Paul Douglas considers himself an "albino unicorn." A moderate Republican, he's also a meteorologist who believes climate change is real. That position was met with scorn by some of the right, who called him a "RINO [Republican In Name Only] climate poser," a "global warming hoax promoter," and worse. Theater artist and musician Cynthia Hopkins didn't need much convincing about the dire consequences we face if we don't address the climate crisis, but two events were pivotal in pushing her to take up the subject in her art--a talk on sustainability at the 2009 Tipping Point conference and a residency with Cape Farewell, a program that aims to "instigate a cultural response to climate change." In 2010, she joined Cape Farewell's Arctic Expedition, in which artists and marine scientists experienced the very environment most threatened by global warming.
While their career paths are sharply divergent, Douglas and Hopkins share twin tools when addressing climate change--science and spirituality. A longtime fixture in Twin Cities media, Douglas is founder of the Media Logic Group, which runs several companies dedicated to collecting, analyzing, and presenting weather data. He's also an evangelical Christian, and biblical principles of environmental stewardship shape his stance on global warming. While deeply informed by research, Hopkins aims for a "wider, vaster lens" in her new work, the Walker co-commissioned music-theater piece This Clement World, which she says looks at both the spiritual and scientific sides of the issue. In advance of the Midwest premiere of This Clement World, Douglas and Hopkins sat down with me to discuss their personal climate journeys and ways that art and science can cooperate in changing minds about a changing planet.
As soon as someone takes on "political" themes in their art, the perception of the work's goals often seems to change: it's not art for art's sake but includes an element of advocacy. Cynthia, do you notice that audiences or critics respond to the premise of this piece differently than past works? What is your aim with the work as a whole, and how does advocacy--the changing of minds--factor in?
I'm always baffled when I hear this issue is politicized. I think it's only politicized insofar as politics is so influenced by the financial markets, and I think that's sad and horrifying. I don't think of it as a political issue. I'm just transmitting a disturbance I've been learning about. I'm filtering that information through my own perspective and experiences and transforming it into a work that hopefully inspires people to learn more on their own. I wouldn't call it a political piece. In terms of effect, I make a strident effort to ignore any idea of how something might come across when I'm making it because I find that to be a poison that can destroy the process. I think that is the advantage of art as a form of communication, in distinction from political, journalistic, or even scientific communications, because there isn't an agenda. I'm in service to the work itself, and the work is like an organism. It's not a means to an end.
I was skeptical in the '80s. In the '90s, I saw evidence--just tracking the weather day in and day out--that something had changed, and these changes were consistent with what climate scientists have been saying for 20 or 30 years. Then I dug into the peer-reviewed research and came to the conclusion--independently, before Al Gore made his movie--that, hey, this is real. This is a real trend, and we ignore it at our peril. My politics are moderate. I'm fiscally conservative and socially progressive. I'm also an evangelical Christian and I'm concerned about climate change--which basically makes me an albino unicorn. I feel like that some days. "Wow, you're a freak!" But, you know what, there are a lot of Republicans out there, especially anybody under the age of 30 or 35, who still respect science and the scientific method.
A lot of this comes down to science literacy, and the fact that many Americans really aren't willing to dig into the science. It's much easier to turn on a cable news show with bloviating talking heads going back and forth, and it's kind of sad. You know what's ironic? Mother Nature is now accomplishing what climate scientists have had a hard time doing--getting people's attention. The past two years have been the most extreme, weather-wise, in America's history. In 2011, four out of five Americans surveyed personally witnessed severe weather. One out of three were personally injured by severe weather. We've had $188 billion in severe-weather damage in the last two years, so Mother Nature is accomplishing what climate scientists cannot, and that is, convince a majority of rational, god-fearing people that something has changed. It's not your grandfather's weather.
Environmentalists of the '60s, '70s, and '80s came to understand the power of imagery as a rhetorical tool. Striking photography of photogenic animals coated in oil, toxic rivers on fire, and formerly pristine forests clear-cut played a key role in changing minds on the environment. It was argued around the turn of the millennium that the gradual nature of climate change--as well as the distance we are from places where its effects are most prominent (the Arctic, say)--meant that those tactics were less effective. Perhaps that's changing again, with dramatic events such as Hurricane Sandy or Katrina, and with social media making us more connected. Take the movie Chasing Ice, about photographer James Balog, who documented Arctic glaciers melting using 25 time-lapse cameras over three years. One scene--showing the "calving" of a glacier the size of the island of Manhattan--went viral, getting more than 3.7 million views on YouTube. Could you talk about that--about how activists and artists have a new set of tools, which is a dramatic set of images and videos?
I've seen that. It's breathtaking. But I think the most effective image, especially for a denier over the age of 55 or 60, is a photograph of their grandkids. There are nearly 1,000 references in the Bible--Old Testament and New Testament--to caring for God's creation. A thousand. For me, that's powerful. Are you looking out for your kids or your grandkids, or is it, "Hey, let's get the most we can grab right now and to hell with future generations." We're accountable. My dad taught me that actions have consequences. You can't pump trillions of tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and pretend it's not going to come back and bite us. It's biting us in the weather.
[German philosopher Arthur] Schopenhauer said something once that really resonates with me: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." And we are now coming out of phase two. And it's because--as Cynthia said--so much money is on the line. You've got the largest corporations that have ever been on the planet, and their business model is in danger. They feel threatened. They don't want to be regulated out of existence, so they're fighting back. They're keeping this confusion going, and they're funding this ongoing confusion. It's not just springing up organically. We're talking about tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars going into these think tanks, the Heritage Foundation-type enterprises that made the news last year, that are keeping confusion going. It's like the tobacco debate that Philip Morris had in the '70s times 10,000, because there's so much more money on the line. That's why we have so much push back right now in this country.
I often ask people, "How much evidence is enough? How much do you need?" The North Pole Arctic ice has lost four fifths of its volume since 1979. Ninety percent of the world's glaciers are shrinking. Sea level has risen 8 to 12 inches depending on the location. The oceans are warmer, the oceans are more acidic, coral reefs are dying. We've got all these fingerprints out there. For me, it's been an accumulation of coincidences.
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