The Climate Museum has opened as a pop-up in New York’s Soho, with a major apocalyptic work of art by David Opdyke. The first-ever US museum dedicated to the climate crisis was created to promote learning and climate action through public programming and exhibitions.
It was founded in 2015 by the former civil rights lawyer Miranda Massie. The museum’s programming has provided free exhibitions, art installations, interactive panels, youth programmes and advocacy tools in and around New York since 2018.
Miranda Massie tells blooloop:
“The way people embrace that invitation to become a climate protagonist has just blown us away. It’s profound. It exceeds our wildest hopes and dreams.”
Facing up to the issue
Massie gave up a career in social justice law to start the Climate Museum. The climate crisis was not, she explains, something that had always been a focus for her. It was, instead, something that kept nagging at her, trying to get her attention:
“I kept suppressing it, to the point where I rented An Inconvenient Truth, back in the days when Netflix sent you a movie from your queue in a distinctive red envelope. The person I was living with couldn’t get his head around the fact that I was continuing to pay for the DVD, but wouldn’t watch it, or even let him send it back so we could get the next movie on the queue. It was like I was paying to not grapple with the problem.”
It wasn’t until several years later, largely as a result of Hurricane Sandy, that something shifted. She found the work she was doing, which involved using her advocacy to fight inequalities in society, profoundly meaningful. However:
“I felt the climate crisis to be the biggest expression of an intensifier of inequality that we have ever seen. It’s a superseding existential crisis for humanity in all dimensions. It was a relief to let go of all of that active suppression of what I knew.”
The time is now
There is, she stresses, no time like the present:
“It’s never too late. I don’t feel proud, but I also don’t feel ashamed of how long it took me to make that decision. It’s a huge global crisis. To contemplate grappling with it in a meaningful way in either your day-to-day life or your work life is a very big decision. It is one that is profoundly rewarding, but it’s not an easy step to take.”
The notion of a museum dedicated to climate that would bring the public into engagement with the crisis seemed obvious to her:
“When it popped into my head, I was absolutely certain that I had read about it somewhere. I thought I was vaguely plagiarising,” she says. “I was astounded to go to my computer and learn that this would be the first climate-focused museum in the US.”
The first Climate Museum
This was in 2012. At the time, a museum of climate change had been established at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, but Massie’s Climate Museum was the only such project in the US.
“There were a couple of other nascent projects. And it has subsequently become much more of a movement, which I’m delighted to see. But at the time, it was an outlier notion where, to me, it seemed totally obvious.”
“We have the climate activist vanguard, including the climate justice frontline organisations and the youth movement, which is essential in moving things forward,” she continues. “Also, we have policymakers who have their minds and hearts in the right place; we have scientists and policy analysts. We need everybody on deck. What we didn’t have at that time was a project designed to shift the culture as a whole towards support – and indeed demand – for action on climate at scale.”
This was the driving force behind the Climate Museum. The concept seemed such an obvious one to Massie that she was surprised to find the URL available for free:
“I thought we would have to be Climate Museum_NYC-15. There really should be at least one climate-dedicated museum in every city with the capital to support one, as a general outreach and educational tool. It seems like a very obvious move to me.”
Climate Museum takes a pop-up approach
The pop-up format is a pragmatic interim measure until a permanent location can be funded. She comments:
“2% of overall global philanthropy goes to climate work of any kind, which is, to put it politely, deeply irrational. The climate arts have been ignored, for the most part, until recently. I think that’s starting to change.”
“We’ve had a very difficult time with fundraising. Although we have had a few extraordinarily generous individual philanthropists, and a small number of forward-thinking institutional funders, who understand what we’re trying to do, and how critically important it is to shift the culture and to break the climate silence.
“We are hopeful that the popup can turn other heads and show the value of the work. It is a strategy for public engagement and for creating a ripple effect through the visitors who come. It’s doing that beautifully. And it’s also an organisational development strategy for trying to show what this work can mean and how essential it is.”
New study shows support from public
Time is of the essence in the race against the climate crisis.
“We have an approach that we’ve worked out and iterated,” she says. “We need people to be trying different approaches through culture and arts with different kinds of communities. The ultimate goal has to be everyone on deck. So, it is essential that philanthropy steps up to support efforts like ours and beyond.”
The United Nations has described climate change as the defining crisis of our time. In light of the facts, how can we account for the enduring silence around climate change?
“In the United States, a new study that just came out – we feature this information in our popup show – demonstrating that two-thirds of US adults support transformational climate action,” Massie explains:
“You could argue that should be 90% of US adults, but two-thirds is still a huge bipartisan super-majority. It’s higher than support for abortion rights, which is very high in the US. It’s also higher than support for unqualified voting rights. It’s a huge majority, given the political lay of the land in the United States.
“That includes climate justice measures. For instance, federal support for sacrifice zone communities, for low-income white communities, and a much larger income swath of black and brown communities that have been treated as dumping grounds for the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.”
We’re all in this together
There is a perception that American adults are indifferent to the climate crisis. However, the study showed that this is not the case:
“That we all feel like we’re in a minority makes the reality that we’re in a super-majority more actionable. We can go out and spread the word. I do think that that perception of being in a minority is a huge part of the silence. It’s not rational, but it’s how humans are. We’re all mammals, and we’re normative creatures, even the most idiosyncratic among us.”
“A person like Greta Thunberg, as she herself has said, is assisted in her clarity by being less influenced by social norms. She is more rational and less emotional in a fundamental way than most people. That’s a superpower in this situation.”
The impact of the fossil fuel industry
There are, she adds, other factors:
“We have been trained by the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda machine to think that we’re responsible for this crisis. And so, we are also shut down by misplaced false guilt, and by overwhelm.
“It’s such a huge problem. How could it possibly make sense to spend our spare bandwidth litigating that when we have so many other things where we might be able to make a difference? We’re overwhelmed with a range of other crises and concerns at this moment in human history.”
“We’re constantly aware of everything that’s happening around the globe in a way that is not consistent with how we evolved to process information about risk and threat. And we’ve been trained to feel responsible and guilty by the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation campaign. So those are three of the top factors. There’s a perfect storm of social and psychological reasons why we’re not speaking up.
“That is starting to shift. Now the question is, can we help it shift fast enough to save human civilization?”
Her answer to this is affirmative:
“The window is diminishing every hour, but it can absolutely be done.”
Tackling the industry head on
This involves tackling the fossil fuel industry, rather than waiting for it to take action against climate change:
“The fossil fuel industry must be defeated in a fundamental way for us to win,” she contends. “When I say ‘defeated’, that could take a number of different forms. They could be bought by different nations, and wound down, for instance.”
However:
“They will not make any promise that’s worth calling a promise. They will lie, cheat, and steal all the way to the destruction of human society as we understand it. There is 50 years worth of evidence to support that. It is utterly consistent. There are no contradictions in the mix to suggest that we should hold out any hope for rational or pro-social behaviour from the fossil fuel industry.”
Accordingly:
“We need to strip them of their social license to operate by telling the truth about their lies. We need to push for action to take the expertise about energy infrastructure that’s embedded in those workforces, and apply it toward a transition to clean and renewable energy.”
Climate Museum shows investigations
This, she concedes, is an exceptionally tall order:
“I’m not saying otherwise, but that is absolutely what’s required. Expecting them to start behaving like responsible citizens of the world is a fool’s errand.”
An exhibit in the Climate Museum’s current show features the recent examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry’s misleading of the public about its role in climate change. The industry dismissed evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.
“The investigation uncovered a bunch of internal emails. One, from an employee at Royal Dutch Shell, discussing talking points for Shell’s president for the United States in October 2020, said that the company’s announcement of a pathway to ‘net zero’ emissions ‘has nothing to do with our business plans.’”
Education is key
Similarly, internal Exxon documents reveal the oil giant pressured an industry group, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, into removing from a 2019 policy statement anything that ‘could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.’
“It’s unbelievable,” Massie says. “They are such cartoon villains.”
But they can, she believes, be defeated:
“I am not claiming that we have defeated Big Tobacco overall. They’re selling tons of their poisonous product in the global south and in places outside of the US. It wasn’t a complete victory. But there was a time 20, 30 years ago, when Big Tobacco had just as much, perhaps even more of a social license to operate. That was stripped away by citizens taking action, by litigation, by activism, by public information, and educational campaigns.”
Climate Museum will continue the conversation
We can do the same with the fossil fuel giants:
“We can dismantle their social license to operate,” Massie says. “Princeton University, which is not known for being at the vanguard of these movements, recently announced that not only is it divesting itself from 90 fossil fuel companies, it is, and I quote, ‘dissociating from them.’ It will not accept their money for research, and publicly listed them as companies that are persona non grata.
“That is exactly the kind of stigmatisation and stripping away of the social license to operate that we need to see.”
This is a significant precedent, she says:
“It’s a huge model. We need to see more of that. We know where the battle lines are, and the fight is on. Now the question is one of speed and ferocity. Greta Thunberg and the climate movement have changed the conversation forever. It’s not the same conversation that it was four years ago.”
A three-part approach to programming
Turning to the Climate Museum’s programming, Massie explains:
“There is a three-part approach that we’ve iterated over the last five years of presenting this kind of work to the public. We start with art, because the arts open people up to an enlarged sense of their own agency, and to a sense of community.”
“The arts are built into how we experience being communal. Part of what genetically differentiates you and me from our Neanderthal cousins/ancestors is a genetic mutation that permits us to appreciate aesthetics.
“Aesthetics and art are built into how we are human, and into human community. It’s why we have those cave drawings on the walls of our earliest homes. It’s why speech and song evolved together. The arts connect us to each other in a way that is deep and that goes beyond consciousness. Even on the darkest subject, compelling art reminds us what we’re capable of as a species.”
Making emotional connections at the Climate Museum
Having connected people emotionally to the subject matter through the arts, the second element is education:
“We teach people something they didn’t already know. In this case, it’s the surprising social science both about that broad consensus in the American adult public, and the fact that we all misunderstand it, and then an explanation for why we all misunderstand it, which has to do with the fossil fuel industry’s domination of the narrative.
“And then there’s a call to action.”
She recaps:
“So it’s three components: arts, something pedagogical, in this case, it’s social science-based. In our next show, it’ll be history based. Then there is a call to action that relates thematically to the art and to the learning opportunity that’s being presented. It is the classic strategic communications troika of ‘what do you want your audience to know, to feel and to do?’
“We have flipped the order of the first two; we start with emotion, which is where art reaches us.”
Future plans for the Climate Museum
That initial emotional connection is, she maintains, key:
“It’s partly why it’s hard for Greta to understand why humanity has been so inactive. The irrationality of what’s going on right now is very hard for somebody who’s super-rational to understand. Most humans are not; we’re super-emotional. We’re more invested in our tribe, our identity, and the things we love than we are in the pure force of powerful truth. That doesn’t mean we’re incapable of being highly motivated by that resonant force of penetrating truth. It’s just a different sequence.”
In terms of future plans, the short-term aim is to establish the Climate Museum in a permanent location. In the longer term, Massie says, she hopes it will also grow and extend all over the world:
“We will see what emerges from the fog and dysfunction of philanthropy, but we are absolutely determined to do that.”
The Climate Museum can be found in New York until 31 March 2023. An interactive exhibition fusing art, social science and action, it leaves its visitors inspired about what they can do about climate change. The experience begins with David Opdyke’s Someday, all this. This is a mural featuring 400 vintage postcards that the artist has decorated with apocalyptic imagery to explore the impact of the climate crisis on the American landscape. His work can also be seen in MoMA and the Brooklyn Museum.
All images of The Climate Museum Pop Up credit Sari Goodfriend
