Three-quarters of Americans are alarmed, concerned, or cautious about climate change but need tools and a push to action, or action beyond reducing their personal footprint, according to Yale’s Climate Communication study. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/ ]
ACW’s Climate Action Affinity Group is gathering and has room for more people. Most initial participants depicted the role of environment in their lives as central or daunting – a mountain, stream, or runaway train – or as “taking care of my little patch.”
We’re challenging our collective selves to build a project around activating the 75% through arts. Those arts could be visual, performing, installation, film, books, comedy or other media. Largely because many of us shared the Mississippi River Pearl https://www.arttochangetheworld.org/mississippi-management-and-watershed-project experience, we agreed we’ll focus on water, perhaps in terms of lakes, drought and floods, or how water is used in everything from agriculture to food and industrial processing.
Our homework: To help with thinking about projects, find examples of other individuals and organizations working on these issues, using arts to motivate the public. Nationwide/world-wide for examples, and locally so we don’t duplicate and maybe can collaborate. We’ll collect contacts and ideas relating to specific bodies of water, rivers, and watersheds in the Twin Cities – and invite these contacts to interact with Pearl while she is at MWMO.
We recognize that the arc is long, that significant change may not come in our lifetimes, but we are optimistic for the longer term and committed to following Patrick Kennedy Williams’ advice on How to Cope with Climate Anxiety (see graphic).
Watch the ACW Changemaker Reports for the monthly meeting dates and contact Margo Ashmore at margo@margoashmore.com for the link or meeting place.