Next Steps for the Arts in Engaging Audiences With Climate Change Science and Solutions
Abstract
Next Steps for the Arts in Engaging Audiences with Climate Change Science and Solutions
Andrew Revkin arevkin@ngs.org For more than three decades, a wide array of communication efforts have aimed to engage various publics on climate change risks and responses in fictional and documentary films, photography of melting ice and struggling wildlife, and countless books and articles in every possible print and online medium. While some output has won awards, it's hard to point to clear impact, in fairly stark contrast to successes with more familiar environmental threats like the pesticide perils conveyed in "Silent Spring," or China's smog crisis, revealed in "Under the Dome" - the deeply personal account of the costs of air pollution by the journalist Chai Jing. Is anthropogenic climate change - driven mainly by the same gas that's the bubbles in beer - simply too big and complex for storytelling as we've known it? A second front is emerging. In the background, through at least two decades, artists have been having a go at climate change, in media ranging from paint to theater to dance to public art to cello compositions charting rising temperatures. In a short presentation noting some examples, the longtime climate journalist Andrew Revkin (a performing songwriter on the side http://j.mp/revkinmusic), will propose that the limits of the arts have yet to be tested - and the possibilities of science/arts collaborations have yet to be fully explored. He'll offer a call to the arts community to dig in more, testing new narratives and partnerships, not just new media. After 30 years of prize-winning climate and sustainability reporting, mostly for The New York Times, in March Revkin joined the staff of the National Geographic Society to help expand grants and other support for journalism and storytelling around the world aiming to build a more sustainable human journey on our changing planet. http://j.mp/revkinNGS- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMED42A..05R
- Keywords:
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- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0850 Geoscience education research;
- EDUCATION