Friday 4 December: Climate change and culture

The poet Simon Armitage, columnist Johann Hari, academic Jonathan Bate and sociologist Tiffany Jenkins join Martha Kearney to discuss how culture is exploring and contributing to the debate on global warming ahead of the United Nation Climate Change summit in Copenhagen.

FILM

The world begins to fall in on itself in 2012

Images of the world coming to a messy end have long been a staple of film. As the climate change debate has risen up the political agenda, films have been utilising it as a doom-laden plot line. With the recent release of Roland Emmerich's 2012 and the upcoming film remake of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, we ask whether blockbusters use the image of a world on the verge of physical collapse purely for dramatic kicks or is something more subtle going on?

2012 is out on general release and The Road will be released on 8 Jan 2010

ART

Hot Spot by Mona Hatoum

The exhibition Earth at the Royal Academy gathers together works by leading artists like Tracey Emin and Anthony Gormley which engage in some way with climate change. Some works have been specially commissioned whilst others are existing pieces and all tell the story of a changing planet. We ask what happens to art when it engages with science? We also look at the role of art in protest; can the art works being taken out to Copenhagen really influence attitudes?

GSK Contemporary, Earth: Art of a changing world is on at Royal Academy, London until 31 Jan 2010

BOOKS

The Magnetic North charts Sara Wheeler's voyage across the Arctic

From the Romantics to Ted Hughes, writing about nature is embedded in British literary history. But recent years have seen a wave of writers re-engaging with nature. Writers like Robert Macfarlane and Sara Maitland have sought out wilderness and silence whilst others, including Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey have focussed on careful description of a single species.

Are writers retreating from the spectre of climate change and a degrading world? Or finding a new way to engage with it? Our panel have been reading Sara Wheeler account of her journeys across the Arctic Circle.

The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle by Sara Wheeler is published by Jonathan Cape