Mastering the art of climate action

Photo by Catherine Kay Greenup on Unsplash

You can't always play to the gallery

I grew up dismissing the importance of art. My parents did their best to bring me to museums and galleries, only to face pure apathy.

My only memory of visiting St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City is of spending two hours "accidentally" photobombing pictures taken by tourists.

In the past couple of years, I've taken up an interest in art, undoubtedly influenced by my parents and friends! My highlights of 2022 were the Hallyu and Seeing Auschwitz exhibitions which are both still open in London if you fancy.

Last year, I had the privilege to give a talk to University of the Arts London students. We had a great conversation about climate change, what motivates organizations to take climate action and, more importantly, how it is done in practice.

In 2022, we saw climate change and art make headline news as two activists from Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup on Van Gogh's painting Sunflowers. As an organization, they use civil resistance to influence the government to halt the licensing and production of new oil and gas projects.

This form of activism raised many questions and left people wondering why a piece of art had been targeted. According to Alex De Koning, a spokesperson of Just Stop Oil, the message was about the cost of living crisis in the UK, where "people can't afford to heat a tin of soup".

The objective was to make people feel shocked, in line with what Just Stop Oil believes people should feel about the government's decisions regarding climate change.

Impossible to brush away the environmental impact of art

Art serves multiple purposes, whether it be communicative, educational or entertaining. Since art has taught me a lot, I thought I'd return the favour by learning about its environmental impact!

The art industry was valued at $64 billion in 2019, with 40.5 million art transactions occurring. More than 3 million people work in the industry, with over 310,000 businesses providing jobs in the arts.

While widespread transparency on the industry's climate impact is lacking, Julie's Bicycle, an environmental non-profit in the arts, has approximated the sector's carbon footprint by leveraging publicly available data.

They estimated that the art world generates 70 million tonnes of CO2e annually. That's equivalent to the annual emissions of Greece! The industry's footprint can be bucketed into three main categories:

1. Transportation (75%):

• Visitor and business travel represent 74% and 1% of the industry's emissions, primarily due to air travel.
• On the consumer side, only 9% of art collectors aim to reduce air travel.
• Additionally, art dealers take 12 flights per year on average for work-related trips.

2. Buildings (23%):

• These emissions arise due to the purchasing of electricity and the combustion of natural gas for heating.
• The buildings concerned are auction houses, art galleries as well as the studios of artists.
• Greenhouse gases emitted by buildings alone amount to 18 million tonnes CO2e, equivalent to Guatemala's annual emissions.

3. Freighting (2%):

• Money might make the world go round, but art certainly moves all around the world!
• Exhibitions and pieces of art travel internationally, with collections such as A History of the Worlds in 100 Objects moving from London to Hong Kong while passing by the UAE, Australia and Japan.
• Tight schedules might lead galleries to rely on air freighting to transport art, ensuring it can get to the next exhibition in time.

Pencilling out decarbonization levers

If the art world is to align with the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°, half of the sector's emissions need to be reduced by 2030. Organizations such as the Gallery Climate Coalition are spearheading sustainability initiatives and pushing for decarbonization in the art world.

As a charity, the GCC provides environmental guidance to facilitate the reduction of emissions throughout the industry. These resources are publicly available and provide much-needed decarbonization levers for:

1. Transportation:

• Galleries can set team quotas for staff air travel and implement sustainable travel policies. Here is an excellent example from WWF if you're wondering what that looks like in practice.
• Exhibition installations can be contracted out to local teams rather than having teams from the home gallery travel around the globe. With simple video calls, Berlin-based Studio Olafur Eliasson organized the set-up of one of their exhibitions in Japan.
• Wherever possible, technologies such as Virtual Reality can be leveraged to demonstrate the art or potential installations, minimizing the need for travel.

2. Buildings:

• The first step galleries, museums and auction houses can take is to conduct an energy audit of their buildings to identify any inefficiencies.
• Following that, insulation can be installed to minimize energy losses, while heating, ventilation, and air conditioning units can be upgraded for energy-efficient equipment.
• The art world can support the clean energy transition by purchasing renewable energy or producing energy on-site with solar panels.

3. Freighting:

• Galleries can plan their schedules to ensure that art does not need to be air freighted from one exhibition to the next.
• By favouring shipping rather than air travel, emissions can be reduced by more than 50 times. For example, transporting 500 kg of art from London to New York emits 55 kg of CO2e by boat and 3 tCO2e by air.
• The art industry can favour logistics providers offering electric fleets when using road transportation.

Beyond transportation, buildings and freighting, we should also consider the environmental impact of materials used in art.

Packaging is essential in art transportation and storage as it ensures pieces are protected when in movement and stored in the right environment. These precautions ensure that art is safe from humidity or sunlight, which could deteriorate it.

To move away from the single use of plastic films or wooden crates, art shippers can leverage reusable containers such as the ones built by ROKBOX. With fewer emissions generated per trip, they can be reused up to 100 times.

Regarding installations, galleries can work to repurpose materials from past exhibitions rather than sourcing raw materials every time. For example, Onassis Stegi has reused plywood, glass vitrines and metal framework from previous exhibitions, and other players in the industry are exchanging display materials in a circular fashion.

A positive frame of mind for the future of the industry

The art world is in the early stages of its climate journey and is in a privileged position to drive decarbonization initiatives in a wide range of sectors such as energy, packaging, transportation and real estate.

If you've managed to read this far (congratulations, by the way), you'll notice that we still need to discuss the impact of the art itself.

Art can help us connect with the natural world and create a desire in the beholder to protect it for future generations. Exhibitions such as Wildlife Photographer of the year play a role in showcasing the planet's beauty.

Art can also be leveraged to raise the alarm. Artists like Tan Zi Xi use their creativity to highlight the severity of ocean plastic pollution, and Michael Pinsky illuminated landmarks in London to indicate rising sea levels if nothing is done to avert the climate crisis.

As individuals, we can leverage our talents to paint stories about climate change and inspire others to take climate action. Of course, it helps to be technically gifted, as I'm not sure my stickman art skills would inspire much change.

This could create ripple effects and inspire people, which might be more effective than science or stats you might read in a medium article written by a guy who spends way too much time thinking about climate change.