Tim Flannery

Timothy Fridtjof Flannery 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 failing to achieve the required school marks to study science, Flannery first studied English literature at La Trobe University, graduating in 1977 with a Bachelor of Arts. 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, while tutoring at the School of Earth Sciences at Monash University, he changed focus to zoology and palaeontology, earning a Master of Science from Monash in 1981.
In 1984 or 1985, after also tutoring in zoology at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of New South Wales for three years, he earned his PhD from UNSW Sydney.
He then left Melbourne for Sydney, enjoying its subtropical climate and species diversity. 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.

Academic career

In 1984 Flannery was appointed principal research scientist and head of the Department of Mammalogy at the Australian Museum. He then undertook his first trips to Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and elsewhere, later becoming mammal curator at the museum. He took 15 trips in total to New Guinea starting in 1981 and into the 1990s, working closely with local tribes to undertake fieldwork, which he later recounted in Throwin Way Leg. A tapeworm he sent to a parasitologist following one trip was revealed to be a new species, and was later named Burtiela flanneryi after him. During this time he also worked to save the bandicoot population on North Head.
From 1997 until 2001 he was also conjoint professor in Faculty of Science and Mathematics at the University of Newcastle, NSW. In 1998 to 1999 he was a visiting professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, as well as chair of Australian studies at Harvard University. He left the post at the Australian Museum in 1999.
From 1999 until 2006 he was a professor at the University of Adelaide, at the same time serving as director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, South Australia.
In 2007, Flannery became professor in the Climate Risk Concentration of Research Excellence at Macquarie University. He held the Panasonic Chair in Environmental Sustainability. He left Macquarie University in mid-2013. He has contributed to over 143 scientific papers.
Flannery is a professor at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne.
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. During the 1980s, Flannery described most of the known Pleistocene megafaunal species in New Guinea as well as the fossil record of the phalangerids, a family of possums. 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.

Mammalogy

Through the 1990s, Flannery surveyed the mammals of Melanesia—identifying more than 30 species—and took a leading role in conservation efforts in the region. He also identified at least 17 previously undescribed species during his 15 trips, includes the Dingiso, 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 and Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea, the most comprehensive reference works on the subjects.
The specific name of the greater monkey-faced bat, described in 2005, honours Flannery.
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.
Flannery's prominence in raising awareness around the subject, and efforts to oppose climate change denial, have occasionally attracted hostility from the media. Some of Flannery's academic peers were also initially critical of Flannery for speaking outside of his primary area of expertise. When discussing this in 2009, Flannery said that climate change science was a less established field earlier in his career and experts from multiple fields had shifted to respond to the issue, and said he feels publicly funded scientists are obliged to communicate their work and be vocal on important issues. In 2015, the Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue recognised Flannery for using dialogue and authentic engagement to build global consensus for action around climate change. As of 2021, he had attended six United Nations Climate Change conferences in official government roles and as an observer.
In 2002, Flannery was appointed as chair of South Australia's Environmental Sustainability Board and was an advisor on climate change to South Australian Premier Mike Rann. 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.
Flannery has frequently discussed the effects of climate change, particularly on Australia, and advocated for its mitigation. During the devastating Black Summer bushfires of 2019–20, Flannery frequently appeared in the media to discuss the links between climate change and the unprecedented bushfires, stating, "I am absolutely certain that 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 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.