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A scene from the documentary  The Here Now Project.

Climate>Duluth and the Lake Superior Living Labs Network are co-sponsoring the virtual showing of a climate documentary between May 29 and June 5. Titled The Here Now Project, this 75-minute documentary was produced by Emmy-winning filmmakers Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel. Selected by the Blue Planet Future Festival, Climate Film Festival and the International Documentary Film Festival, The Here Now Project chronicles climate events in 2021 where ordinary people record their real-time experiences using cellphone videos. 

Here in Duluth, especially since the city council passed the climate emergency resolution in the spring of 2021, it appears that we are experiencing more climate-related events with each passing year. During the past several weeks, we only have to look over our shoulders at the three wildfires north of Duluth in St. Louis County which has burned through more than 32,000 acres. 

Even though I was 40 miles away, I started coughing on and off for several days. It was another reminder of how so many different climate and extreme weather events, including the ongoing rise in the C02 levels and warmer temperatures, are impacting our physical and mental health; whether or not we’re in the middle of those events or many miles away.

On May 19, the New York Times ran a story titled “Minnesota as a Refuge from Climate Change? Three Wildfires Show Otherwise.” 

In the article, Lee Frelick, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology, stated that this region has two seasons for wildfires – one in mid-May and a longer season in August and September. Frelick reported that the spring season is getting longer as the temperatures rise and the snow melts earlier in the year. 

In Minnesota, a typical year has on average 1,200 wildfires that burn through 12,600 acres. But during the first five months of 2025, there have already been more than 1,000 wildfires that have destroyed more than 50,000 acres.

On May 22, the climate news from around the world reported that there were record temperatures in Greenland and Iceland, temperatures in the seas around the U.K. and Ireland are 4 degrees warmer than usual, record rains and flooding in the Savona region of Italy, and Iran and Kuwait have recorded the hottest May nights in history. 

We can try to deny or distract ourselves from thinking about climate change. And we can debate the politics and scientific validity of the climate emergency. But we cannot close our eyes or turn our backs to the actual experiences of millions who find themselves living through extreme weather events around the planet, across the U.S. and even here in Duluth and northern Minnesota. 

This is the climate reality that was presented in the 2018 climate vulnerability assessment for Duluth as well as all of the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the past seven years. 

What are we seeing and experiencing? It’s a world in which so many of us are facing and experiencing higher temperatures, larger and longer living wildfires, more intense rainfalls and flooding, severe droughts and the destruction of personal property. And all of these real experiences are happening in the here and now.

In his book The Fragility Of Things, William E. Connolly proposes that we are living in a very fragile world in which we are all connected and thereby impacting everything around us. 

“Everywhere you turn connections and infusions between human and nonhuman beings of multiple sorts proliferate. To be attached to humanity is also, then, to be attached to varying degrees to a variety of lively things and processes to which it is connected,” stated Connolly. 

Connolly argues that our dilemma for today is that this fragile and Interconnected world requires that we slow down in how we relate to nature and live on this planet. 

As we collect and share more experiences in this climate-change world, through these dramatic and devastating weather events, we must do more than simply react to each event or experience. We need to realize and understand how Interconnected we are with the environment and planet, and that we definitely need to slow down and seriously reflect upon what these climate-related events and experiences are trying to tell us.

We will begin showcasing the The Here Now Project on Thursday, May 29, at 9 am.
You can watch the documentary by going to filmplatform.net/events/herenowprojectdlh. The registration code is “THN-DLH.”