Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist, conservationist, explorer, author, science communicator, activist, and public scientist. He is especially known for his 1994 book The Future Eaters, on the natural history of Australia, which was adapted for television in 2006, and his 2006 book The Weather Makers, about the effects of climate change in Australia.
As a researcher, Flannery had roles at several universities and museums in Australia, specialising in fossil marsupials and mammal evolution. He made notable contributions to the palaeontology of Australia and New Guinea during the 1980s, including reviewing the evolution and fossil records of Phalangeridae and Macropodidae. While mammal curator at the Australian Museum, he undertook a survey of the mammals of Melanesia, where he identified 17 previously undescribed species. He has published widely on the systematics, zoogeography, and biochronology of the mammals of Australia and New Guinea.
He has since written many more books on natural history and environmental topics, including Throwim Way Leg and Chasing Kangaroos, and has appeared on television and in the media. He was awarded Australian of the Year in 2007 for his work and advocacy on environmental issues.
Flannery became prominent for his role in communication, research and advocacy around the issue, particularly in his native Australia. In 2011, he was appointed the Chief Commissioner of the Climate Commission, a federal government body providing information on climate change to the Australian public, until its abolition by the Abbott government in 2013. Flannery and other sacked commissioners later formed the independent Climate Council, which continues to communicate independent climate science to the Australian public. An environmentalist and conservationist, Flannery is a supporter of climate change mitigation, renewable energy transition, phasing out coal power, and rewilding.
Early life and education
Timothy Fridtjof Flannery was born on 28 January 1956 in Melbourne, Victoria. He was raised in a Catholic family along with his two sisters in the Melbourne suburb of Sandringham, close to Port Phillip Bay. He described himself as a "solitary" child, spending time looking for fossils and learning to fish and scuba dive. He said he first became aware of marine pollution and its effects on living organisms during this period. He attended Catholic school, and later said that he did not enjoy it and became an atheist. He was expelled in year 12 for suggesting a prominent abortion activist be invited to speak to counter the anti-abortionist views at the school, but was later allowed to return after an intervention from his father. After being impressed by Flannery's knowledge of natural history, palaeontologist Tom Rich and his wife encouraged him to pursue the subject. After doing some postgraduate studies in geology, he changed focus to zoology and palaeontology, earning a Master of Science (MSc) from Monash in 1981. In 1984, Flannery earned a PhD at the University of New South Wales in Palaeontology for his work on the evolution and fossils of macropods under palaeontologist Mike Archer. He left Macquarie University in mid-2013. He has contributed to over 143 scientific papers.
In 2021 he was a visiting lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, as the Fondation Segré Distinguished Visiting Professor.
Scientific contributions
Palaeontology
In 1980, Flannery discovered an Allosaurid dinosaur fossil on the southern coast of Victoria, the first from the family known from Australia. In 1985, he had a role in the ground-breaking discovery of Cretaceous fossil monotreme Steropodon, the first Mesozoic mammal fossil discovered in Australia. This find extended the Australian mammal fossil record back 80 million years. As part of his doctoral studies, he reviewed the evolution of Macropodidae and described 29 new fossil species, including 11 new genera and three new subfamilies. during his 15 trips, Sir David's long-beaked echidna, and the Telefomin cuscus. and several tree kangaroos. He also found living specimens of the Bulmer's fruit bat, which were previously thought extinct. In the 1990s, Flannery published The Mammals of New Guinea (Cornell Press) and Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea (Johns Hopkins Press), the most comprehensive reference works on the subjects.
Flannery's work prompted Sir David Attenborough to describe him as being "in the league of the all-time great explorers like Dr David Livingstone".
In 2022, Flannery was a co-author on new research on the origins of monotremes.
Climate change communication
In the 1990s, Flannery observed a change in the elevational range of trees while doing fieldwork in New Guinea, and realised it was likely to be a climate change impact. He subsequently began working on climate change more seriously and shifted to campaigning and publicly communicating about climate change from the 2000s. Some of Flannery's academic peers were also initially critical of Flannery for speaking outside of his primary area of expertise. As of 2021, he had attended six United Nations Climate Change conferences in official government roles and as an observer. He was a member of the Queensland Climate Change Council established by the Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation Andrew McNamara.
He was chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, an international group of business and other leaders that coordinated a business response to climate change and assisted the Danish government in the lead up to COP15. to discuss the links between climate change and the unprecedented bushfires, stating, "I am absolutely certain that [the bushfires are] climate change caused."
Climate Commission
In February 2011, it was announced that Flannery had been appointed to head the Climate Commission established by Prime Minister Julia Gillard to explain climate change and the need for a carbon price to the public. The commission was a panel of leading scientists and business experts whose mandate was to provide an "independent and reliable" source of information for all Australians.
Following the election of the Abbott government in the 2013 Australian federal election, on 19 September 2013 Flannery was sacked from his position as head of the Climate Commission in a phone call from new Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt. "It was a short and courteous conversation," Flannery recalls. "I'm pretty sure that cabinet hadn't been convened when they did it. My very strong recollection is that it was [the Abbott Government's] very first act in government... The website that we'd spent a lot of time building was taken down with absolutely no justification as far as I could see. It was giving basic information that was being used by many, many people—teachers and others—just to gain a better understanding of what climate science was actually about." It was also announced that the commission would be dismantled and its remit handled by the Department of Environment.
Climate Council
By 6 October 2013, Flannery and the other commissioners had launched a new body called the Climate Council. Flannery told ABC News that the organisation stated that it had the same goals as the former Climate Commission, to provide independent information on the science of climate change. Amanda McKenzie was appointed as CEO. Between 24 September and 6 October the new Climate Council had raised $1 million in funding from a public appeal, sufficient to keep the organisation operating for 12 months. The Climate Council continues to exist based on donations from the general public.
Publications
The Future Eaters
In 1994, Flannery published The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People, which became a bestseller. The third and final wave Flannery describes is European colonisation at the end of the 18th century.
Flannery describes the evolution of the first wave of future-eaters:
In contrast with other hypotheses that climate variability and change had shaped the evolutionary history of Australia, he instead attributed the continent's nutrient-poor soil as a driver.
The Future Eaters enjoyed strong sales and critical acclaim. Redmond O'Hanlon, a Times Literary Supplement correspondent said that "Flannery tells his beautiful story in plain language, science popularising at its antipodean best". Fellow activist David Suzuki praised Flannery's "powerful insight into our current destructive path". Some experts disagreed with Flannery's thesis, however, concerned that his broad-based approach, ranging across multiple disciplines, ignored counter-evidence and was overly simplistic.
The Future Eaters was adapted into a documentary series for ABC Television.
The Weather Makers
While reading scientific journals more widely during his tenure at South Australian Museum, Flannery became increasingly alarmed by anthropogenic climate change. "With great scientific advances being made every month, this book is necessarily incomplete," Flannery writes, but "That should not, however, be used as an excuse for inaction. We know enough to act wisely."
The book broadly discussed longer-term patterns of climatic change and its influence on evolution. It also discussed contemporary greenhouse gas emissions and effects of climate change, such as sea level rise, impacts on large storms and species extinction. Flannery also provided guidance on mitigation, such as reducing emissions and increasing solar and wind power. Other points include:
- that a failure to act on climate change may eventually force the creation of a global carbon dictatorship, which he calls the "Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control", to regulate carbon use across all industries and nations—a level of governmental intrusion that Flannery describes as "very undesirable"; and
- the establishment of "Geothermia"—a new city at the NSW-South Australia-Queensland border—to take advantage of the location's abundance of natural gas reserves, geothermal and solar energy. Flannery argues that such a city could be completely energy self-sufficient, and would be a model for future city development worldwide. Of the city project, Flannery told The Bulletin that "I know it's radical but we have no choice".
The book won international acclaim. Bill Bryson concluded that "It would be hard to imagine a better or more important book." The Weather Makers was honoured in 2006 as 'Book of the Year' at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. James Hansen reviewed the book positively. Released not long before An Inconvenient Truth, the book came at a time when climate change was becoming more prominent topic in public opinion and increased Flannery's profile. He recounted his scientific fieldwork and experiences with local tribal people in New Guinea in Throwim Way Leg (1999).
In 2010's Here on Earth, Flannery criticises elements of Darwinism while endorsing James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis. He published another work about climate change in 2020, The Climate Cure, which calls for the Australian government to address the issue and argues its response to the COVID-19 pandemic could be used as a model for this.
Following The Future Eaters on Australasia, he has published popular science books recounting the natural histories of North America in The Eternal Frontier (2001) and Europe in Europe: A Natural History (2018).
Television and film
Flannery has appeared in several series for ABC Television, including several travel documentary collaborations with comedian John Doyle. Two Men In A Tinnie focused on the pair travelling down the Murray River, and Two in the Top End in the Kimberley. In January 2018, Flannery appeared on the ABC's Science program exploring whether humans are becoming a new 'Mass Extinction Event', in addition to outlining the '5 Things You Need to Know About Climate Change'. Flannery also appeared in the 2021 documentary film Burning, about the Black Summer bushfires.