350 Earth
Launched last week on the eve of the climate negotiations currently being held in Cancun, Mexico, 350 EARTH is the world’s first art exhibit large enough to be seen from space.
In over a dozen places around the globe, well-known artists sketched simple designs communicating climate solutions and climate impacts, and huge numbers of people –thousands at a time– gathered to execute these designs in deserts, on snowfields, any place with a good background. All those bodies were photographed by satellites generously donated by DigitalGlobe, orbiting the EARTH from 76,000 feet above the equator.
There are some amazing images from Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and Manhattan in the U.S., from Spain, from the Dominican Republic, from Mexico, from Canada, New Delhi, Egypt, Cancun, on and on and on.
From the 350.org team:
The final event took place on the beach at Brighton in the UK, where Thom Yorke (the lead singer of Radiohead) assembled a few thousand of his closest friends and biggest fans to brave the cold on England’s coast. Together, they formed the image of the legendary King Canute attempting to hold back the waters.
Over the course of the last seven days artists have paid homage to elephants, eagles, scarab beetles, and polar bears; they’ve called attention to rising seas and gathering storms and dying rivers; they’ve shown how solar cookers and careful farming can help reverse the tide.
But it’s appropriate to end with an image of King Canute, because he sends a powerful message to the world leaders gathering today here in Cancun, Mexico for the next round of UN climate negotiations. King Canute wanted to prove to his subjects that God, not man, ruled the waves. He commanded the ocean to recede and it paid no heed. But now we’re in the opposite situation; humans are raising the seas and destabilizing the rest of the planet with our carbon emissions. As artists–and scientists, and religious leaders, and everyone else who makes up the 350.org coalition–keep insisting, this time it’s up to us to take action.
Our leaders won’t do what we need them to do until we build a movement powerful enough to challenge the might of the fossil fuel industry. All around the earth this week, artists have shown that they’re going to be a crucial part of that fight. We’re going to have to call on them many more times in the months and years ahead.
The expectations for these talks are not as high as they were for last year’s conference in Copenhagen, but there is hope to be found– in the eyes of the 300 youth activists gathered here in Cancun, and in the incredible 350.org team assembled here that is already getting to work delivering the EARTH photos to country delegates, passing out 350 pins and ties, and planning actions to keep science at the center of these negotiations.
These negotiations won’t move until we force political change in individual countries, and that’s exactly what you’re helping to do. Working together, we can move the world a little closer to the sea-change we must have. King Canute couldn’t stop the waves–but all of us working together can keep the oceans in check for centuries to come.
For more, see earth.350.org
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