places like peat bogs and lakes. The timing of layers and variety of pollen found create a picture of the changing diversity of plant species through time in the local landscape.

Some of this pollen may settle on the bottom of a lake or bog and become fossilised.
Igor Klyakhin / Shutterstock

Analysing pollen data from the Neotoma Paleoecological Database, we found that plant communities became increasingly diverse across most of the northern hemisphere over the Holocene, starting around 9,000 years ago in Europe. Surprisingly, these increases in diversity are often linked to growing levels of human activity.

In the southern hemisphere, the results are more varied. In Africa and South America, increased human land use saw decreases in plant diversity, and reduced land use saw an increase in diversity. Despite this, the turnover rate – how quickly different types of plants change – increased with human land use in all of the continents. Humans have been a key driver of vegetation change for a very long time.

Farming created a patchy landscape

Following the end of the last ice age, the climate warmed, conditions generally became a bit wetter, and forests spread across newly thawed lands – particularly in the northern hemisphere. It is in these expanded, early-Holocene forests where we find the strongest overall links between an increasing human presence and the increased diversity of plants over the Holocene.

In contrast, in open and grassy locations such as the North American great plains and the savannas of Africa, plant diversity decreased as human pressures grew.

The link is best illustrated in Europe, where two large increases in plant turnover and biodiversity found in pollen samples roughly coincide with the two major migrations of people into Europe over the Holocene.

The first began around 9,000 years ago with the north and westward movement of Neolithic (farming) populations from the Fertile Crescent region of the Middle East into Europe. The second began around 5,000 years ago during the early Bronze Age, as horse-riding pastoralists from the central Asian steppe – the Yamnaya – moved westward into Europe.

Patchy forests contain pollen from trees, grasses and herbs.
F-Focus by Mati Kose / shutterstock

We think these new arrivals in Europe would have chopped down some, but not all, of the forests to make way for animals and crops and to make their homesteads. Grasses and other plants that thrive in disturbed ground would have moved in. This would have created a diverse landscape full of patches of different vegetation.

Making a forest patchy is easier than making an open grassland patchy, since it’s easier to chop down trees and for open-ground plants to colonise these gaps. Making an open, grassy location patchy means planting trees (and them surviving) in places that are too dry or cold to support tree growth. We believe the fact it is easier to make a forest patchy could have driven some of the historic differences in patterns of vegetation between different parts of the world.

Land without people may have less biodiversity

Many people today advocate for enhancing biodiversity by minimising the human influence on landscapes. Often this takes the form of rewilding, which aims to “let nature lead”.

Yet our results suggest that in many places – though not all – minimally human-modified landscapes had fewer different types of plants. Often, human disturbances enhanced rather than eroded biodiversity. Indeed, many of Europe’s most biodiverse places today are traditionally managed, low-intensity farmlands such as Alpine meadows and the dehesas and montados in Spain and Portugal.

In light of this, removing humans from landscapes to make ecosystems healthier and more diverse could sometimes be counterproductive. Though perhaps surprising, our research reveals that in many places, biodiversity thrives because of, not despite, thousands of years of human interactions with the Earth’s ecosystems.

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