Conversations | Confronting Climate Change Denial

good afternoon welcome to conversations Art Basel Miami Beach I'm Edie Winkelmann and our panel this afternoon is confronting climate change denial we have a sailboat an incredible panel of experts and advocates on this topic I would like to address the elephant in the room which is that an Art Fair is not an ecologically friendly venture Art Basel is very aware of this in fact Art Basel has already initiated some long term plans and strategies to address their own carbon footprint there are members of Art Basel x' team will be very happy to explain any more about that if anyone has particular questions but today we're very fortunate to have two artists who work in this topic starting in the left hand side Alexis Rahman who's based in New York Alison Janie Hamilton who is also based in New York David Wallace wells who's a deputy editor and climate columnist at New Yorker and the author of the uninhabitable earth and Sonya Sakura ray who is a environmental advocate based here in Miami to guide us through the conversation is stephanie hustler who is a director at the Trondheim quince Tala in Norway and I would ask you all to join me in giving them a very warm welcome [Applause] one other quick note we will have copies of David's book and some of Alexis's book on stage for a book signing after the conversation so thank you thank you ad and thanks for the invitation to add Winckelmann who put together this panel together with Jenny Fulton and thanks to our basil for bringing us here so in 1962 Rachel Carson a marine biologist and poet wrote a book called silent spring in which he addressed the problems of DDT and insecticide that was used at a time and whose environmental impacts became known now we're more than half a century down the road 9 at 2019 and we're becoming aware more and more of the ecological urgency mainly climate change especially in a city like Miami that is going to be you know affected by rising sea levels sooner rather than later I think this topic is particularly relevant to address and also considering that hopefully many of you are interested in discussing how to offset or how to reduce our footprint on the planet so it's fantastic that we have so many different perspectives here also well artists writers and you know people who are involved in policy and and activism to address some of these topics the overarching theme is climate change but also climate change denial I live in Europe and in Europe climate change denial is you know it exists but it is much more less relevant or much you know less powerful than here and I know that David you've written about that topic also partly in your book dionan habitable earth and perhaps we should start by discussing why climate is so difficult to tackle or what creates this kind of fear in people that produces climate change denial and David if you don't mind I would love for you to start yeah I think each of us knows why it's hard because none of us is living as though the crisis is as urgent as it is so in the u.s. we often think about fossil fuel executives as being forces of great denial or the Republican Party but I think that sort of let's many of us on the left off the hook we are all of us living in denial when you really understand that the scale of the crisis and the way it will transform the shape of human life on this planet over the next century it requires a much larger commitment than almost anyone on the planet aside from maybe Greta tunberg is really making and I think there are a lot of reasons for that there's a simple fact that it's not comfortable to consider really scary scenarios we especially in the US we've been raised to expect that the future is more prosperous and more just than the past we want to believe that our own lives will be and the lives of our children will be fulfilling and in ways that you know we were taught to expect as children we have a kind of what economists call a status quo bias where we're unwilling to contemplate radical change and certainly to choose to make radical change and then there's sort of obstacles all the way up the political ladder through you know the social level and the political level and the geopolitical level and facing all of those obstacles to action it's sort of natural to turn away and not want to look squarely at the problem itself you know unfortunately that's sort of what we need to do we can't really afford to live in denial much longer scientists say that we have about a decade to cut in half global emissions to give us a decent chance of staying below two degrees of warming which is a level of warming may call catastrophic and the island nations of the world called genocide and which would be really crippling for a place like Miami Beach this is not a binary system it's not like if we fail that test then it's all over but we don't have very much time to secure a future that anyone in this room today would recognize as livable and prosperous and just and if we have a hope of doing that we really have to sort of pull our heads out of the sand as uncomfortable as that may be the anthropologists are not Singh actually wrote about that we require new arts of noticing in an age of climate change where previous certainties are becoming completely unrecognizable to us she also writes about a myth of progress which is something that you just addressed and as kind of myth that in the global north most of us sort of grew up with and so there's something quite fundamental about that change that we need to embrace and we need to accept and also you know tackle in a way and Alice and I was wondering if you could say something about you know let's say art as a different tool of noticing in the sense of a net sing so art as a way to not necessarily reaffirm certain myths such as the myth of progress but to see things differently yeah of course I mean art and the arts in general have always had the ability to to sensitize and to make and to bring you know whether that's visually or sonically you know bring to bear what's happening for some in a more intangible or abstract way and unfortunately as you you know just mention this idea of what's going on with the climate for some it's this kind of abstract kind of idea that's kind of out there in the future and it's almost overwhelming to figure out a way to deal with it however for many you know that's a really a temporal kind of disconnect because for many climate changes here right now and it really has been and so for many populations there's not a luxury of being able to worry about the future because it's now um there's climate gentrification there's the ways that you know the the as as the hurricanes become more and more intense which is you know evidence-based that you know the intensity every year there's there's some conversations about the amount the frequency but definitely there's widespread agreement on what's happening with the intensity higher storm surges more rainfall more flooding and so if you look at something like for example the history of you know as a Floridian hurricanes are you know something that's always been kind of culturally a part of my world if you look at the history of how these natural disasters really illuminate social disasters that are already existing you really get a chance to see how for many what's most worrying is not necessarily the science in what's physically happening but the social aftermath of that thing and artists have always tried to address that for you know whether it's Zora Neale Hurston using the great you know the Great Miami hurricane I'm Okeechobee hurricane is this backdrop for their Eyes Were Watching God or Richard Wright you know commenting on the Great Mississippi Flood I mean you have all of these models and examples of artists trying to grapple with this volatile environment especially where I'm from the region where I'm from which is the American South and so you know the Arts has the ability to kind of bring together this really complex conversation and I think also you know kind of destabilizing some of the myths that are existing for example you know this part of the country believes that climate change is real and this part of the country is in denial I mean I think it's a lot more complex than that I think that the dialogue that is made available in the conversation in the world of art of the arts I think has there's an opportunity to kind of collapse some of those those barriers that I think are you know it's a culture war that doesn't have to necessarily be and I'm curious and excited about some of the ways that the arts has the ability to further some of those conversations and this is a perfect segue to Alexis you made a work called manifest destiny in 1999 where you depicted the Brooklyn Bridge after the after natural disasters such as global warming for example and this was 20 years ago so since then or even before that you've been making work addressing climate change and ecological havoc that some parts of humanity are wreaking on a planet so how have you seen or what's your perspective on how the conversation has changed well it's I'm very conflicted because when I made when I started making work about these issues in the mid-90s after a conversation with a paleontologist when I asked him what are you afraid of and he mentioned global warming climate changing he explained this scenario I felt that we were in for a rough ride because it was the perfect storm of being invisible being about long-term sacrifice and being in the realm of bigger than us humans it's God's domain if you want to go that direction and certainly individuals rightly feel helpless in the face of this let alone be willing to sacrifice so that was in 1994 and in Duluth coldest day I've ever been in 37 below paradoxically but what I realized was that was the perfect thing for me to start thinking about in terms of my work I'd been making paintings and drawings about the history of Natural History and the biodiversity crisis but I saw that as the perfect storm for myself of it seemed apocalyptic and I knew it it was real and it had John rrah implications like some of my favorite things as a child like plan of the apes or whatever you want to call it and I think that's one of the problems with the genre of climate change is that it resembles or mimics other things because is incomprehensible so I decided then and I'd say a good 80% of my work since then has been about those issues and manifest destiny came from a conversation I was having with Arnold lame and then the director of the Brooklyn Museum and he asked me if I would be willing to make a painting for their grand reopening in 2004 was the long way off and I said well why don't I make a painting about climate change that has to do with Brooklyn and I got the green light more or less and I decided that I wanted to approach the best or most you know expert scientists at the time which happened to be James Hanson and Cynthia Rosen swag and they were very open and generous to me so I went through a list of people to talk to before I get I allowed myself to permission to even think about what the painting was going to be other than I knew I was gonna be standing on the banks of the East River looking towards Brooklyn and whatever the science told me would dictate the iconography of the painting and to make a long story short 82 feet rise which is just over the Brooklyn Bridge you know whatever the bridge part of it not this stanchion and then I spent years doing research and you know wasn't a full-time job I had to do other things to make a living during that period in terms of art stuff but now the paintings in the Smithsonian and which is great and that's where it should be as I kind of you know a bitter icon of American industrial might that's also beautiful because it brings together these different disciplines art science history of course which we need to do if we want to address climate change from different perspectives and somehow account for the complexity that it presents us with Sonia you work in a much more hands-on weight and maybe art is very often do and you work quite a bit on affecting policy and working with organizations for you know to protect water and nature at large so how do you deal with these topics and can the arts somehow you know add to that conversation from your point of view yeah so absolutely I truly believe that it begins here on the local level right I mean that's where you begin to feel these beginning effects here we are in beautiful Miami again the weather spectacular you know the water's pristine at least it it looks like that but it really starts at that local connection to the people around you your families your neighbors you begin to to realize that like we're all in this together and you know these hurricanes and these storm events that are happening immediately put people into this sort of survival mode right and it's like it's happening it's happening more frequently it's in our face I mean here in Miami we certainly we see it during certain times of the year that it's literally in our face where the water comes up right we have these King tide events sunny day flooding as it's called on they're very dramatic moments and and the water comes up and it's for a period of two or three days so you see it and you're supposed to really connect with that and understand this is the the future it's a snapshot right so take that information nature is telling us this is how it's going to react these are the changes that are happening already so it's really on us to be able to act on that and ideally through the inspiration of artists I mean I'm I'm all we're moved by art right so if anything we can separate our political affiliations and just be in those moments connected in those artistic connections and and Inspira inspiring you know calls of action right there I think it's on all of us as ed was mentioning I think Art Basel plays in an immense role in showcasing that right it's one week here in Miami and and it begins in those moments when it comes to action again we've been talking about this for long enough you know this isn't a new phenomenon this has been decades right obviously there's there's resources behind all of this funneling our denial I should say and and we're becoming more and more aware of where those funds are coming from but I think there's a real cry out there I mean literally our children are are crying and screaming in a way that it's its front and center asking for a climate emergency climate crisis call it whatever it is it's happening and it's very real and so the work that I really try and do at least locally here in Miami is to really again connect on that local realm where people can feel like connected and there's movement in those steps from the local to the state level you know I'm here in in rain boots today you know actonclimate joined by my husband who's a state senator pushing for legislation it's very real to us it's a family affair and it's gotta be 24/7 it's not something we talk about and we shelf and then we talk about again it's got to be in our art it's gonna be in our communications as daunting and as heavy as it is it's here and so of course there has to be more promise and hope in that space it's not meant to be you know this is suffering it's it's a slow-moving hurricane in many regards but there's solutions out there and that's the other beautiful part with art is that you know if you're able to project and design future scenarios we're seeing this you know through architecture and augmented reality you're able to kind of design that future vision that you're looking for right with nature in that space and so I think more than anything you know the art the architecture world can really help inspire us to present that that future vision that we're trying to get to it's it's heavy it's hard but it's doable I mean if there's anything worth saving its us it's our children and so it should be pulling on us and it should be spoken about and talked about an act upon at all times thank you I go back to you David in your book you present an overwhelming amount of facts you ride among other things that by 2045 South Miami or Miami Beach actually may be flooded up to 14% and you present a ton of other facts as well I believe you said that if the wealthiest 10% reduced their emissions to the average European level we would be reducing emissions by 30 percent and I was really you know overwhelmed in a way by all of the facts and a research but it also seemed absolutely necessary to you know actually present the wealth of material or this overwhelming mass of information to people out there just to show how complex the topic is but also to show that it's maybe not that hard to you know not create correlations or cuz or not causalities necessarily but some sort of correlation even if they are highly complex that's being said so if the facts are there if the science is there why is there still denial or why is it so difficult to push through and actually make you know legislations happen international agreements happen I mean the u.s. withdrew from the Paris agreement in 2017 which is yeah insane well I think that true what we think of as true denial is actually becoming considerably less popular in the u.s. depending on how you ask the question the polls show between 70 and 80 percent of Americans are concerned about climate change to some degree and that those numbers are up at least 10 in some cases 15 percent just over the last year so it's moving very rapidly in the right direction and you know still 25 percent of America is more people than I would like to be living in true climate denial but 25 percent of Americans believe that aliens live on planet Earth with us so I don't think that we need to necessarily yeah I don't think we need to defer to those people on climate policy in the same way that we don't hand the keys of NASA over to them either um I think the bigger problem is what I was talking about before the this sort of forces of complacency and inaction that function as denial and you know I think there are a lot of reasons for that I think each of us benefit every day from the fossil economy and we are uncomfortable even can how to reorganize our lives even though in some cases it wouldn't require such a dramatic reorganization we don't even want to think about that and that holds true like I said a few minutes ago at really every level of social organization you know I think if you imagine is this trajectory of climate consciousness growing in that in the way that it's growing it won't be very long before our democratic politics will be unable to resist that call to more action but the question is what kind of action will be taken and you know I think it's a crisis I could tomorrow catastrophe that the u.s. pulled out of Paris but no major industrial nation in the world is on track to meet its commitments under Paris the only two countries in the world that are honoring those commitments at the moment are Morocco and Gambia even if we all did honor those commitments we would be on track for over three degrees of warming which would mean hundreds of millions of climate refugees cities in South Asia and the Middle East that would be so hot in summer you couldn't walk around without risking heatstroke or death hundreds of millions of people dying of air pollution you know we would lock in the permanent loss of the planets ice sheets which would produce not just eighty feet of sea-level rise but 250 feet of sea level rise 600 trillion dollars in climate damages which is double all the wealth that exists in the world today this is the world that where we'd be heading for if every country in the world was honoring the Paris commitments and not a single nation is so you know the question of how we move forward to me it's a incredibly difficult puzzle that has challenges like I said at every level the level that most concerns me is the geopolitical one I can see national governments taking quite fast action and actually over the last year we've seen a conservative Parliament in the UK declare a climate emergency and commit to zero carbon by 2050 the governments of Denmark and Finland and Norway have all made quite ambitious commitments to decarbonization but looking at the global picture you know China is the world's biggest emitter and they're responsible for about 30% of emissions the u.s. is second with about 15 percent and even though and then it's India at seven and then after that no other country is more than three so no nation in the world is like having a clear significant impact on the climate of the future even a country like China that's contributing 1/3 of all emissions if they rapidly decarbonize and no one else in the world takes action then it'll be basically for naught and that's especially true for a country like Australia or any of the Scandinavian countries they could decarbonize tomorrow never emit another ton of carbon and they'd still be living with the same climate as they would if unless anybody unless everybody else in the world took action too and that's this real collective action problem who's going to lead the way and why would anyone act if the world isn't acting in concert I don't know that I see a solution to that problem which is the thing that scares me most the Paris Accords were kind of an attempt to organize a global coordinated political movement but they were undertaken at a time when so many countries in the world that were treating from international organization and international cooperation were treating from and into a sort of more narrow sense of nationalistic self-interest I worry that that will continue and will swamp any real effort to move together which is why I've started to think personally that it might be a more productive model not to think of that you know the sort of international UN system as the basis for climate action but something like the nuclear non-proliferation agreements of the 1980s when the world's two superpowers the US no Soviet Union came to an agreement and I'm basically bullied the rest of the world to act in concert would take a huge change of perspective in the US and in China to make that happen but on some of I still see that as a I know it may be a more plausible path for than one in which we get all hundred eighty six nations of the world to agree to particular standards that they then honor given that we've you know we came to an international agreement in Rio in 1992 in Montreal and Kyoto and now in Paris and none of those have produced any progress on climate at all I mean now we're talking mainly about the sort of meta level of nation-states but also intergovernmental organizations and so on and of course these are extremely important but the base upon which they're build is also embedded in racial gendered histories you know that are deeply unjust so if we rely on these sort of structures to solve the problem that we're in I think you know we're not we're not really going towards a structure or really you know tackling the problem at its root of course it is important to use the tools that we have as of today you know such as legal systems etc but I do think that we need to also listen to two other kinds of voices you know that have been systematically excluded from these kinds of conversations listen you mentioned those a little bit earlier and I know that some of your work is also dealing with that quite particularly especially a research into hurricanes historically and today and how they affect black communities I think you looked at two particular hurricanes from 1926 and 1928 for your work at Storm King quite recently could you talk a bit more about your research and in particular relating to what a yeah the injustice is right yeah so for the storm King project it was a monumental Amash to people who perished in these two hurricanes the first was the Great Miami hurricane of 1926 and then the Okeechobee hurricane of 1928 and I'd come across this song that was written by Judge Jackson called Florida storm and in the kind of we call it flora Bama kind of coast there was this style of music called shape-note singing it was this kind of religious hymnal type of call-and-response music and almost all of it that I kind of went through was this kind of religious and spiritual music but I found this one song that was a secular hymn that was written called Florida storm and it was in response to the Great Miami hurricane and in the same year that that song was released then the Okeechobee hurricane happened and that's the one that I'd mentioned earlier that was the backdrop for Zora Neale Hurston her eyes were watching God and so in this second hurricane thousands of black migrant workers were killed in that storm and buried in these mass unmarked pits and only pretty recently did did they even get like a marker I think there's like one kind of in the deltona area now but you know those learning about those two storms but not only the storms themselves but the response and lack of response and the kind of inhumane treatment of the people who dealt with those really kind of took me on this research journey into looking at these patterns of storms so whether you're looking at you know the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 we're really set this narrative of like looting and like you know Oh what happens when you know people are kind of on the loose and these myths of you know which communities are a threat in the aftermath of storms when really they're the victim of this of what's happened and then you could look at again I mentioned the the flood and missus it I mean um yeah the the Mississippi flood in 1927 that Richard Wright fictionalized or drew from and then you look at and you know of course I don't even have to mention you know the horrific aftermath of Katrina and then when I was working on that storm king project we had also just had Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and I'm looking at these images of you know the president of United States throwing paper towels into this it's this crowd of people and so you know it really got me thinking about how what happened after these huge disastrous weather events it's really just kind of a microcosm of what already happens on a day to day level with communities and it also brings up you know the fact that the people who are contributing the least to the issue of climate change are the ones who are suffering the most now have in the past and will continue and then that kind of just links to the whole history of a social and cultural experience of the landscape in relationship to what's going on as we imagine a continued intensity that's relating to climate and it's not just hurricanes that's that's the kind of angle I took most recently but you can see it in so many different ways and and you look at the populations that are most vulnerable it's you know poor folks rural folks women people who rely on agriculture I'm speaking the u.s. context but you can completely see parallels all over and again that the the irony of it is also that not only is it that the people that are contributing the least are bearing the brunt but a lot of those communities have long-standing traditions and ways that those who can are contributing the most the problem could actually learn from you know and in the u.s. context a lot of that again it's that kind of quote/unquote flyover country or in the south or an Appalachian these places where you would assume that okay those that's where the climate deniers must be but really those are the places where you see some of the most sustainable practices where the ways that waste there's less waste there's more sustainable practice food practices and a lot of things that people those of us who live in these kind of cultural capitals and the urban city centers and the coastal parts of this country could really learn from and so you know I think that you know with you know given art's ability to bring folks together and to have these kind of conversations one thing that I'm hoping to see is you know more partnerships with some of our major institutions with you know the the less sexy you know local and regional arts and cultural spaces that really have a lot to offer to the conversation based on what the populations there have been doing for decades and even centuries I just wanted to build listening to you know your work on hurricane Miami and and the history there what's interesting too is those communities there are you know that eventually moved into those spaces in Belle Glade and Pahokee you know there's a dike now that protects future flooding which is so interesting because those areas are really low-lying parts of the state but now you have communities that you're trying to protect from future flooding so again I mean that was in the 20s but you know hurricanes are supposed to shake us up into how we're building designing redesigning our cities you know and so if we're not learning during those moments I mean it becomes really lost revenue I mean we're not making economic sense to continue to invest in these in these unsustainable practices and so I think that's also what's happening is that you know that's coming up now and people are saying you know I want to know where my public tax dollars are going I mean if it's to basically sustain you know communities that should not be living and on you know low-lying parts of the state but then again those are AG communities that provide food for us and so it's this weird dynamic and certainly on you know social justice front climate gentrification you know what's happening to is higher elevate elevation you know parts of South Florida are becoming very desirable right I mean we have to eventually see that the water is coming and you're gonna go towards less risky parts of the cities and and the region what does that do right that those are shock factors to huge communities that have been there for a long time I mean I'm a fourth generation you know Floridian I want to be here I want my kids to be here but I mean there does come a point that you have to look at the future and you want to go and move and live in places that are less risky and so you know it's just interesting to see all of this play out it's very real time its history you know repeating itself in many ways but I think again art and culture is supposed to help kind of shake us up where we're not this is daunting the science the information sometimes I mean when you're living in this space you don't realize we're in our own bubble sometimes and the science and the data isn't is overwhelming right and so you want to just kind of put it to the side and tell me what's in front of me but yeah you know sometimes that's why science and art need to better merge together where you can described in your artwork real relevant data that might not be understood on you know a New York Times piece for instance right but you can maybe understand it through storytelling and through you know paintings I think that's where people are more likely to be able to tap into through their Instagram feed etc and so if there's a way to pull in that information and that data through those realms I really foresee especially our culture in our generation now where we just absorb all of this in this cyclical 24/7 cycle of social media that's where we need to plant the information it's gotta be there where we're feeling it because if not you know we're waiting for the the scientists to save us or we're waiting for people to pay attention to the science and it's just too much the data is is is is overwhelming for the common you know person to kind of capture and absorb all of that so feminist theorist donna haraway calls it staying with the trouble you know she says that it's not easy to make causalities but that's also the interesting place to be you know because now you mentioned social media and I agree of course we need to use the tools that we have but social media also produce emissions so you know how do we balance these kinds of these kinds of issues and it's extremely complex but maybe also an exciting you know moment to start from and to also stay in this complexity and I wonder some I worry sometimes that like being in the in sitting with it is just a strategy of normalization and acclimatization I've done I did some reporting earlier this spring in California about the fires and was you know horrified as a New Yorker to encounter people who had lived through nine wildfires and were not even now even considering moving and I said you know how could how could you how could you live through this and look at this landscape and consider it habitable and they said oh but you know you're from the arc right and I said yeah and they said well you live through Sandy right and I was like you know fair point you know I think that there is a way in which extreme weather and storytelling about climate change is waking us all up but to judge us by the actions we're taking we're not nearly as awakened as we should be and especially when you look at all of these issues from a climate justice perspective I really worry that you know our primary cultural response will be diff'ent to define more and more suffering as acceptable especially when it's in the global south or in communities within the US that are already impoverished or marginalized I think that we're seeing those impacts already there been studies showing that countries across the equatorial band of the planet have lost as much as a quarter of their GDP over the last four decades because of climate change that the whole phenomenon of Islamic terrorism is tied up in climate impacts but we're not treating them as first of all as climate stories and second of all as a reason to really dramatically change our own behavior we're just you know sort of retreating into a narrower sense of our own self-interest and trying to protect ourselves which is to say accommodate ourselves or design a future for ourselves in a world that is nevertheless suffering at unprecedented levels there's something quite remarkable about the human ability to create an outside or to conceive of ourselves as outside of the things that are happening which is a modernist construct now that we divide nature and culture and we think of ourselves as being within culture and without you know nature and one might think that you know with hurricanes and so on we need to realize that we're actually part of nature and yet there's no escaping you know but yeah there's something quite persistent about that particular myth of this divide and our own hour in the global North you know safety LX is what yeah you wanted to say something and then I have a question I think that it's not it I think strands of that or a modernist construct nature is outside but you know humans are tribal to the bone or the DNA and you know we destroyed all other hominids or had sex with them and then destroyed them or absorb them throughout our evolutionary history we're intensely tribal in this room I'm sure and that's something that I think you know we have to acknowledge in terms of what we're dealing with here what was the question well no I mean yes absolutely but that's also why we need to see these connections know that we're not separate from a community who absorbs you know David David solution of having you know using the nuclear powers bullying the rest of the you know the model of Russia and America from the Accord I think is the most coherent argument or the you know plan of heard yet because it was successful and you know that is something to hope for I think in terms of what's possible I was recently talking to Christiana Figueres who used to run the UNFCCC she was like the in charge of the Paris Accords basically and I asked her how we could try to convince more nations of the world to see to see their own shared faith and take action in response to that understanding and she's not just this sort of one of the architects of the Paris Accord she also never runs an organization called global optimism so she's like you know she is she's an optimist and she said we can she said the mistake of the Paris Accords was to try to appeal to everyone's that's nature's best better angels of their nature and she said what we need to do instead is make a case through self-interest which she said you could actually do which i think is really important and it's been an under told part of the story through conversations about public health because when you talk about climate change generally you know what the US does or what California does or what all of Europe does or what India does it though impacts won't be contained within those countries and so it's really hard to bring them into alignment with their own goals what the u.s. does the benefits will be distributed globally or the negative impacts will be distributed globally but public health is much more local and it's especially that's especially true when you start thinking of these things in terms of climate justice you know the people who live near chemical plants are those who can't live anywhere else and the people who are breathing in polluted air are those people who can't afford to live elsewhere and the benefits of cleaning up just that pollution are actually they're really striking you know 9 million people are dying globally every year from air pollution which is a Holocaust that we're committing every year and you know the the the Economist recently came out with a report saying that the benefit of the coal the cost of the environmental cost of the coal industry in the u.s. is totally outweighed the economic benefits over the last decade and that the public health impact has been so bad that we have been better off all told if we just retired the coal industry entirely and so I think there is like a kind of a public a public health case to be made there but I also do worry about approaching the whole problem through this narrow self-interested lens because I I don't know I just don't want to live in a world where the only way we can persuade anyone to do anything is to appeal to their self-interest I just have one anecdote that might occurred to me while you were mentioning that I've I've been thinking a lot about Cleveland in this 60s and Carl Stokes and the ability to get the Clean Water Act passed and with with his brother and and one of the things that and for those of you that don't know Carl Stokes is the first african-american mayor of a major American city and he had the brilliance to see that environmental issues and justice were racial justice at that point the only people that were living in Cleveland proper were African Americans because they couldn't afford to flee and it was so polluted and impossible for them to leave that they were literally it was making them sick so I think they're there that is a success story from our history as a country that we might want to keep in mind yeah just to add to that I I'm I think looking back at that environmental historical moments it's I mean they're pivotal that's where that local change happened right the water is so polluted and I think in the case of other cities you know I think it was Boston where there you know the river literally caught on fire I mean those are real dramatic moments that shifted people's perception that it was happening on the notion of just public health I think you really will awaken people right when you're talking about those in health air quality water quality I mean those are things that you have control over you want to have control over and it's not just traditional you know health its wellness too right I mean to your point about nature sometimes I'm most connected by just sitting in a park and just shutting off a little bit you know I think that's lost a bit and you hear things and the world around you is in a way speaking to you right and and and that's needed more and more I mean there was a moment or if you're privileged enough to go out to national parks and feel that connection it's phenomenal but for the day-to-day and certainly the most underserved you know the best that they have are their their community parks around them and we need to connect into those spaces and tap into that because they're there's a real awareness that happens in those moments when you you you kind of turn off and you hear and you see the water in the stream and you become conscious what's in there what is that oil slick or why am I not breathing so well today those I think are those moments that that create these pivotal moments of crisis where local action happens and essentially hopefully state and federal action happens I'm I'm affirmed I just I really think it begins sometimes when we we quiet ourselves and we listen and we can actually find more answers with nature but the one thing I mean I I totally agree with what you're saying the one thing that I might complicate that a little bit is that a lot of the underserved populations that we have live in rural places and are living you know and our laboring everyday in nature you know and are really experiencing not only the beauty and and everything you just said that I can that I you know totally get but they're also experiencing firsthand the violence and the intersections of all that from a class race and gendered perspective kind of in that day to day economy of of various parts of the country for example whether that turpentine farming which just you know it was something that you know right on the heels of American slavery slavery like right through reconstruction up until I think the last barrel of turpentine left the South Georgia northern Florida region in 2001 so that you know it's a it's a continued connection between what's happening in our rural spaces with kind of these again disasters and usually I am very optimistic about when I think about the the idea and the proposal of looking at through public health I can't help but think about Flint Michigan and how still you know not enough has been done there or cancer alley and I become a little bit skeptical about handling the issue through public health because I think it might depend on like who who's the population that's suffering or you know I also worry about you know again thinking back on like on Galveston or these other disasters and this threat and myth of a population the population that is the most vulnerable that's hurting now becomes like the myth of like a plague like these people are sick and that means X Y Z for us who are having any means so there's a push and pull there that I worry about but I do think that there's there I like the idea of there being other kind of avenues and angles I'm I would be curious to see where Public Health could take could take the you know if you can really like run the ball you know to use a football analogy I'm from Florida you know but um to you know in the face of something like cancer alley especially you know I'm just wondering where are the limits and where are the opportunities I think doesn't expect to you know having to really rethink our value systems and a way that we actually construct a you know as a political legal economic systems that we live in and whether there's a way to actually you know undo and rethink them much more deeply I know that we have to stop soon and I wanted to open up the floor for questions okay lots of hands great microphones are just way too low I can yes it's very interesting but I believe that nuclear power is kind of a more of a centralized thing and I think we really need is as you say to rethink the social system and have maybe more passive things like solar power and other new technologies rather than something that also can add additional pollution but you know perhaps I'm just coming from a scientific combined with technology point of view which I'm not seeing a lot of on the stand but I do appreciate everyone's input I don't recall anyone mentioning so nuclear entered energy but can to the point of solar I mean I don't think anyone questions that I think you have to see who's doing it right I mean I'll call out the state of Florida right now we're not doing enough of that I think we're at barely three percent renewable energy whereas Texas in California or 20% or above so absolutely but you know there's monopolies there systems in play there those are power structures that we need to get through on the nuclear point I mean yeah look we have a power plant here and most vulnerable part of the country and we're still fighting regulations on trying to expand their footprint they want a second power plant so these these are real issues that we're already having but if you if you don't have alternatives and and those industries coming in and helping the political system see that there's a there are there's opportunities where they can succeed by announcing renewable energy plans unfortunately these monopolies sort of dominate the political systems we have made like enormous progress on renewables that prices have fallen dramatically over the last decade and much of the world it's now cost competitive with dirty energy in some parts of the world it's even cheaper to build new renewable capacity than continue running old fossil infrastructure but over that same period of time we've made no progress in the ratio between green energy and dirty energy globally so even though solar and wind is much much cheaper than it was a decade or certainly four decades ago proportionally we're doing just as bad as we did in the 1970s in the 1980s in the 1990s and I think that suggests actually that we do need more centralized action through political and policy change when you when you sort of understand that in order to get a handle on warming we can't just be satisfied with reducing our emissions we need to zero them out entirely because any additional amount of carbon will warm the planet further and that gives you a whole different perspective on the kind of scale of change that's necessary because like well we're gonna need a new electric grid and individuals can't build a new electric grid we're gonna need new battery technology and we're gonna need massive R&D spending to bring that about we're gonna need a different kind of airplane because the airplanes we have today are never going to be made to run without carbon emissions and all through all of the sectors that produce carbon and the scale of that challenge is so large I think it's really hard to imagine approaching seriously at the individual level it has to come through coordinated policy responses after that I you know with renewable energies things are not that easy unfortunately because renewable energy still require minerals and so I just wrote a book about ocean and deep sea mining from an artistic research perspective where I looked in particular artisan Hammond's and basically how we need minerals from the ocean floor that companies and governments are now you know preparing to mine and of course renewable energies are fantastic but you know if we destroy the oceans and ecosystems at 5,000 and deeper you know depth that we don't properly understand yet and ready origins of life actually began most likely you know how does that affect global warming further so that's the complex complexity of things so yeah renewables are important but it's not quite as easy I have a quick question maybe particularly for Allyson and Sonia I'm gonna lay out a few points so that I can establish the framework for the question we're in a temporary City right now and temporary cities exist all around whether it's a Art Fair or the immigrant detention Children's Center or a reverent refugee tent city like after Hurricane Andrew that I was in I'm an artist I've been here in between New York and Miami I have a carbon footprint for that reason but I also go to parties where the wealthiest 1% I I get an opportunity to have a conversation with the people that you're talking about as perhaps having the potential to make an impact I think there are some important intersections happening during this actual week and an extreme separation of class going on which I don't know who's sitting in this audience right now but there are some important things that artists are doing actually not just in terms of visual representation but actual direct action for example Neri Ward's show at the new museum one of his things that he did in selling those works was contributing to a non-profit so if you bought the work you were actually directly giving money to a particular nonprofit who I'm forgetting so that's one example artists resell contracts you know there's a lot of ways I think that direct action can happen like my question I guess is you know Art Basel has been going on for a while they talked at Pam about how Christo and jean-claude made Art Basel happen you know they they made this City Miami turned into this global metropolis and what's happened we've gotten 42 new condos on the horizon as results the waste infrastructure is so overwhelmed that we have like a poop cannon that shoots poop a mile offshore and comes back right so I couldn't shake take my child to the beach because she was having trouble breathing so I guess I'm wondering I guess in a hopeful way in what ways can this this kind of temporary sort of hovering that artists do now especially if you're at blue chip level in what ways can we directly impact and have direct conversations with policy and I want to just throw out the amazingness and you know Jose Javier's here that that you know amendment for God started as a petition so I I just want to kind of point out some things because I do think there's a lot of hope and I do think everyday people who are perhaps in the middle class or let's just assume that if you're coming to our passel you know so I just want to I'm wondering if perhaps the two women or three women can kind of point out some of the other potentials and things that everyday people can do to directly impact action direct action sorry I love your question um for me I think that one of the most important things you know as they're saying this is a temporary kind of something even more than a city I don't know like a I don't know but you know to me it's important to realize where you are like whose land has this been who lives here who lives right over there in Little Haiti that's getting pushed out further and further and further who's here before who's been here decades ago centuries ago what practices relating to the environment have been going on by those people you know what are what is the knowledge base that has already been here and that is already existing that hopefully those of us who are here for these temporary amounts of time could start to draw from in ways that are not overwhelming overburdening that community but perhaps putting something in place it's actually restorative and repair so for me you know I you know we talk a lot about okay we in the West this or we hear this but you know culturally from me you know it's I come from a culture where you look towards your elder as you look towards history and you look towards what has happened before you and so I think that there's again I keep going back to this idea that there's so much that's happening that just baked into the culture that's moving through life and living in a more sustainable way but I think that again those of us who really care about the issues could could just draw from and just who's in the community that we're in like this is not just um you know this wasteland until Art Basel government Basel comes it down there people here who have knowledge and deep expertise and live ik lived experience so again for me it's all about trying to figure out ways where dialogue can happen and so as an artist I mean for me it's important to have part of my practice that is based in community that is allowing for exchange and a continued system of shared knowledge so I mean that's something I'm working on in my home region in northern Florida but I would love to see you know more opportunities come about to where something like a fair or something like a temporary exhibition or something can draw from what has already been brilliantly existing but unfortunately maybe hasn't had enough resources to make to really contribute to like the the big global and geopolitical level needs that we have yeah I actually want to say something know if you can comment directly Sonya about the special area plan because I don't know if everyone knows about that and how the museums and the families are opening up the development of in the climate gentrification areas you talked about yeah so good point and I'm glad you're obviously plugged in locally I think like you said I think that's so important when you come to these fairs we're in this wonderful ten eighty thousand people but there's communities here there's neighborhoods there's big changes locally that are happening you know some of the collectors are now open from Winwood into a lopata for those that don't know alla pata is a really old historical part of Miami early settlement early history working-class neighborhood hospital health care system there there's collectors opening spaces there and as wonderful as that is I'm hopeful those collectors will showcase right changes that are happening or art that can help you know showcase the environment I'm doing some work in that area on a creek I'm trying to restore a creek in the middle of a lopata that people have no idea exists it's the most polluted creek in the entire state and so it is the responsibility of the collectors and you know fairs like this special area plans those are theirs there were incentives and we're disrupting that now to build these massive developments in order to create job growth and economic activity people now realize now in 2020 we don't need massive development small-scale can work and you can potentially really invite development that's you know at a scale wide level so that you know you feel that local connection but I even want to bring out the point of understanding your landscape you're in you know we're talking about that my my Lebanese grandfather would always say when you travel you know stop and learn about the geographic area you're in take a moment while you're here for the week you know there's wonderful art but there's also art in other places around us beneath us learn about the porous limestone beneath your feet which is essentially part of the problems is that what we're dealing with is that the water's coming up through these porous limestone so it's important to know the geography the topography you know again I reiterate the importance of slowing down sometimes to feel connected to these spaces we move fast these fairs pop us from spot to spot but there's a lot of action and activity you know you know I will plug out there are local leaders statewide leaders here doing stuff and it's important to connect with them you know we were talking even about this article that about the panel you know kind of natural criticism right here you are in a space but is art basel really doing enough to talk about climate change or showcase it right um but you you know this is a platform and at least they're giving us this to be able to speak about it you know hopefully there's a lot more of that in the future and they feel that there's interest in this subject so I think that's also needed and the pressure is there but thank you for the question and for keeping the attention on this can I just I just want to talk about theirs being from New York you have a sense that and both David and I grew up there one of the reasons that I wanted to be an artist was to get out of Manhattan and learn about the world and I just finished a five-year project about the history and future of the Great Lakes that has been embraced by local institutions around the Great Lakes it has six venues it's going to end up in Flint this coming spring and I agree completely with the local versions of what you're talking about this is policy is our only hope and looking in your backyard is the way to go but when you live in Manhattan it's I've done projects about Manhattan - besides manifest destiny but the idea that you know there every place is worth paying attention to and cherishing and there's so many versions of this all over the planet that I think you know activism and art and all these issues that could come together and really you know get things going in the right direction that's paradoxically optimistic from coming from me I think that you know as a curator what I find important is contribute to the knowledge production in different ways you know and giving artists opportunities especially artists who you know maybe haven't been given opportunities as much in the past and to give space to voices that have been excluded and you know I think it's also very important to listen like just just shut up and listen um I have a question for David and for Sonja David I read your book I really enjoyed it I wanted to read it because I wanted have concrete examples I could give to people about things that have already happened not things that are gonna happen in the future and you had so many of them my question is you had the elements of chaos in your book which elements of chaos do you think there's more awareness on if you could pick one which one has the most awareness right now and then Sonia I'm so glad you touched on how we should talk about right here like what swear on my aming how it's going to be affected in the future in Miami Beach there's trillions dollars worth of value but by any conservative scientific measure this island a lot of it will be consumed by water by the end of the century could you speak to what people are saying here about that or are they just literally ignoring it completely Thanks I think the three that people are most aware of these days are sea level which has been talked about for a generation wildfires which has been a huge story over the last couple of years what was the third I was gonna mention anyway wildfires is like the growth area of awareness for sure and it's like been devastating and in Australia just in recent weeks and I would say the like the next thing is going to be air pollution and that that is going to be an increasing concern you know I mentioned that nine million people a year are dying from air pollution but it also affects premature birth and low birth weight it affects rates of schizophrenia and autism and ADHD every aspect of of mental health and biological health you can imagine is damaged by small particulate pollution and we haven't really begun to reckon with that and I think that's the sort of the next phase to the point of what are people saying and what are what are they doing so Miami Beach like you said I mean this is a barrier island so I'll start there you know these were mangroves at one time and when the bay was dredged it filled this island up to build on so we are sitting on island um the Miami Miami Beach was the first to really feel these effects right like I told you the king tides kind of made it very dramatic and we locally they started putting in pumps and sea walls to kind of help deal with this the situation I think over time they've realized you can't pump your way out of this and so nature is really trying to come back into these spaces and and local leaders are allowing that right allowing for flooding to happen and to be absorbed by green spaces bioswales storm so there are doing that Miami on the mainland is watching what the beach is doing right so we're all learning from each other but there are some serious areas that are just the flooding is just too frequent the projections are getting worse just this week in Key West there was a massive climate compact and it was the the discussion of retreat was just talked about for the first time what does that mean your your you know the letting perhaps roads go and and those are hard difficult conversations right but you know there comes a point and how much are you going to invest in that infrastructure if you could only see it last for 20 30 years right and so the these hard conversations are happening I think local leaders are feeling responsible with public tax dollars the spotlight scrutiny is on us to do the right thing but there are it's positive because again there's ways that we are just learning from each other and at least like I said nature there's a lot of data that showcases leaving nature in its place mangroves mitigate storm surge and flooding phenomenal let's leave the mangroves in place or add marked more of that into these spaces it's really of course real estate is dependent you know that this the economy here locally is dependent on growth and so it's important that we maybe shift that economy a little bit or learn to to design in ways that growth can deal with these future impacts if we intend to live here right I mean some people there will come a point that they will migrate and that will start happening and a lot of people projecting that so I want to be hopeful things are happening and they're continuing to invest in these in these ways to have us liveable here but it's it is week by week day by day that we're pushing that sort of action and I will say one thing I'm very hopeful city hall lately whether it's Miami Beach City Miami Miami Dade County there are a lot of activists showing up and watching how money is being spent how policies are being enacted that pressure is there because you know people are scared right that's your investment your home and you want to make sure that you know locally they're investing for the long term okay I think we have time for one more question so hi first of all thank you for all the work that you do and for putting this on jumping off of some of what has been said I think we're kind of living in this moment of hypocrisy and and and that's this question is specifically for the people who are creating objects books paintings photos and al you kind of already answered part of this question but you know where it's kind of like even just to speak to this problem is kind of inherently violent even just to bring everyone here together today to have this conversation is kind of inherently violent and because of the large-scale infrastructure of our society and we're you know to make a post on social media requires heavy metals and electricity or you know whatever it may be and you know we're we're any kind of action is inherently kind of an inaction and it's this contradiction that I I'm always trying to address in the work I don't really have answers as much as questions and I guess I kind of wanted to know if any of you are kind of addressing this formally or conceptionally not that there's really a difference in the work and if so how yeah I mean that I mean you hit the nail on the head I mean that's such an important part of this whole conversation I mean I would love to get on this epic Skype conversation with all y'all but you know here we are you know I think that within the context of you know something like the fair or the Biennale or the thing that draws you know all of us together from all these corners of the world I don't think that those things are not gonna happen so I think so I know so I think that it's having being able to have the conversations or to try to make the most of it now that we're here I'm I I think that's at least for me as an artist that's where I'm trying to go it's like well what can I do with the what can I do once the person's in the building like what can I offer and contribute so yeah it's complex we were talking about it yeah she says there's not really an outside to it exactly so um yeah we were talking about it a little bit backstage it kind of feels like a catch-22 in a lot of ways coping yeah that's and and because it feels like a catch-22 I mean really the only thing you can do is to make a choice you know and so everyone that choice is gonna be different for every person but for me and I and I I love what you said too about you know whether it's formerly conceptually or some kind of other type of practice it's all kind of part of your your art making it's kind of all part of your practice or to use that word so for me you know personally I'm thinking of ways that I can involve local communities and try to bring them into the dialogue because what I don't want to see for me is you know to make work that's didactic or that's like teach okay here's what you know any mean like prescriptive again just going back to you know culturally like coming from a place where you you are supposed to exchange with the community you're supposed to dialogue with your elders you're supposed to bring people together in an intergenerational way so for me it's looking kind of like more of an in practice type of arm to you know my work as an artist but everyone really kind of grapples with that differently and I know you're doing I mean amazing work on as well so yeah I think it's gonna be different from person to person but to me it's kind of like whoa we're here so now what what do we do with that you know yeah yeah we just say I'm you know I think like everybody up here probably like everyone in this room I'm like bothered a bit by my own climate hypocrisy but I also think that what we call hypocrisy is often just our desire to see the collective perform better than we can as individuals and that we should not be as afraid of living that way and I think you know I'm someone I didn't just grow up but New York I grew up born in 1982 came of age in the 1990s at the end of history and I was like bombarded with these lessons of you know I'm the post-cold-war values of markets and neoliberalism and I think that one major lesson of that which I was raised with was that we made our mark on the world politically through what we bought and what we consumed and I think we were sort of people of my generation at least were raised to almost discard the whole category of true political engagement and think of it as naive or overly earnest and instead to think about defining ourselves through our consumer choices and I think especially on a challenge as big as climate that's that's just the wrong path and that we shouldn't burden ourselves too much with too much guilt about how we live as individuals if we're engaging politically to make change at the scale that's necessary because no matter what is done at the level of individuals if we don't get large-scale policy change we're not going to make any progress and so I think it's also extremely important to get away from this Eurocentric or you know western-centric narrative and actually look towards you know obviously utter you know cosmologies philosophies but also solutions that are already being crafted in spaces that we're maybe not as familiar with in a global North so I'm thinking for instance of Bangladesh and Brahmaputra Valley where people have historically been they needed to build architectures that basically respond to flooding simply because there's a wide river it's 12 kilometers wide and you know when it doesn't rain India closest to dams and when it rains they open at them so basically the area is either very dry or extremely flooded the architecture responds to that you know and it's not built in any you know super high-tech fancy way so so I think that you know getting a bit away from our own obsession with our own selves and you know whether we're able to consume or not consumer yeah I think we need to you know go much deeper in our way of rethinking yeah and to David's point it's interesting I'm 82 as well born in 82 when Krista was here it's kind of funny my mom's an artist me me for a abstract wild and she you know my father was working on the surrounded islands here in 82 I was born in that summer and he came on the boat to the hospital on Biscayne Bay and that's part of my story right I knew that my parents instilled in that you know Christo's and surrounded Islands at the time fabric that wrapped around barrier islands talking about how people in Miami live between water and land you know three-year undertaking massive I mean perhaps I mean now that might not be able to be done right with permitting etc maybe they would use a material that was less impactful to you know nature in the environment but it did put Miami on the map in many regards and those moments hopefully that we can inspire artists to think like that are important and I do want to you know give a shout out to local artists that are doing a lot you know there's Xavier cortada light art they're all here during Art Basel and really bringing climate change climate art related change here on the spotlight you know there's coverage locally they're trying to get to that coverage you know for some of the bigger artists but you know they do take advantage of this week and so that's that is the beauty as 80,000 people come here that you know we try and take the spotlight and also bring real-world issues to light so I'm getting signs that we need to end thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and thank you for your questions and for being here [Applause]

Channel: Art Basel

Views: 1,012

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Art Basel, Conversations, Art Basel Miami Beach, Art, Climate Change, Alexis Rockman, Sonia Succar Ferre, David Wallace-Wells, Stefanie Hessler, Allison Janae Hamilton, Environment

Id: 83FXBpvDej8

Length: 76min 40sec (4600 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 11 2019