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Lessons from ‘It’s a Sin’: The Importance of Climate Exceptionalism

Eva Neill

Released at the end of January, Russell T. Davies’ new drama It’s A Sin has met critical acclaim in its emotional portrayal of the lives of five friends as they live through the onset of the HIV/AIDS crisis of the late 20th century. Set against the backdrop of 1980s London, in which culture is often reminisced through the rose-tinted glasses of colourful fashion and “the best era” of music, Davies presents the often masked reality of this time for the gay community, where stigma and epidemiological uncertainty dominated the discourse around the mystery illness spreading within the community.

The series has broken records for its broadcaster, Channel 4, with over 6.5 million views on its online streaming platform in a matter of weeks — approximately 9.5% of the current UK population. The most powerful impact of the show, however, is perhaps its mobilising effect on HIV awareness and testing. With the debut episode broadcast on the Friday preceding HIV Testing Week, the 2021 figures for people checking their HIV status beat 2019’s weekly total in the first day. Furthermore, the show has highlighted the continuing veil of mystery around HIV/AIDS, with internet search hits regarding the fatality of the illness in the 80s up 3,100 percent, and other related searches also demonstrating the lack of public understanding around how the virus is transmitted both physiologically as well as demographically. Yet looking at these figures 30 years after the final episode of It’s A Sin is set, this evidences the ingrained consequence of the taboo manner in which AIDS was treated and the lasting impact of misinformation.

In the years after the series took place, the world of global humanitarian governance saw the HIV/AIDS crisis be placed in a position of “exceptionalism,” in which there was a move from downplaying the issue to accepting it as a fully-formed health epidemic. In this acceptance, governments and international bodies were also able to recognise the crisis as having trans-societal implications, affecting health, development, human rights, and, eventually, becoming a threat to international peace. Rather tellingly, it was the latter framing that became the most powerful mobilising motive for the HIV/AIDS crisis to be treated as an exception from the standard neoliberal regime, heralding the formation of new institutions and rationalities to bring AIDS salvation from the contemporary geopolitical growth paradigm. Today, then, I cannot help but identify parallels that run between the social and political management of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s and the current climate change crisis which increasingly manifests itself in all circles of life.

To begin, the widespread misinformation and conflicting personal opinions which circulated with regards to HIV 40 years ago may be compared to the culture of “fake news” which has fostered a community of climate change deniers. Despite plentiful scientific studies and visible evidence of global warming, the subject of climate change is often treated as a buzzword and, for some, a stimulus for debate as to whether the planetary-scale deviations from stable Holocene normality are of concern, or even legitimate. Whilst there may be some contention amongst academics as to the extent of these changes that are human-induced, this fails to push the importance of changing our lifestyles and economy-level behaviours, just as on a more individual level, Davies showed the denial of the spreading “mystery illness” through Richie’s belief that HIV was a stigmatised myth. Unlike Thatcher’s Section 28 which prevented the discussion of HIV and AIDS in schools due to the stigma which surrounded it, our government at least encourages global warming education, although the necessity to remind them of climate change accountability in their own actions and policies can make many activists and our own mobilised generation at times feel as though they are fighting a losing battle. (Recall the characters being arrested whilst protesting in It’s a Sin compared to the rather controversial scenes of some extinction rebellion protests or school climate strikes.)

Then there is the shared case of slow violence present in both climate change and the behaviour of HIV. At its beginning stages, HIV would go completely unnoticed until it had developed into the critical and untreatable AIDS. The destruction of the individual’s immune system was a gradual process which now, when identified early, can be easily treated and the spread prevented. The case is the same for our climate: the unfolding of environmental collapse through the sixth mass extinction of species, ocean acidification, rising temperatures, and pollution, amongst a multitude of others, is akin to the debilitation of the immune system in HIV patients at the beginning of the epidemic. The modern rate of change is unmatched by natural processes, just as the virus increases the speed of immunity failure. However whilst the cause of HIV/AIDS was a point of great uncertainty 40 years ago, the sources of climate change are traceable in our carbon footprint, largely aligning with the beginning of great acceleration from 1950 (although the beginning of planetary-scale environmental degradation may be traced back to the industrial revolution or the beginning of modern farming). In fact, we as a species have known of the causes and cures for climate change for decades now, and yet have continued on a largely unchecked path.

This adopted ignorance to human-induced environmental degradation is intertwined with the controversy that surrounds global reliance on fossil fuels for both economic growth and geopolitical stability. In the West, however, the humanitarian element of climate change is often excluded from the narrative, a result of the weight of its symptoms currently being shouldered by the developing world. The gradual and systematic collapse of our planetary immune system, as it were, is enacting slow violence against the hundreds of millions of peoples living in coastal areas whose lives are being washed away by rising sea levels, and those in regions of Africa and Asia for whom desertification is forcing them to uproot the lives they will no longer be able to live. Thus, as existential crisis undoubtedly makes an unchallenged claim on the ultimate form of crisis, this will leave many with no option but to become climate refugees, the first generation of which are already beginning to appear, despite no formal recognition of this demographic under international law.

The eventual result, therefore, of what has increasingly become a human rights issue, is a tipping point which I fear we must reach before governments finally implement “exceptional” policies for climate change, as they did for the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As climate change requires governance above the level of the nation-state, there exists a likely emergence of value conflicts in distributing the burden of - and the blame for - its humanitarian and developmental impacts. With the potential for a climate refugee crisis which would introduce threats of social system collapse and distrust or disenchantment with global governance, it is highly possible that any perceived risks to international peacekeeping or security will be the mobilising force behind the employment of such “exceptional” policy action, particularly since climate change disproportionately affects the developing world. It might then be said that as the global politics of HIV/AIDS became characterised by redistribution against neoliberal governance, so too must climate change be approached in the same manner, as the “wealth brings health” attitude that has permeated 20th and 21st century Western thought is clearly untrue on a macro level.

Where HIV exceptionalism bore witness to a shifting of policy thought towards what may be termed “market foster care,” it is important that here climate change is now actively included as the final parallel between both sprawling issues. Once the virus was viewed as a barrier to the competitive involvement of populations and smaller demographics on the world stage, state involvement began to make positive changes in fighting both the stigma and epidemiological challenges related to HIV/AIDS. Such replication today could not only help remove the tension surrounding the topic of climate change in the public discourse, but could also see a reframing of the climate crisis as an opportunity for the West to positively build back on the negative trend it has set; for example, by reevaluating its short-term economic priorities against the temporality of Earth system behaviour. By implementing a principle from ecological democracy, just as the rights of the individual were emphasised in the move to HIV/AIDS policy exceptionalism, intergovernmental bodies could emphasise the importance of the representation and inclusion of those most vulnerable to the oncoming environmental and humanitarian impacts, thus giving them a voice in the decisions by which they are increasingly affected.

Having discussed in interviews the importance which Davies felt in legitimately portraying how individuals and the community reacted to and experienced the HIV/AIDS epidemic, it is clear that even in a time of continued stigma around sexuality, the mystery of the virus and how to treat it was the killer above all others. In the case of climate change today, however, this is not the case; and I sincerely hope that in 30 to 40 years time, a similar portrayal, perhaps with characters from the activism or scientific communities, does not have to be made for climate change, where instead of demonstrating how far we have come, it carries a feeling of bitterness in that effective change could have been enacted, but the choice was simply refused. That, in my opinion, with the wealth of knowledge at our disposal, would be a sin.

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