The role of Art
In 2005, William Ernest McKibben – an American environmentalist, author, and journalist – said that what nowadays warming world needs is the power of Art impact because: "An intellectual understanding of the scientific facts was not enough today. If we want to move forward and accomplish meaningful change, we need to engage the other side of our brains. We need to approach the problem with our imagination. And the people best suited to help us do that, are the artists."
Nowadays, works of art related to climate change are created both by scientists and non-science artists. Art has the privilege of transmitting information in a new way, different from traditional forms of communication, giving the viewer the opportunity to come across with new forms of perception and interpretation.
More and more artists around the world are using art as an active form to raise the awareness of modern society about rising sea levels, changing average temperatures, disturbing rates of extinction of animal and plant species, deforestation, plastic pollution and more. From creating works of art with recycled materials to literally making art from garbage – all this has one goal: to draw the attention of the world to the problems of the warming planet.
A research by Norwegian scientists Laura Kim Sommer and Christian Andreas Klöckner gives them a reason to classify works of art related to climate and environmental issues in four categories according to their content and the reactions they provoke in the audience:
- The first category was labeled “the comforting utopia”, which includes artworks that evoke positive emotions but do not inspire people to enact positive climate action.
- The second category, labeled “the challenging dystopia”, is related to artworks that evoke negative emotions and do not inspire any climate action.
- The third category was labeled “the mediocre mythology”, which is relevant to artworks which evoke neutral emotions, and they do not inspire people to take positive action on the climate.
- The final category, labeled as “the awesome solution”, which means that the work of art includes both positive and negative emotions, and inspire people to take positive climate actions.
The data collected by the two scientists and the analysis of what human emotions have been evoked, give them the reason to conclude that works of art are generally more likely to leave the public open to positive action in the field of climate.
In recent years, expanding the art of climate change beyond purely visual representations has allowed the audience that can appreciate and experience this art to expand. With the help of environmental media, various musical forms and popular music, whose lyrical aspects address climate change topics, have been presented. There is a growing number of global warming productions in the performing arts, such as those performed by the global Climate Change Theater Action, which presents a remarkable series of readings and performances of short plays on climate change that take place every two years, in parallel with UN COP meetings.
Many distinguished people share the belief that illustrating the concept of global warming and the resulting consequences for the society and nature by the means of Art, is all too often more effective in teaching students than studying it on a scientific basis alone.
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