Musician signs up for key climate report reading

Musician Marlon Williams will join more than 100 speakers in a weeklong theatrical mass reading of a landmark climate change report in Christchurch.

He will accompany mayor Lianne Dalziel, Climate Change Minister James Shaw and former Young New Zealander of the Year Sam Johnson, along with business leaders, artists, academics and activists at a shipping container on the Christchurch Art Gallery forecourt in January.

Each will read an excerpt from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released in October 2018, which outlined the importance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The entire reading is expected to take 50 hours, from 11am until 7pm for a week from January 23, to coincide with foot traffic from the Bread and Circus World Buskers Festival.

Event organiser David Simpson said taking an ‘‘enormous, overwhelming’’ document and making it accessible was the first step in encouraging change.

Having the broadest range of personalities possible would show the ‘‘depth of public feeling’’ and show there ‘‘is no way of not engaging with this’’, he said.

Organisers were in the process of trying to fill speaking spots with well-known personalities, with two authors from the report already confirmed, he said.

Anyone wanting to sign up should do so through the 1.5 Degrees Live Christchurch Facebook page.

Simpson, who is working with Gap Filler’s Ryan Reynolds, hoped to generate a sense of ownership of the document and encourage people to learn what it said and normalise discussions around the need for social transformation.

‘‘People relate to people. Even I haven’t read the whole document, but we can work through it together and have discussions on the way.’’

The report had 91 co-authors and contained more than 6000 scientific references. It was approved by representatives of 190 countries, and is the most comprehensive analysis of the steps required to limit warming to 1.5C to date.

The world has already committed to keeping warming ‘‘well below’’ 2C through the Paris Agreement, which also included a more aspirational goal of 1.5C.

1.5 Degrees Live was first held in August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, organised by Simpson’s cousin.

It has since been read at the Scottish Parliament, and at Westminster Abbey.

‘‘I haven’t read the whole document, but we can work through it together.’’

David Simpson Organiser