Day Eight: Collaborating Against Climate Change
“By understanding and cherishing our past, we can become aware of how to value our present and, most importantly, how to protect our future, while we still have the chance.”
So goes the ending of the old Treasures of the La Brea Tar Pits movie I’ve watched several times since I first visited over twenty years ago. As the narration emphasizes “protecting our future”, the camera pans out to the sunset over Los Angeles, turning a sublime and romantic hallmark of Southern California’s landscape into a somber warning of our fragile existence. I don’t remember when that video was made, but I feel they must have added that in to emphasize the relevance of paleontology for today’s solutions. Sure, paleontologists get to dig for bones and study dinosaurs and other extinct, exotic creatures, but one main reason for studying their bygone worlds is to better understand the changes happening in ours, and to brace for the worst.
As The Climate Museum puts it, “climate change is the challenge of our time,” which is a mild way to phrase one of the major existential risks that humanity faces to its existence as we know it. A 2016 report from Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute states, “Research has suggested that warming of 11–12°C would render most of the planet uninhabitable, and would completely devastate agriculture,” (p.8).
What’s worse is the damages don’t pay out at the moment our thermometers are now several degrees hotter on average. Adding to it is that it’s not merely an issue of saving starving polar bears, but also of preventing geopolitical tensions from exploding. USMC General Thomas D. Walhauser, Commander of U.S. Africa Command, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee this past Tuesday that the grasslands of the African Sahel are receding a mile a year, which adds kindling to regions facing relentless sectarian violence such as Mali and Libya.
With such a seemingly insurmountable and Hydra-headed challenge ahead of humanity, what can a museum do? I’ve often thought that natural history and science museums could lead that charge, through educational exhibitions and the brain trust of their curators, by bringing the science to wider audiences. Yet, as I looked at The Climate Museum’s In Human Time exhibition, featuring a magnificent pastel work of Antarctica’s Whale Bay and a video installation of ice cores, I felt inspired to review the study of ice cores and awestruck at the natural beauty now imperiled by global warming.
One museum, or one discipline, by themselves, may not be able to make much of a dent on the issue of climate change. Perhaps for museums to mobilize their communities against climate change, they will have to win both hearts and minds. I feel the Climate Museum is in a very nimble position to engage with people on the ground, and even to find opportunities to partner or take the stage in other institutions such as the USS Intrepid’s Kids Week or the AMNH’s upcoming Earth Day festival.
Already I have seen how the arts can inspire and amplify the urgency of action grounded in scientific realities. When I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium in October last year, I viewed an exhibition of art about plastic pollution in our oceans. One work, Gyre by Chris Jordan, was particularly poignant. I have seen the videos and read the articles about the Northern Pacific Gyre, but I never felt as compelled as when I saw this plastic Hokusai to forego bottled water for my refillable metal bottle, for starters. The art exhibition didn’t detract or distract from the Aquarium’s mission, or from the science at all. Other institutions may do very well to follow suit.
