Art for Change
Through the wonders of YouTube, I was able to find a piece of art that has motivated me to act. It was done by Prince Ea in a video where he discusses climate change. It is titled “Man vs Earth” and it is a video that I found to be very motivating. Personally, I believe that climate change is real while others seem to have a hard time believing so. The rate at which the environment is deteriorating is alarming and not many seem to be hearing the screams from Mother Nature.
I was introduced to the video by one of my professors when we did a small segment of our class on climate change. For being a five-minute video after watching it I felt different. I felt like I was just sitting around doing nothing, that I wasn’t doing my part in trying to help save the environment. Something from the video was compelling me to re-evaluate my carbon footprint. I was forced to step back and look at how I was harming the environment and what small steps I could take to hopefully help work towards change.
Thus, my delve into researching began. I have cut down on my consumption of items that are deteriorating to the environment. I no longer use things like makeup wipes, I try to cut down on single-use plastic, taking shorter showers, and even have been looking into swapping meals with some vegan options. Fast fashion is also something that I have been looking into. New trendy clothing can be utilizing toxic dyes to speed up the turnaround time of creating new clothing for cheaper prices (among other things like labor laws). Looking into sustainable brands or up-cycling clothing has also been something I’ve been looking into.
From the video, one specific line that stands out a lot to me is “if you condense the earth’s lifespan to 24 hours, we have been here on this planet for 3 seconds”. In 3 seconds, an insurmountable amount of damage has been done to the Earth. Wildfires, hurricanes, nuclear warfare, extinction, and more. Some are out of our control but the damage we have caused has to lead to more powerful storms and more animal extinctions. Three seconds is such a short amount of time and when we think of how much has been done in such little time, I would hope people question the effects of industrialization and capitalism.
It can seem a little overwhelming and easy to think that the environment is so far gone that it is basically too late to try and fix it now, but every little effort helps. I didn’t expect that by watching a short 5-minute video I would be rearranging my efforts to help the environment in any way. It was one of those topics that I knew was a huge issue, but was more out of sight out of mind. I’m not sure why I thought that would work but I have changed my ways and am now educating others and encouraging them to take small steps too.
