Where art and climate meet
When art meets science, a human connection is made. Carly Thomas discovers how this can help with the huge issue of climate change.
Climate change. Say the words out loud. They emote anger, denial, grief, disbelief and however they make you feel, they are becoming words you cannot shirk from.
Track Zero founder Sarah Meads is facing those words head on. They are part of her everyday dialogue and she is taking steps to inspire people to shift their culture from inaction to change.
With her charity, Meads is on a mission and her Arts + Climate Innovation Roadshow offers creative ways to take on climate action.
Meads has worked at senior levels on sustainable development, climate change and international affairs and is a former senior policy adviser to Oxfam New Zealand. She wants to create a narrative of hope and sees the vehicle of art as an important way forward.
‘‘The arts can be a disrupter, successfully challenging incumbent values and ideas, including how we innovate technology and sustainable urban design as well as re-imagining the fundamental systems we base the way we make and consume things with disregard for planetary boundaries.’’
On a practical level that means taking to the road with climate scientists, Professors James Renwick and Dr Tim Naish, from Victoria University, and then inviting local artists and educators to join a panel discussion.
Meads believes in the power of looking at the problems identified by science with a cultural lens and it is the arts, she says, that are the constructor of statements about who we are and what we want to be.
‘‘Often, climate change can feel impersonal, overwhelming and too technical for people to get engaged.’’ But through the arts, says Meads, a connection can be made.
Renwick, who has just won the prime minister’s $100,000 science communication prize, presents the science. And the science says that if warming continues at the current rate, the Paris Agreement’s aimedat threshold of limiting temperature increases to 1.5C will be crossed at some point between 2030 and 2052.
A halving of global emissions in the next decade is what is needed – a race against emissions is at the heart of the crisis.
‘‘In one sense it’s really that simple. If we want to stop the climate from changing we have to stop emitting carbon dioxide, especially. Every extra kilo we emit today, most of it is going to be there in 1000 years.’’
He sees how it is hard for people to believe – ‘‘it’s hard to change the things you thought you knew’’ – and he can see why people still deny the science ‘‘I am a scientist and sometimes I think I would rather not know.
‘‘We have to do it. Anything we can do to reduce our use of fossil fuels is a good thing. For individuals that is hard. We live in a society that’s totally powered by fossil fuels and to make a change you kind of have to fight against the system. The change has to ultimately be global, but per head of population, New Zealanders are pretty good at pumping out green house gases, we are in the top 10, internationally. There is much to do here.’’
And he is talking about it. Those two, bigger-than-us words, are words he uses often. Renwick has given numerous presentations, countless interviews and if you sat next to him on a bus there is a high possibility that he would engage you in a climate natter.
‘‘We have to talk. We can’t not. This is a really hard problem, but we have to step up and we have to be courageous about it.’’
Artist and and a founder of Snails: Artist Run Space in Palmerston North, Kirsty Porter will be involved when the roadshow stops off in her city next week. She says the need to act now can be overwhelming
‘‘Climate change is huge and there is this cognitive dissonance that is happening with people. When you look at the reality that
we could be looking at food shortages, mass migrations and extinction, those things seem extreme when we can go to the supermarket and there is food on the shelves.’’
But she really believes art can help communicate in a way that words and science can’t always do. She says the capitalist wheel has ‘‘bleached us all’’ into a bland society that needs creativity to bring it back to life.
‘‘It’s hard to understand what could happen in the future, so the arts can try to imagine the world that we want and portray that in many ways – film, art, theatre, music. Art can empower people.’’
Porter, along with others, has been standing in front of the Palmerston North City Council building every Friday for the past few months. Brightly painted banners declare a climate emergency, placards shout out and chalk drawings make a colourful cry on the footpath.
If you want to know what people think about climate change, says Porter, go and stand on the street with a sign. She says she was living in a bubble in her social media streams and she just assumed everyone was as concerned as she is. But after talking with many people on the street she has found there are plenty who argue with her, many who say it is just a natural cycle and some who say climate-change action will destroy the economy.
‘‘There’s a quote out there that says ‘it’s easier for people to imagine the end of our civilisation than the end to capitalism’.’’
Art, she says, can push beyond political and economic boundaries and at the roadshow, in her allocated timeslot, Porter will be urging people to push hard.
For artist and educator, Kura Te Waru-rewiri, her time to speak will be a plea, a plea for people to be proactive.
‘‘It’s time for concerns to be directly in everyone’s face. As an artist I have reflected my concerns through the concepts I work with – mana whenua, the guardianship of the land, kaitiakitanga and knowledge from ancestors. Climate change is a very real concern that we have as Ma¯ ori because of the very little that we have left.’’
Te Waru-rewiri says it comes down to having respect for the sky and the earth. Her marae in Whangaroa is under threat because of rising sea levels and to be having the discussion about a possible relocation is, for her, a terrible thing.
‘‘It is almost 100 years old and is on land gifted to us from our ancestors and when it is under threat, we are too.’’
It’s the human stories that Meads thinks can help bridge the gap in people’s response to climatechange science. The real and tangible things and the emotional communication from art that can filter into the gaps where science isn’t always the best fit.
It’s bringing those emotive and reactive words, ‘‘climate change’’, into a different realm, and for Meads it’s about helping people look at them in a way that will help shape our carbon-neutral future.
The Arts + Climate Innovation Roadshow is travelling to locations from Whangarei to Dunedin and will be stopping at Palmerston North, at Te Manawa, on Tuesday. Professors James Renwick and Dr Tim Naish will be joined by Track Zero Founder Sarah Meads and local guests, playwright and educator Professor Angie Farrow; artist and educator Professor Robert Jahnke; artist and founder of Snails: Artist Run Space Kirsty Porter; and artist and educator Kura Te Waru-rewiri.
‘‘We live in a society that’s totally powered by fossil fuels and to make a change you kind of have to fight against the system.’’
Professor James Renwick