This coverage is made possible through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.
The beginning of “Climate Sisu” is familiar — footage of trash floating in the ocean, aerial views of dry earth, and heat maps of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
We’ve seen those images many times in documentaries and news stories about climate change.
But this short film is unique in its focus on climate resilience in northern Michigan.
Sisu is a Finnish word that describes the concept of resilience. The solutions the documentary features range from planting new grape varietals in vineyards to pushing for passenger train service to northwest Michigan to adapting city planning in the Upper Peninsula to prepare for environmental shifts.
“We’re almost on the scavenger hunt, led by these young people,” said Grand Valley State University Prof. Elena Lioubimtseva, who helped write and produce the film, which premiered last spring. “We’re going north, we’re exploring, we’re looking for solutions. We’re open, we want to learn from the community about what is already done. We don’t want to fall into despair, which is, unfortunately, really becoming the prevailing theme when we speak about climate change.”
Lioubimtseva is a professor of geography and sustainable planning at Grand Valley State University. She started teaching courses on climate change in 2000.
“I remember at that time, it still was seen as something politically dangerous,” she said. “I was introducing my class on global climate change, and people were saying, ‘Oh, you don’t want to call it global environmental change.’”
“Climate Sisu” has its roots in an education project Lioubimtseva started in 2020, when she was creating online resources for teachers, funded by a grant from NASA. When the pandemic hit, she and other teachers continued to develop those virtual lesson plans and tools. They focused on different themes, like climate change in Michigan and environmental justice.
Still, Lioubimtseva had questions: “Can students really be passionate about it, can they really relate to the topic of climate change if they’re not experienced in outdoor education?”
As the pandemic continued, she started taking her students outside virtually, going out in the field while she held Zoom classes. She started brainstorming with two students, Leah Anderson and Kristin Davis. By 2022, they had a collection of short videos, and decided to make a one-hour feature.
The documentary touches on a wide array of local and grassroots approaches to climate change — from education, to city planning, to agriculture.
The first stop is Suttons Bay, where the nonprofit Inland Seas Education Association provides environmental education from sailboats.
The team visited Brengman Brothers Vineyard in Traverse City, where the owners started planting new types of grapes as the growing season has gotten longer.
People from Groundwork, an environmental nonprofit, advocate for a passenger train system in the documentary and talk about the controversial Line 5 pipeline and a proposed tunnel project that would run under the Straits of Mackinac — something the group opposes.
A planner for the City of Marquette talks about the need to adapt city plans and get community buy-in.
A professor at Northern Michigan University’s Center for Native American Studies talked about the importance of recognizing our relationships and responsibilities to the earth when thinking about climate change.
A climate educator and a business professor weigh in as well.
Lioubimtseva said they also wanted the audience to think about Michigan’s place in the world; while it might be better-situated and experience less drastic shifts than places like Florida or California, it still has a responsibility to mitigate climate change.
The best way to do that is by cutting greenhouse gasses. And the need to do so is urgent.
“We want to be optimistic, and it’s important to be solution oriented,” she said. “But it’s also important to convey that sense of urgency, that we cannot just wait and see and act slowly. We cannot afford to be idle.”
A clear takeaway from “Climate Sisu” is that working together is important. And climate action has to be sustained on many levels.
“I think individual action is important,” Lioubimtseva said, “but it cannot be successful without support of national policies, state policies, local policies.”