"The most important thing any single one of us can do to fight climate change is talk about it."
– Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and author
It has been an eventful time at PEM since we launched our Climate + Environment Initiative in the spring of 2021. I am so grateful to be at an institution that is actively seeking out opportunities to raise awareness about our planetary emergency – and what we can all do about it. In addition to hosting an array of climate events and exhibitions, we’ve embarked on an ambitious effort to make our exhibition creation more sustainable and earned an award for our commitment to energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
I am particularly excited about two upcoming virtual programs that highlight the importance of conversation in this arena. Talking about the climate crisis is so vital to our ability to imagine and move towards a more positive climate future.
Then, on February 9, PEM will host “Speaking from the Heart: An Open Dialogue on Climate Action.” Co-hosted with Rare, this special online event inspired by Climate Action: Inspiring Change brings together a panel of youth activists and climate professionals to share their wisdom and motivations as they imagine new possibilities together. You’ll meet Jordan Sanchez, a Harvard University student and spoken word poet; Noela Altvater (Passamaquoddy), a student at Washington County Community College and award-winning community water activist; Natalia Jacobs, a Bates College freshman who was part of the planning team for the 2022 Western Mass Youth Climate Summit; Miranda Massie, founding director of The Climate Museum; and Kevin Green, leader of Rare’s Center for Behavior & Environment, which harnesses behavioral science to help mobilize individual action into large-scale change.
Online audiences at both events will be encouraged to join in during the Q&A. My hope is that these conversations will ripple outward and lead to other candid exchanges in homes and offices, in classrooms and around dinner tables. Everyone needs to feel they have a voice in this critically important story that is unfolding in our time. There is still time for us to work together to envision a different climate future, but we’ll need courage, fortitude and vision to make it happen.
Anjali Mitra, The Seas Are Rising, So Are We, 2020. “Climate Hope: Transforming Crisis” contest entry. Bay State Award, High School. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Programs Inc.
PEM’s Climate + Environment Initiative continues with more upcoming programming and exhibitions, including a dynamic and inspiring international exhibition coming to PEM in February 2024. Stay tuned!
The New Yorker recently looked back at Ed Koren’s 60-year career with the magazine, including more than a thousand cartoons and thirty-one covers, and counting. It also gives the brief backstory of how Koren and Stephen Gorman teamed up for Down to the Bone. “It’s vague to me how my work transformed into these skeletal figures with their melancholy, and the tragicomic gaze in their eyes,” Koren told the magazine. “The tragedy is climate change and its effects. What’s comical—that might seem like a shocking word—is the link between these woebegone creatures, their fate in the world, and ours. The hopelessness and haplessness of it all. We’re pulling the trigger on them and, we don’t yet seem to understand, upon ourselves.”
Keep exploring
PEMcast
PEMcast 26: Our Current Climate
32 Min Listen
Blog
Finding Our Place in the Climate Action Story
5 Min read
Blog
Curating climate change and a museum-wide environmental initiative
7 min read
Past Exhibition
Down to the Bone: Edward Koren and Stephen Gorman
March 12, 2022 to February 5, 2023
