A 22-year-old hairdresser has put down her scissors and tongs to present a new documentary film about climate change.
One of Jaz Njie’s clients, filmmaker Claire Wallerstein, chose her to present the new film “because she is from the generation that gets a lot of their information from places like TikTok and YouTube, and that is where you really get this rampant misinformation people are being exposed to now”.
Ms Nije, a member of Gen Z, who works as a mobile hairdresser, said she was glad to have been involved in the 40-minute film which premiered on Monday at the Cornish Film Festival in Falmouth.
“It’s just been probably the best work I’ve done so far, I’ve really enjoyed it,” she said.
‘Whole lives doing research’
As part of the documentary, #ClimateScam?, Ms Njie spoke to scientists, sceptics and people who studied how climate change had been reported.
She said she had met “people who had spent their lives doing this [climate change confirmation] research” being “really sad about what’s going on in the world”.
She said: “You see a social media post that is literally just been made by a site in one day and… spreading these rumours and people just go straight to that.
“They [climate change deniers] need to look at the people who have been spending their whole lives doing research.”
The member of Gen Z, described as people born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, said that, as a hairdresser, she had a few clients who were climate deniers, as well as a few friends who also did not believe in climate change.
She said: “I think we all just need to put our heads together and focus on the problem that we’re all seeing happening.
“We can see the floods happening, we can see the droughts, we can see the fires.”
Ms Njie said she was happy to be back cutting hair and chatting with her clients, but added that she also hoped for another chance to do more presenting work in the future.
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