April 22, 2022
The New York Times Style Magazine
While observing Earth Day 2022, we’re reading about the role art plays in addressing the climate crisis.
“[In 2005,] the environmentalist Bill McKibben railed against the culture’s perceived indifference. ‘Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?’ he wrote in an op-ed for Grist. ‘Compare it to, say, the horror of AIDS … which has produced a staggering outpouring of art that, in turn, has had real political effect.’ For future generations looking back on the present, ‘the single most significant item will doubtless be the sudden spiking temperature. But they’ll have a hell of a time figuring out what it meant to us.'”
This NYT Style Magazine piece goes on to look at artists’ responses to the climate crisis in more recent years. Author Zoë Lescaze offers some provocative questions and observations.