“When the Earth Speaks” was the title last month of the world premiere of a production in which highly effective photos synchronized with extraordinary music performed by a talented string quartet from the Yale School of Music brought home the global warming crisis.
It took place before a packed audience at the North Fork Arts Center’s Sapan Greenport Theater in Greenport, Long Island.
The combination of the photos, from 86 countries, selections from the international BarTur Photo Awards competition, and the music conveyed well the rapidly increasing calamity of climate change.
The award program was created by Amnon BarTur, a veteran photojournalist. He spoke at the event as did José García-León, the dean of music at Yale University, among others. Composers of the music and musicians who performed it, also spoke.
There was a panel from which I was privileged to make a presentation.
The two musical compositions performed, said the announcement of the event, will “fill the theater with orchestral urgency and restraint, while floor-to-ceiling cinematic projections carry audiences across 86 countries: glaciers in retreat, coastlines redrawn, lakes altered beyond recognition, and landscapes that speak of both loss and resilience. Sound and image move as one, creating an immersive portrait of our planet that is at once beautiful and sobering.”
Photos of people and animals affected were heartbreaking.
Then, a few weeks later, what the event communicated struck much of the United States and Europe in a record-breaking heat wave. The Earth was speaking,
As weatherman Al Roker, who for years has emphasized the connection between the weather and global warming, said on the Today show, on the eve of the heat wave hitting, the U.S. was heading for “prolonged life-threatening heat…triple-digit temperatures….The heat is on.” Ahead would be “unrelenting heat,” he said.
It had already struck Europe and NBC correspondent Daniel Hamandjian reported record-breaking temperatures there including a town in France with 111-degree temperature.
Media was telling the story that scientists have been warning of and with data confirming for years, about climate change causing the planet to warm dangerously and also producing extreme weather events.
What former Vice President Al Gore had called “An Inconvenient Truth,” his Oscar-winning film of 20 years ago, was clearly apparent again.
In my presentation at the event, I mentioned doing my first TV program on climate change in 1997. I titled it “The Heat Is On” and interviewed the late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan, who had just written a book with the title “The Heat Is On, the Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription.”
Gelbspan like Gore and hundreds upon hundreds of scientists have emphasized that the burning of fossil fuels and consequent release of carbon have led to a blanket over the Earth,
In my remarks, I said we have to deal with global warming as illness is dealt with in medicine—taking on the cause, not just the symptoms.
Public awareness, public education, public action—action at the grassroots is critical—because the solutions are here. It’s not a matter of technology but of action.
I said what we were seeing and hearing at the event—the impressive photography and stirring music—were part of the activism, along with organizing, protesting, joining in groups.
As to groups, I cited the organization 350.org and it saying: “We believe in the collective power of ordinary people taking action: we campaign and organize locally and globally to create a world powered by just and accessible renewable energy that will move us away from fossil fuels, for good. And we are doing this with the urgency the climate crisis demands of us. We can’t just watch climate change unfold. It’s time to act.”
I noted Bill McKibben, a founder of 350.org, speaking of wind and solar energy now being cheaper than fossil fuels.
Gore now also emphasizes how the cost of renewable energy has plunged. He speaks about the “spectacular, unprecedented technology revolution—including low-cost solar panels and wind turbines—that now make aiding the planet an affordable choice….We’re in a different world now. The options are terrific.”
Founded by Gore, The Climate Reality Project is an important organization, too, devoted to dealing with the climate crisis through, it says, “grassroots leadership trainings, global media events, digital communications and issue campaigns.”
I spoke about Dr. Mark Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere and Energy Program at Stanford University and an environmental engineer, and his recent book, “No Miracles Needed,” about how existing clean, green, renewable energy technologies are here now to provide all the power we need.
The corporations with a vested interest in oil, gas and coal will continue to push their products, corrupting the political system in the process.
But, I noted, Ember, the independent British research organization, recently determined: “Solar and wind power are the fastest growing source of electricity in history, expanding globally at a rate that is actually outpacing overall electric demand.” They have “more than tripled their output over the last decade….The levelized cost of energy for both technologies has plunged since 2010.”
As Yale Climate Connection headlined a recent piece: “Despite Trump, Renewable Energy Keeps Surging.”
President Trump would have us believe that climate change is a “hoax”—despite the weather outside.
The past 11 years have been the warmest years on this planet on record, says the World Meteorological Organization. Extreme weather events have come with fury. Ocean warming is unabated and the sea level rise is accelerating.
There’s urgency. NBC News just reported with this headline: “Ocean surface temperatures hit record high as world enters ‘uncharted territory,’ scientists warn.”
There are efforts to present the “When the Earth Speaks” program in New York City and elsewhere. That’s very good. The program has been supported and funded by the Visual Storytellers Fund of New York City.
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