Olafur Eliasson issues a wake up call with Ice Watch

Ice Watch is Olaffur Eliasson's latest environmental project. In a square in Copenhagen he arranged 12 chunks of ice weighing in at 100 tons to resemble an ominous clock. The melting ice represents the amount of ice that disappears every 100th of a second due to global warming. Read more...
Image: Olafur Eliasson's Ice Watch, City Hall Square, Copenhagen

Public Smog will save the earth

As public awareness of climate change grows, Amy Balkin's Public Smog project highlights the need to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Public Smog is a series of attempts to create a clean air park in the atmosphere. Actions to create the park have included purchasing and withholding emissions from regulated greenhouse gas markets in Southern California and in the European Union, and an attempt to submit the Earth's atmosphere for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Public Smog also offers an array of compelling images that expand the limited repertoire currently used to highlight the effects of climate change - for instance, striking images of skylines with silhouetted buildings and geometric white gaps suggesting clarity and possibility in an otherwise smoggy landscape. Other Public Smog images show serene skyscapes of blues overlaid with phrases such as 'public mog is no substitute for direct action' and 'public smog will save the earth'.

This link takes you to an article on Public Smog and interview with Amy Balkin.

IPCC climate change report: slashing carbon emissions is affordable

Catastrophic climate change can be averted without sacrificing living standards according to a UN report, which concludes that the transformation required to a world of clean energy is eminently affordable. The report, produced by 1,250 international experts and approved by 194 governments, dismisses fears that slashing carbon emissions would wreck the world economy. Read more...

Image: solar power plant in the Nevada desert

UN report warns of climate change risks

Climate change is being felt in all corners of the globe and some parts may be undergoing irreversible change, an assessment by the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has found. The report forecasts impacts on hundreds of millions of people of coastal flooding, crop reduction and trillions of dollars in economic losses and says the impact of recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts and floods, reveal the significant vulnerability of some ecosystems and many human systems. Read more...

Comics and climate change

Is there anything comics and graphic novels can't do? This is the question Guardian writer Jonathan Jones faced after reading Logicomix, a gripping account of the lives and ideas of logicans at the beginning of the 20th century, and with global warming uppermost on his mind. 

He asks: "Could a graphic novel do justice to the current controversy in climate science? As leaked emails and errors embarrass the science on which an entire politics is based, could a comic depict both the pathos of scientists driven by conviction to possibly suppress or distort data, and the larger picture that overwhelmingly demands urgent action to save the climate? Could it dramatise the motivations of sceptics and eco-warriors?"

You can read Jones' article here.

Image: Beijing smog

Jury out on Copenhagen summit

The jury is out on whether the Copenhagen summit was a step forwards or backwards. The so-called Copenhagen Agreement recognises the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C, but does not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal. As the post-summit discussion gears up on whether it was an important first step or a profound disappointment here is the BBC's Climate Change: Copenhagen in Graphics published on the eve of the summit. Along with the exhibition EARTH Art of a Changing World, the BBC graphs provide a timely reminder of the need for a new model of global politics - one that delivers a legally binding treaty on emissions cuts required to beat global warming.    

Images: Mona Hatoum's Hotspot (2006) in the exhibition EARTH Art of a Changing World at the Royal Academy of Arts (image from the exhibition website); two graphs from the BBC NEWS website

EARTH: Art of a Changing World

Timed to coincide with the Copenhagen conference, this exhibition looks at climate change through the work of artists such as Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Tracey Emin, Spencer Finch, Antony Gormley, Mona Hatoum and Mariele Neudecker. EARTH: Art of a Changing World  runs at the Royal Academy of Arts until 31 January 2010.  You can read more on the exhibition here. 

Image: 400 Thousand Generations (2009) by Mariele Neudecker, courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm, from the Royal Academy exhibition website

Climate and Culture

The latest issue of M/C Journal is dedicated to the climate-culture nexus in the light of change threats.

"Climate is, presently, a heatedly discussed topic. Concerns about the environmental, economic, political and social consequences of climate change are of central interest in academic and popular debates. As such climate change is a 'hot' cultural discourse and a media issue. Moreover, there has recently been a 'cultural turn' in climate change science and politics, with some scholars arguing that climate change research and action has been hindered because it has not fully accommodated cultural values that give everyday meaning to climate, and consequently urging for greater attention to the cultural dimensions of climate change." Andrew Gorman-Murray and Gordon Waitt, Climate and Culture, M/C Journal, Vol. 12 No.4 2009

This link takes you to M/C Journal and articles published in the climate edition.

Image: NASA satellite image of the dust storm that enveloped the East Coast of Australia on 23 September 2009

Fourteen days to seal history's judgement on this generation

This link takes you to the Guardian's climate change conference editorial calling on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen to take decisive action. In an unprecedented step of speaking with one voice, the editorial appeared in 56 newspapers in 45 countries.

Image: Iceberg spotted from a New Zealand shore for the first time in living memory (November 06)

Climate change goes on the backburner

Hopes of a legally binding treaty at the Copenhagen summit next month have gone up in a puff of smoke. Key negotiators say that a global treaty to fight climate change will be postponed by at least six months, possibly a year or more. Now it seems the best hope is for a politically binding agreement that has all the elements of the final deal, including specific targets and timetables for greenhouse gas emissions cuts.

In the meantime, New Zealand has been called out by British correspondent Fred Pearce. Writing in the Guardian Weekly he says: "New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it's no friend to the Earth". In a no-punches-pulled article he describes the "greenhouse wash" that followed the promises made by countries 12 years ago when the Kyoto protocol was signed, identifying those that failed to deliver. After lining up the worst offenders he says: "But my prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself around the world as clean and green." He might have added that New Zealand is one of the countries that is not sending its Head of State to Copenhagen to sit alongside others including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Brazilian President Lula Inacio da Silva. You can read Pearce's article here.

Images: Milford Sound, New Zealand; detail of Rachel Whiteread's Embankment (2005), Turbine Hall installation at the Tate Modern (the Tate Modern is an influential backer of  the 10:10 campaign)

Harbingers

Following our post on John Reynolds' environmentally savvy work Snow Tussock and an earlier post on the 10:10 campaign to slash carbon emissions by 10% during the year 2010, here are two striking images -  one of an iceberg spotted from a New Zealand shore for the first time in living memory (November 06) and the second of the recent dust haze that turned the Sydney sky red in September 09. 

Tate Modern backs move to fight global warming

A coalition of British scientists, companies, celebrities and organisations spanning the cultural and political spectrum have committed to slashing carbon emissions as part of a campaign to tackle global warming by reducing their carbon footprints by 10% during the year 2010. The coalition aims to bolster grassroots support for tough action against global warming ahead of the key summit in Copenhagen in December, which is being staged to broker a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

The 10:10 campaign was launched last week at the Tate Modern where four vast oil-fired generators once churned out greenhouse gases. As well as hosting the event, the Tate was amongst the first to sign up to the 10:10 campaign, which is backed by public figures ranging from the climate change expert Lord Stern to some of Britain's leading arts personalities including Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Ian McEwen, Gillian Wearing and Franny Armstrong, the film-maker behind the climate change movie The Age of Stupid.

Image: Tate Modern, Bankside, London