By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Climate action group 350.org wants us to see, really see, what’s happening as the result of climate change here on Earth.
So it’s taken to space to get a better view. Satellites began snapping photos of giant art installations, many involving humans forming pictures, last Friday and will continue through this week (Nov. 20-28). The photos include one of a giant eagle in Los Angeles, created to represent the “Earth to Sky” solutions to climate change; a mural in New York City that shows how the area would look after the seas rise; a picture of a girl on a delta in Spain and a flash flood in New Mexico created by more than 1,000 volunteers with blue posters.
In Santa Domingo, artist Vanessa Dalmau designed an image of a person standing on the roof of their house, a depiction of what can happen when rising seas caused by climate change threaten coastlines everywhere. Members of 350 Domininga, a group that is leading the 350 movement in the Caribbean, helped create the art installation.
A figure seeks shelter from rising seas in an art installation in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic. (Satellite photo: Digital Globe.)
“The picture is a poignant visual reminder of not only how vulnerable our coastal communities are to climate change, but how our entire planet is much like that single home on the beach, perched on the edge of an unpredictable future,” according to 350.org, which is featuring all the satellite photos at its website.
Below are the images from Los Angeles and New York. (Visit the 350.org website to see more photos from around the world as they come in.)
An eagle represents the Earth to sky solutions needed to climate change. (Aerial Photo: Jeff Pantukhoff, Spectral Q)
In Los Angeles, community gardeners turned out to help create the Eagle project, which also got support from solar panel component companies, Olin Brass and Madico. The backyard gardeners represent a way to reduce food transportation, fuel and storage.
Solar, meanwhile, will be a big part of the carbon solution for the city of Angels, which has set an ambitious goal of reducing carbon emissions to 35 percent below 1990 levels. Those who want to know more can see Green LA Initiative.
This eagle represents a movement ready to take off against climate change. (Photo: Digital Globe)
The satellite photo from Los Angeles shows the size of the art project from another perspective. The symbols above the bird mean ‘well being’ in Inuktitut, the Inuit language, which stands for ‘Harmony, Balance & Health,’ reports 350.org. The saying captures the goal of the international movement and also harkens back to its roots in 2007. That’s when 350.org’s predecessor group Step It Up, began meetings and climate actions, and when the Inuit people issued a global warming warning to the world with the image of a drum dancer and the word “listen” arranged on the sea ice on Canada’s Baffin Island.
The artist behind that project and the one in LA John Quigley, also known as Spectral Q, told 350.org that when the Eagle, representing clean energy, takes off, so will our prosperity.
Below see the satellite image of a rooftop art installation in Brooklyn designed by the artist Molly Dilworth, known for a recent life-size work of painted waters in Times Square. That five-block installations also was created to show the predicted unfolding of unmitigated climate change.
The Brooklyn Rooftop artwork was done in collaboration with the NYC Cool Roofs initiative, which promotes painting roof tops with a reflective, white paint to help cool them, reducing air conditioning requirements and the Heat Island effect.
Painting a rooftop white not only reduces energy use, it can also make it last longer, according to the NYC Cool Roofs, which has already helped cover more than 1 million square feet of roof tops since its founding in 2009.
This rooftop art installation depicts what would happen to the N.Y. and N.J. coastlines if the seas rise 7 meters. (Photo: Digital Globe)
350.org founder Bill McKibben noted that the Brooklyn piece will serve as a reminder to those flying overhead that the largest city in the U.S. is vulnerable to the rising oceans that are coming as the arctic melts.
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