Right now the left brain really isn’t doing the trick. We’ve known about climate change for 20 years—known that it’s the greatest threat humans have ever had to deal with. And so far we’ve done…nothing. Oh, some little stuff here and there, but nothing on a scale big enough to matter. Environmentalists have believed that the scientific facts— unimpeachable, and unbearable—would be enough to force action. They’ve believed fervently in statistic, in bar graphs, in pie charts, in white papers, in executive summaries, in closed-door briefings. It’s all noble, but it’s meant that we never managed to build a movement around global warming. You don’t build movements with bar graphs.
You build them, in part, with art. With painting and with music and with graffiti and with dance and with concerts and with everything that engages the right brain. Or that engages the heart, trusting that where the heart leads the head will follow. (It seems to work better that way for most people than the reverse). I’m thinking of this right now because our friends at Planet-mag.com have started a new enterprise: one of a kind paintings and sculptures from fine artists around the world that “exhibit their personal artistic interpretation of earth.” Go look—they’re amazing.
The website takes some of the money they make and donate it to campaigns like ours at 350.org. But the money’s less important than the vision.
And it’s a vision you don’t need to be a certified ‘artist’ to share. Last fall we held a Global Day of Climate Action on October 24. It turned out to be bigger than we could possibly have imagined—5200 demonstrations in 181 countries, which CNN said was ‘the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.’ But better than the numbers were the pictures: everyone uploaded images of their rallies, and they turned out to be creative, passionate pieces of public art. Seriously, take a look at these too (and note that most of the people involved don’t fit your preconception of ‘environmentalist.’ Most of them are poor, black, brown, Asian, young—because that’s what most of the world is.)
No one could suppress the startling beauty of their various collective visions—for 36 hours it was the top story at GoogleNews, proof that more newspapers and tv stations were sharing that story than any other on the planet. At the Copenhagen conference six weeks later, 117 nations signed on to that 350 target. But they were the wrong 117—the poor ones, not the rich and addicted. So on we fight.
And we do it with art in the vanguard. Because we’re not going to make the same mistake we made 20 years ago. We need a big movement, and big movements come from beauty and meaning, not columns of statistics.
Follow Bill McKibben on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmckibben
Scare them, I say! Scientists being the scrupulous, cautious researchers they are have been far too timid in alerting the population and policy makers to the connection between record-smashing weather events like floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, killer heat waves and deadly droughts.
These are the things that people care about most and these effects should be put front and center.
The false dichotomy between concern for environmental pollution and CO2 emissions should be abandoned. Nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide and acetaldehyde from fossil and biofuel emissions are choking our atmosphere with ozone. Ozone is toxic to vegetation and is killing trees at a rapidly accelerating rate. Goodbye, nuts, fruit and maple syrup! Even annual crops have symptoms of exposure on the damaged leaves. To look at them, it's perfectly obvious that foliage is not healthy and this will inevitably impinge on our food supply.
The EPA knows about this but they're not not telling people anymore than BP and our government are letting reporters and scientists see the carnage in the Gulf which, by the way, is a small fraction of the oil and coal emissions we put into the atmosphere every day. You can just see it better.
www.witsendnj.blgospot.com, photographs & links to research
So Art won't do it. It's not going to effect the lizard. What will is getting the dystopic future we're fashioning into mainstream culture, and of all the arts, only literature and cinema can do that. They present a story and a vision, not just a vision. They appeal to both the lizard and the cortex.
THE USE HALF NOW MOVEMENT: http://www.facebook.com/pages/USE-HALF-NOW-CAMPAIGN/316473176497?ref=mf
SPACESHIP EARTH: NAVIGATORS WANTED http://www.truth-out.org/spaceship-earth-navigators-wanted59735
Cheers, Chisa
My contribution on behalf of dolphins...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVPS_gcfhoY
James Hansen said that 400ppm CO2 tipping points kick in (the arctic melts quicker, then freezing in the winter can replace). Other ecological tipping points stop tipping and fall over.
The amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere- at this rapid rate has never happened in millions of years. Hansen also has said the period after 2010 should see quicker global temperature rise.
400ppm CO2 is too high- we are likely to pass that in a few years- 450 is highly dangerous- at 393 where we are now is still very dangerous.
After 20 years of knowing the basic facts on Greenhouse gases- we still do nothing- God help us.
But, there's another source of CO2 and water vapor, and that's natural gas. People also expel small amounts of natural gas as a byproduct of food digestion, so, in either case, people are basically full of it, and helping in many ways unwittingly to contribute to the problem that everyone's complaining about. Maybe, if everyone agreed to skip the chili, open a window, and stop whining, this noxious problem would largely go away. And, if they took up walking, instead of driving anywhere and then rending the hair and clothing about The Environment as soon as they get home from their latest personal promissory spending mission on the Wal-Mart battlegrounds, there'd be less vehicle and manufacturing-related emissions also. But, then the economy collapses, and the amount of greenhouse gases(see above) rises instead of falling, due to all the subsequent whining.
We can fix some of the problems, or we can complain about them. Complaining is easy, most people are past masters at the craft, but work is difficult, changing vehicles over from gasoline is difficult, re-learning to ride a bicycle is difficult, but, no result in life worth having is typically easy to achieve.
No, it's when you realize the hard FACTS that you start to take notice and make changes in your lifestyle. My group had a booth at our local Earth Day festival and made up a board that explained the giant ISLAND of PLASTIC and how many billions of bags we all contribute. That information made a difference in getting people to change their behavior - including me.
What needs to happen is much more communication of facts, information and how to make significant and permanent changes in your lifestyle. And not just changing the dang lightbulbs or recycling aluminum cans. It's developing a sustainable, locally based lifestyle and eschewing the cr@p that is put out by the big corporations for mass consumption, and in the process destroying not only the environment but whole communities. Never mind recycling the can, say "no" to the Coke.
If the warmists want to engage in something less "glamorous" that will get them dirty, get busy with the growing landfills that are leaching poisons into the aquifers. Join those of us who fight the TX-size plastic island on the Pacific. Fight against nukes and waste "storages" that cannot contain the deadly poison which sooner than later corrodes the containers and leaches into the ground and aquifers. Fight for investment in green energy, e.g., to cover roofs with solar cells from CA to FL. The surplus that will go to the Grid will warm all the schools, houses for the aging and infirm, the poor and a lot more. Fight for the truth about methane released in the Gulf and its consequences that will create a real global warming. Oh, and in case you slept thru your biology classes, CO2 is easily absorbed by the forests and seas and all the greenery in between.
So, once again, with feeling: Global warming is a fraud.
Take a look at the various satellite photos of the globe. Is the green increasing? Has clear-cutting and desertification suddenly stopped? Have strip-malls and sprawling suburban house construction been outlawed?
What happens when there are heavy rains and the various petrochemicals and agrichemicals of run-off hit the algae on the continental shelves? Has this been arrested? Oh, and have the effects of all the oil spills been ameliorated?
You do know how important phytoplankton are in the CO2/O2 cycle, yes? That they are in decline world-wide? That this is very noticeable in a warming Antarctic ocean?
And even if all of this weren't so, there is another factor. As evidenced by the data of paleobotany. There have been periods in the earth's geohistory when CO2 levels were higher. Sure, that meant more plants. But they produced a higher atmospheric percentage of O2. And that in turn meant raging wildfires.
See What to Do at http://www.aesopinstitute.org
350 or Else - Unrecognized Threat from the Gulf Geyser! Is the new headline.
Ironically, confronting the surprising dimensions of the problem might generate a huge number of jobs..
A very thin film on the surface of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans threatens to raise temperatures toward a catastrophic Tipping Point.
Consider the possibility that a massive mobilization is needed to combat what might be looming if substantial oil is coming from fissures in the sea floor and the leak cannot be capped.
Little known and hard to believe breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies appear capable of helping to supersede oil much more rapidly than might be easily understood.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.
Future cars can become power plants when parked, wirelessly selling electricity.
In very few years, with 24/7 development, such vehicles might be able to sell sufficient power to pay their own way as investments.
Cars and trucks would begin to cost-competitively leave behind gasoline and oil.
We need far more robust and sensible steps to massively attack the problems in the Gulf and prevent as much oil as possible from reaching the Atlantic ocean.
Gaining independence from oil is possible. Making it happen rapidly enough may require a greater effort that was required to respond to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
It can be done! Now let's do it!
Seems most people have no idea what "robust statistics" or "peer review" or "scientific evidence" actually mean. Or the difference between a personal preference and an informed opinion. Or how to evaluate information independently.
Trace the references of climate change debunkers, and you'll find they derive from the same few sources. That alone should raise suspicions about their veracity. The tactic is to repeat, repeat, repeat, creating the illusion of validity.
Nor are the ultra-rationalists blameless. Look up posts by writers like Rev. Jim Wallis over on the explicitly named "Religion" section of Huffpo. Often, militant atheists hijack the comments section to push their own dogma of disbelief. I have yet to see one of them explain how such vehement denigration of progressive allies is a useful tactic in a world in crisis.
So I am glad to see this article. Scientifically, a painting is just a hunk of cloth and splotches of pigment. It is the artistic, the mystical, the poetic, and the spiritual dimensions of human understanding that give it meaning. Same for human life.
The heart mode is valid. We also think in patterns, and process intuitively. Who doesn't feel for those oiled birds, struggling in distress? Who isn't affected by the the vision of millions of people, world-wide, united in cause?
I greatly appreciate the dedication of Bill McKibben, but creating 350 slogans is a) not about art, and b) somewhat like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
Do I see a vacuum there, or am I goin' blind...?"
"...and the smell of a world that's been burned...
Yeah well, um, maybe it's just a change of climate..."
J. Hendrix, 1968
Up From The Skies/Axis Bold As Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Av-vf9ZEjE