Museums on Earth |
Defne Inceoglu
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| Illustration courtesy of Defne Inceoglu. |
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This is the beginning of a series on teaching climate change in museums. In this first article, I will be addressing the political divides that influence public opinion on climate change and where the Canadian public's minds may lie. This in turn can influence our audiences opinions - and may create conflict - within our museum spaces. Because of this, we must contend with the idea that we need to politicize our museum spaces in order to fulfill any future mandates based on education, truth, trust and advocacy.
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There is really no sort of global topic as pressing or urgent than the current climate crisis. It is entrenched in the public’s psyche from media outlets reporting on unusual weather, droughts and floods. It is in the discussions amongst our world leaders and political parties; with whole political platforms dedicated to reducing carbon emissions and creating new policies and taxations.
The climate crisis has also made out to guilt the individual consumer: from companies greenwashing products to viral videos of sea animals suffering at the hands of plastic pollution.
On top of all of this, there is also the overwhelming pressure from the scientific community fighting just to be heard - one particular story which came out in the science journal Nature this past September, "‘Ecological grief’ grips scientists witnessing Great Barrier Reef’s decline", discusses the emotional toll that ecosystem researchers feel when witnessing decline.
"An emerging body of research shows that many people feel loss due to environmental degradation caused by global warming, a phenomenon called ‘ecological grief’. Although researchers are often on the front lines of ecosystem collapse, few studies have investigated the mental and emotional consequences of such work" (Source).
This emotional burden of the climate crisis is felt across all sides of the political spectrum; it is permeated into our
everyday lives. A number of recent studies have been published on the psychological and physiological effects of climate change; unfortunately many of these studies are walled up and kept away from the public by expensive journal subscription fees. Having open access to these journals is a luxury that maybe only university students or faculty members can take for granted- such studies have only been touched few and far between by media.
This barrier of knowledge leaves publics to learn about climate change studies only from media sources - or the public are left to scour for sources on their own. Publics who find science inaccessible or uninteresting will presumably not look to primary source material. Not to mention these sorts of studies are upsetting and hard to stomach. This is not necessarily something someone would subject themselves to on purpose, especially considering that most people are burdened already with debt, physical/mental health issues, interpersonal relationships and work.
Additionally, the politics of this country are ever polarized and becoming more so still. This can be seen in our last election, but also tellingly in a
2011-2016 study that the Université de Montréal undertook in partnership with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the University of California Santa Barbara and Utah State University. It is a study that has really stuck with me as I have been thinking through Canadian perspectives on climate change. The only criticism I have of this study is that it does not include any participants from the Territories or Labrador, seriously under-representing a large population of residents.
It is a project really unmatched and unparalleled in its scale in Canada, (with a sample size of almost 10,000 people), the researchers deduced by riding the climate change beliefs held by Canadians. The maps really speak for themselves; most surprisingly the statistic that only 60% of Canadians believe that the earth is getting warmer due to human interventions.
Below are three maps of interest that I pulled out of the study:
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| Image used with permission from the Université de Montréal's website. (Source). |
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| Image used with permission from the Université de Montréal's website. (Source). |
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| Image used with permission from the Université de Montréal's website. (Source). |
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Compare these maps to the 2019 election results by riding, and a pattern emerges:
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| Image courtesy of CTV News' election coverage. (Source). |
There is clear tension between our provinces in terms of political beliefs- mapped now into this is the question of climate change.
The question lies then, how do museums factor into all of this?
What is the role of the museum, or the responsibility of one, to discuss climate change? Can we use our spaces to discuss this – should we tackle this issue, keeping in mind the divided opinions and beliefs of the Canadian public - who are in turn our audiences?
To create exhibitions or facilitate programming with the intent on teaching or advocating for climate action, climate change in your institution will automatically destabilize any notion of the museum as apolitical. Instead, it will be invigorated with choice and conflict: with your museum audience divided by politics around policy, oil, taxation and climate change apathy.
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Next time, we'll cover some strategies for talking with visitors about climate change, using my visitor research project at the Royal Ontario Museum as a case study.
