Halloween is almost upon us! Still stumped about the best way to decorate your premises for this spookiest of holidays? We have here a set of six Grist-exclusive patterns to help you carve the perfect eco-pumpkin. Each pattern comes with instructions. Just click on your favorite, print the PDF, sharpen your knife, and get to it.

Then all you’ll have left to do is choose the perfect costume. (Don’t go as Bill McKibben, you’ll steal our thunder.)

Related Links:

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

Courtesy

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

Bill McKibben says time is running out on climate delays

City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

Some of the MacArthur Foundation “genius award” winners are doing work related to climate change. And they now they each have $500 grand, no strings attached. Neat-o:

Also sorta related:

Much, much more info on the foundation’s site.

Related Links:

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Update! The people have spoken; we have have a winner. Presenting the nifty Tracing Emissions mobile (and a gallery of entries).

Photo courtesy spike55151 via FlickStory: In June I wrote about Burning Embers, an art and design competition that invited students to create illustrations that reflected the causes and effects of climate change. The idea was that we need more compelling imagery than the sometimes-drab, sometimes-confusing graphics in policy reports. Well, four intriguing finalists have been selected—a video, a photo essay, a set of “animal cards,” and a mobile (the last is my favorite).

Ji Lee, creative director of the Google Creative Lab, did the judging for the organizer, the non-profit Artist as Citizen. Commenters on the Dot Earth blog of New York Times science reporter Andy Revkin will vote for the winner. Revkin pitched the early idea for a climate art competition after reporting on the problematic “burning embers” graph in a 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Anyway, have a look at the four finalists—they’re all worthwhile. Then vote for a favorite at Dot Earth, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Thin Ice
M. Drennan, School of Visual Arts, M.F.A., Photography, 2009

Extinct
D. Kim, Parsons School of Design, B.F.A., Communication Design, 2009

Tracing Emissions
T. Holliday, S. Reagin, Pratt Institute, both M.F.A., 2011

Climate Change
M. Shapiro, New York University, B.F.A. Film, 2011:

Climate Change from ArtistAsCitizen on Vimeo.

Related Links:

It’s Getting Ha! in Here: Maria Bamford

Disappearing slave history

Gore on the Daily Show: extended dance remix

Update below

The coal-industry group Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy, which doesn’t actually allow families to join, has a wonderfully crappy coloring book for children. Let’s have a look!

Plot, character development, and drawings that kids would actually want to color don’t seem to be priorities for "Eyes for Frosty." At least it picks a relevant topic in snowmen—they won’t be around for long if the coal industry succeeds in stomping all over climate change legislation. And kids will be stuck with the consequences of our fossil-fuel pollution, so it sort of makes sense to at least leave them with a coloring book.

All Images: Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy

It should be clear already: the artist’s heart just isn’t in this.

Meet Power Rock and his sidekick Spurt.

[Skipping boring stuff about prehistoric sediment]

But where did the mountaintops go?

Spurt finally gets some screen time.

Power Rock’s eyes get more evil-looking in each frame.

Wait, they can fly? Come back Power Rock! Come back Spurt!

Now go check out some real climate art.

Update: Alert reader SOLARKISMET informs us the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity runs an annual Coal Calendar Art & Essay Contest for middle schoolers. It's sad, but these student artists show more talent than the "Eyes for Frosty" creator. Why, Illinois, why?

Related Links:

Prologue to Copenhagen

Vinod Khosla Nonesense

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

x

Related Links:

Friday music blogging: Harper Simon

Climate Citizen: Mary Stuart Masterson

Friday music blogging: Phosphorescent

The green sliver to your right represents songs that express environmental concern and don't suck. It is populated by "Big Yellow Taxi" from Joni Mitchell. Oh, and "Mercy Mercy Me" by Marvin Gaye. "Earth Song," by Michael Jackson, if you're into that kind of thing. A couple of Neil Young songs. They call it a sliver for a reason.

With the recent explosion of "green" over the past few years, though, we've noticed a new wave of tunes that try to do better -- to hip green so, you know, the kids can dance to it. Unfortunately, few of these new efforts have found their way to the sliver.

Here's a list of recent eco-minded tunes, ranked from most to least cringeworthy. Don't say we didn't warn you.

-----

10. Dave Stewart (the Other Guy in the Eurythmics) has been instrumental in starting a posse of green celebrities called "Greenpeace Works," which he characterizes, God help us all, as a "think tank." The brain trust's inaugural production is "Go Green," a forgettable piece of didacticism set to stale mid-'90s pop beats. Imagine "We Are the World," only with B-list celebs. And a corkscrew jammed in your temple.

The song is Greenpeace's "Earth Day anthem," which is as good an indicator as any that the human race is done for. When grumpy red staters imagine elitist liberal greens and their Gulfstream-flying Hollywood buddies, this is the soundtrack to their fuming.

9. Remember when Madonna didn't give a f*ck what you thought? When she was just dancing around in ripped up clothes, all spunky and badass, like you could take your rules and stick 'em where the lucky star don't shine?

We miss that Madonna. Nowadays, Madonna cares what you think. Really cares. In fact she's tapping you on the shoulder so she can tell you what you think -- thus "Hey You." Converting Britney to Kabbalah? Fine. Making unwatchable movies? Fine. Collecting poor brown kids like tchotchkes? Hey, papa don't preach. But this song? This is too much. Madonna must be stopped.

8. Did you know the Earth is, like, hurting? With global warming and stuff? Totally. "I don't know what all this means," admits synergistic multi-platform Disney entertainment conglomerate Miley Cyrus. Luckily, "tomorrow becomes another day." Some of us grumpy post-pubescents might point out that tomorrow, insofar as it's not today, is already another day, but hell, we're just old! The kidz can make a diff! Wake up, America! As if you could sleep through this.

7. If you are, ahem, of a certain age, you will remember Jared Leto as the TOTALLY DREAMY Jordan Catalano from short-lived teen drama "My So-Called Life." If you are of Generation Z or whatever we're on now, you know Leto as the lead singer for mopey emo rockers 30 Seconds to Mars, who have distinguished themselves from dozens of other similarly tight-jeaned mopey emo rockers by ... er ... they went to the Arctic! To film a video, presumably in support of saving the Arctic.

Puzzlingly, the song isn't about climate change. Or the Arctic. It's about how life is totally a big lie and you just have to, like, maintain. "A quiet desperation's building higher / I've got to remember this is just a game." Oh, Jordan, if only it were. Er, Jared! We meant Jared!

6. Painfully bad white-boy rapping -- and you'll see more before you're done with this list -- is a delicate business. It requires a certain ironic detachment; painfully bad rappers have to be in on the goof. Ideally they deliver some good information, because if you gotta suck, you might as well suck informatively.

On all these scores, Darrick “D-Pain” Lee and Michael “Phat Mike” Darnel get a solid C. That's C as in Canada, Land Where Laughing-At and Laughing-With Meet. These Vancouver hip-hoplings' debut joint, "Hurtin' Our Planet," loses points for hectoring but gains 'em right back for the use of autotune.

5. Middle of the list, middle of the road, possibly the middle of the known universe: "I Need to Wake Up (Inconvenient Truth)," from Melissa Ethridge. Yes, this slice of OprAmerican cheese is meant to tickle Boomer '60s nostalgia. (Wake up, hippies! Cast off those khakis!) And like most Boomer nostalgia it mistakes activism for therapy. But c'mon. Don't you want the Boomers fired up? They'll be retiring soon, with time on their hands. And they have all the money!

4. Slightly better white-boy rapping, from Vermont's X-10, wins for being packed with an almost scholarly level of detail on peer-review, methane capture, efficiency, and voting margins. The song pleads with Vermont's congress to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of clean energy bill H. 520. That is keeping it real with wonk appeal. Word to the 350 in 802. Out.

3. will.i.am is making a play to be the new Bono, a performer taken seriously on matters of world import. Though he lacks Bono's, er, understanding of matters of world import, he does have a huge Rolodex, the ability to project himself as a hologram, and an almost uncanny instinct for tickling the millennial American id, as demonstrated by his now-famous "Yes We Can" video. (Not to mention "My Humps.")

Slightly less impactful, and with fewer lovely lady lumps, was "Take Our Planet Back," a song Mr. i.am did for Mr. Gore. It's a little sappy, but it does contain this immortal passage:

2. In "Melting Ice," 10-year-old Lil Peppi, the "king of eco-rap," gets quite a bit of mileage out of a synthy old-school beat and being frakking adorable. My favorite is the outfit with the "Science Team" badge. Go Science Team!

Peppi also says "we gotta find a solution, no matter the cost," which I take as comment on this matter.

1. Now we're getting somewhere. "I pull up behind and you never heard a sound." This is from comedy troupe Casual Mafia and it's obviously supposed to be funny, but it's kind of awesome too. They're not making fun of my people are they?

(You might also enjoy "Douchebag Anthem.")

Take it all the way to 11 -- click to the next page to see the best eco-song out there.

Winner!

Take one of the best pop songs of the last decade, add a cute girl, a goofy pink hat, and impossibly nerdy lyrics about home energy efficiency audits, and you have, quite simply, perfection. "Yeah, this record's going LEED Platinum / If you got those skinny windows, better fatten' em." If this video were a man I'd gay marry it.

Related Links:

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

Kids just say no—to fossil fuels

Friday music blogging: Harper Simon

Far from their sometimes musty, dusty reputations, many museums in the U.S. stand on the cutting edge of eco-innovation. Whether it’s behind the scenes (using recycled materials to build exhibits, renovating to LEED standards) or inescapably out front (a whole museum dedicated to wind power), museums are showing visitors the green light. Take our tour—admission is free!

Related Links:

Why buying cheap energy certificates worsens climate change

Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1

Slideshow: Reinventing the JP Green House

Most of the pieces in this series focus on individual artists or one-off works. But climate art is gaining an institutional foothold too. Check out our tour of green museums -- and read on for more examples of groups taking a broader look at climate through art.

Founded in 2001 by artist David Buckland, Cape Farewell aims to "pioneer the cultural response to climate change." The international charitable organization does this by bringing artists, scientists, and communicators together to inspire the creation of art that is rooted in scientific research.
This piece made from steel, glass, water, and salt is part of the "Earth: Art of a Changing World" exhibit opening at London's Royal Academy of Arts in December. Click here to see a preview of this exhibit.Mariele Neudecker, 400 Thousand Generations, 2009
A recent project involved an 18-day trek through Peru's shrinking glaciers and rain forests, during which artists visited multiple science stations. After the trip, the art they produce will become part of ongoing exhibitions and engagement programs.

In December, Buckland will help curate "Earth: Art of a Changing World," an exhibit at London's Royal Academy of Arts that will feature works from more than 30 contemporary artists. See a preview of the exhibit in this slideshow.

Art-history types are taking note of climate change as well, both in terms of concern over how rising temperatures and humidity could affect art treasures in tropical nations and in the development of new fields of study, such as "ecocriticism."

The most recent edition of the American Art journal features an essay on the topic of "ecocritical art history" that defines the term as "emphasiz[ing] issues of environmental interconnectedness, sustainability, and justice in cultural interpretation." And although author Alan C. Braddock comments first on a Thomas Eakins painting from the late 1800s, he goes on to note [PDF] that "glimpses of climate change increasingly appear in contemporary art" and points to the Arctic photography of Subhankar Banerjee as an example.

Braddock also chose to put one of Banerjee's photographs of caribou migration on the cover of his forthcoming collection of essays, A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History.

Need more evidence that the climate crisis is creeping deeper into our cultural consciousness? Check out these climate-related stories we dug out of the Grist archives:

Visual Art
Images of an evolving world by artist Don Simon
Burning Embers design contest seeks new ways to illustrate climate change

Film
A review of Fields of Fuel
A second look at Fields of Fuel
Wangari Maathai film shows Kenyan tree planting as political subversion
The Next Wave chronicles the climate change refugees
Sweet Crude documents oil exploitation in the Niger River Delta
Sea Change documentary highlights threats of ocean acidification
Big Coal does not want you to see Coal Country film
An interview with climate mockumentary filmmaker Randy Olson

Music
Music festivals across the country aim to lessen their footprint
Legendary Burning Man festival gets an eco-conscience
Barenaked Ladies vocalist Steven Page lays bare his hopes for a green future
Moby reflects on his new "best of" album and his not-so-new social activism
Reggae artist Michael Franti lets loose on inspiring social change
Mike D of the Beastie Boys drops science on green tours, politics, and Live Earth
The barnstorming band that's changing the world, one campus at a time
Russell Simmons on harnessing the power of hip-hop to change the world
Nine things you should know about musician Andrew Bird
Jason Mraz sings the praises of a simpler life
Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard chats about the band's environmental ethos
Tom Gray on green touring, Wal-Mart, and why he won't proselytize

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

Friday music blogging: Harper Simon

Salvadoran mudslides: A plea for climate change solutions and holistic water policy

More than 30 leading contemporary artists have contributed work on the theme of climate change for an upcoming exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Entitled “Earth: Art of a Changing World,” the exhibit runs from Dec. 3 through Jan. 31, 2010.

Related Links:

This Halloween, cut flesh for the climate

Toward the language of excitement, opportunity, and potential

What Bill McKibben learned from the gay rights march

Someone wise in the PR biz once said “any publicity is good publicity,” and climate activists certainly seem to take these words to heart. They’re not afraid to dress up as polar bears or penguins or CFL bulbs to get their message across. And they recognize the power of a good aerial shot, too, arranging themselves on beaches, open fields, and frozen ice to spell out what’s on their minds.

We’re highlighting their work in our series because we recognize that it takes a lot of creativity—and some fancy stitching in some cases—to make this activist-powered “performance art” happen.

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

Salvadoran mudslides: A plea for climate change solutions and holistic water policy

We have met the deniers, and they are us

Artist Chris Jordan is known for his creative representations of American consumption habits, but even he was shocked to find out the numbers involved in producing coal-fired electricity.

After learning about mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachian range, Jordan decided to illustrate just how much coal we consume each day—and the project turned out to be much more immense than he had realized.

Related Links:

Prologue to Copenhagen

Vinod Khosla Nonesense

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

That pleading little essay I wrote in 2005? It was probably the last moment I could have written it. Clearly there were lots and lots of people already thinking the same way, because ever since it's seemed to me as if deep and moving images and sounds and words have been flooding out into the world.

Bill, built from Flickr pix.Kalman Gacs, 350.org/galleryThat torrent of art has been, often, deeply disturbing -- it should be deeply disturbing, given what we're doing to the earth. (And none of it has quite matched the performance work that nature itself is providing. Check out, for instance, James Balog's time-lapse photography of glaciers crashing into the sea -- if we could somehow crowd that thrashing sheet of ice into the Guggenheim for a week, people would truly get it.) But for me, it's been more comforting than disturbing, because it means that the immune system of the planet is finally kicking in.

Artists, in a sense, are the antibodies of the cultural bloodstream. They sense trouble early, and rally to isolate and expose and defeat it, to bring to bear the human power for love and beauty and meaning against the worst results of carelessness and greed and stupidity. So when art both of great worth, and in great quantities, begins to cluster around an issue, it means that civilization has identified it finally as a threat. Artists and scientists perform this function most reliably; politicians are a lagging indicator.

But once a threat has been identified, the attack has to be at least a little organized. Which is why I'm so pleased that many artists are not just doing their own thing, but also increasingly figuring out how to come together to make the sum of their voices louder than the individual parts. Let me use the example that's closest at hand: the 350.org campaign that I've been helping run this past year, the biggest global grassroots effort on climate change.

We're working with ministers and mountain climbers and youth networks and even politicians. But with artists too. I've been shamelessly asking friends to shape their work to fit our message: that 350, as in parts per million CO2, is the most important number in the world, that beyond it the world simply doesn't work in the ways it must for our civilization to survive. And people have responded in remarkable ways. You can see many of them on our website, from crafters to fine artists to someone who somehow managed to make a portrait of me from hundreds of Flickr photos of 350 demonstrations around the world. (I've always hated looking at pictures of myself, but that one I stared at for a long time, because it seemed to illustrate a principle that matters to me: we are who we are because of our connection to others.) 350.org is one of the first campaigns I know of with an official artist-in-residence, Kevin Buckland, who is coordinating as best he can many of these contributions. But mostly it's like a potluck supper. Everyone is bringing what they do best.

We've asked writers if they would pen 350-word poems and essays, and many have responded. Here's the great Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, for instance.

Photographers are organizing around the world, not only to send us images, but also to document the thousands of actions that will be taking place on October 24 on our global day of action. (That day itself will be a carnival of performance art; I've just come from helping cobble together what we think will be the world's largest underwater demonstration, in the Maldive Islands.) We'll take the pictures they upload from around the planet and show them on a giant screen at the U.N. that day, and then deliver prints to every delegate and negotiator.

Amazing artists keep stepping up to fill needs we didn't even know existed. John Quigley, for instance, who is the Rembrandt of what you might call aerial art -- arranging human beings on the ground to make a point from above. Here's a picture from Poznan in Poland, and from Bonn, Germany, and from Bali, Indonesia. (See more aerial art in our performance art slideshow.)

Musicians too. Some of them world-famous: Moby will apparently headline a concert/rally on the big day in Mexico City, and Groove Armada in the U.K.; Sigur Rós let us use a song of theirs on our most recent organizing video. Fred Small provided us a marching song that we put to great use when we helped shut down the Capitol Hill Power plant in Washington in March. Rev. Lennox Yearwood and the Hip Hop Caucus have been helping us plan events across the country that use a different beat than old-school environmentalists are used to. Today's email brought not one but two cuts from one of my favorite pairs of singers, Michigan's Seth Bernard and May Erlewine. I asked them -- humbly but insistently -- for a song; they went to work. That's how it's been with pretty much everyone. (Read more about climate-change tunes and North American bands going green.)

A graphic depiction of the task at hand.Michael Lagocki, 350.org/galleryThere's no limit to the stuff we can use, from pros and from amateurs. Crafters have sent in endless great patterns; graffiti artists have started taking the number to the streets and building buzz; dancers have been creating dances of 350 steps and more; great video artists put together our first organizing video, which has now been seen all over the planet.

My point four years ago was that we needed art to help build a general consciousness about climate change, the greatest problem we've ever faced. That's happened. Now we need to focus some of that beauty and witness and anger sharply enough to help spur deep and lasting change. It's always hard for any of us who are writers and musicians and visual artists to subordinate our own personal vision even a little -- that's what makes us artists. But the pleasure of working together in common cause more than makes up for the imposition. Please join us!

Related Links:

Bill McKibben says time is running out on climate delays

Is Bill McKibben right to be angry with Obama?

Mr. President: Time to quit fibbing and spinning

This image of a polar bear on Barnard Harbor in Alaska was used in a Senate debate about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.Photo: Subhankar Banerjee

"Art has always reflected what is in our world and in our horizon and what our fears are -- which is all tied in to climate change." Coco Howard, Seattle artist

In 2003, a Senate debate turned into an art show for a moment. In the heat of an argument over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) held up an image of a polar bear crossing a frozen harbor. That image, taken by photographer Subhankar Banerjee, was dynamic and colorful and full of life -- everything, in fact, that drilling advocates had argued the Refuge was not.

It wasn't the first time art had played a role in the politics of preservation. As Victoria Anstead, an environmental art curator and advisor, points out, the iconic black-and-white images of Ansel Adams helped expand the national park system. "It helped give people enough information that they could ... know that issue intimately enough that they would vote the way you wanted them to -- to preserve the land," she says.

The same effect is possible, say artists and activists, around the issue of climate change. Art can reach people in unexpected ways, can make abstract political issues come alive and lead people to take action. And increasingly, climate art is appearing in unexpected places.

That wasn't the case four years ago, when author Bill McKibben asked "Where is the art about climate change?"

Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele answered that call. (Read McKibben's new essay to see who else is getting involved.) McKibben's words got the photographer/writer pair thinking about a recent trip they'd taken to interview members of the Iceland Glaciological Society, volunteers (from sheepherders to plastic surgeons) who measure and document the advance and retreat of glaciers in their own backyards.

Hoping to shift the debate from "is it happening or isn't it" to "how do we cope," the duo launched a large-scale multimedia project called "Facing Climate Change" in 2006. Through images, words, and audio clips, they are telling the stories of people affected by and adapting to climate change. (Hear wildland firefighter Joe King talk about wildfire suppression in the American West.)

"I think it's really the job of documentary and creative arts to take this issue and put it inside our psyche," Drummond says. "There's something about these visual arts that can take the emotive sides of [climate change] and really steep us in it so we have this deeper understanding of the issue."

Chris Jordan's "Gyre" is actually made from 2.4 million bits of plastic.Courtesy Chris JordanFor artist Chris Jordan, deeper understanding comes with breaking down complex concepts into digestible bits. Or in the case of his recent piece "Gyre," 2.4 million bits -- of plastic.

That number, 2.4 million, represents the estimated pounds of plastic pollution reaching the ocean every hour. In writing, it is surprising, but assembled Seurat-style into a re-creation of Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," that number becomes staggeringly comprehendible.

"There are actually all these studies out there ... demonstrating that the human mind doesn't have the ability to comprehend numbers more than a few thousand," Jordan says. "And yet, all of the numbers associated with global warming are all these astronomical, huge numbers that are so hard for us to feel anything about."

Numbers like 4 trillion, which is the number of pounds of carbon dioxide generated each year by coal-fired power plants. Or even 63,000, the number of pounds of coal burned in the United States each second. Jordan incorporates both into another new piece, created as part of a Sierra Club campaign to fight mountaintop removal mining. (Hear Jordan explain the numbers in this audio slideshow.)

"I think that's one of the most powerful roles that art can play in culture is to shine a light on our collective shadow," Jordan says, "to bring things out from the shadow and illuminate them."

Interactive media artist Rebecca Bray, who helped created the hugely popular and effective "Meatrix" animations, agrees: "Art can traverse these boundaries between being not just gorgeous but also thought-provoking and responsive and very personal."

Like Jordan, Bray is looking to use her artistic talents to help people break complex environmental issues down into smaller problems that seem solvable, but she's aiming for a much more hands-on approach. She and fellow artist Britta Riley have started focusing on the concept of R&D-I-Y (research and develop it yourself), a "crowdsourcing initiative" that focuses on environmental problems. "We can't always wait for scientists and research institutions to come up with solutions," she says.

Their latest endeavor involves the use of recycled local materials to create vertical window farms that serve as décor -- and dinner. (Umbra Fisk chats with Bray and Riley while offering video advice on how to grow food in a small space.) And now they're sharing their functional art project, via workshops and web demos, with a much larger population.

"Climate change is something that people share in common. Everyone from Sámi reindeer herdsmen and wildland firefighters, to high school students, lawyers, and prisoners, must confront and adapt to climate change," Steele says. "Our hope is that by combining these universal things, art and climate change, we can influence people to act -- soon."

Related Links:

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

Kids just say no—to fossil fuels

The North Face, Aspen, and climate policy

I’m thinking about reporting on this house as an example of sensible environmental design reproducible for the masses. Can anyone help me decide? This is a press release (emphasis mine):

Related Links:

Why buying cheap energy certificates worsens climate change

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1

"Ice Cold" by Kris GarlandPhoto: Sarah van SchagenGlobal warming got you in stitches? Trying to understand all the tightly knit issues by looking for common threads?

Weave your way down to Schmancy (part of the "trilogy of awesome") in Seattle, Wash., for an artsy display of embroidery, quilting, felting, and otherwise fiber-fab interpretations of the Arctic's plight. The Fiber Arctic show, on display through July 9, features sculpted icebergs, sequined whales, stranded polar bears, and one very sassy reindeer.

Though Schmancy regularly hosts group shows, this one was unique in terms of the environmental theme, offering the artists more of a challenge, said owner Kristin Rask at the opening June 12.

It was also an opportunity to utilize alternative fibers, like the iridescent seaweed Coco Howard used in her felted piece "What the Tara Expedition Found There," created by repeatedly poking a barbed needle into the fibers to create the heat and friction that binds them.

"Art has always reflected what is in our world and in our horizon and what our fears are," Howard said, "which is all tied in to climate change."

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

This Halloween, cut flesh for the climate

U.N. chief will pressure senators on climate bill

Is that a banana seat or are you just happy to see me?
The best part about World Naked Bike Day: No awkward spandex shorts. The worst part about World Naked Bike Day: No awkward spandex shorts.

(Click below to see the next item in this week’s Grist List—or view them all on a single page.)

Photo: Paul-in-London via Flickr

No scoop for you!
Finally, the perfect icebreaker for those awkward climate-change conversations with your kids: Snow Cones Are Forever (or are they ... mwahahaha!).

Photo: Elvis John Ferrao via Flickr

Lambor-greenie?
Question: Does driving a hybrid Lamborghini make you more or less pretentious than a Prius driver?

Photo: Heidi KenneyPlush delivery
If a stitch in time saves nine, think what 20 "fiber artists" can do for the Arctic ... Talk about fancy, Schmancy!

True story
"Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ (a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer), you can have the best of both worlds: the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book."

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

General Motors to start repaying government loans

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Photo courtesy spike55151 via FlickrNow here’s a great idea: The student-driven not-for-profit Artist as Citizen has a new Burning Embers design competition, inviting student artists to find new ways to portray climate change trends, causes, and effects. The contest, open to undergraduate and graduate art students and recent graduates, invites work in any medium that can be shown online--illustrations, graphics, photo montage, YouTube videos, flash movies, or any combination.

Burning Embers was inspired by a problem familiar to anyone who’s spent time with scientific reports: graphics by scientists can be achingly dull or confusing. The project takes its name from the “burning embers” diagrams created for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and criticized alternately for being too unclear or too unnerving (backstory here). The contest offers two calls:

The contest includes a $4,000 prize and makes available grants for concept development in amounts from $200 to $800 (for team entries). The competition page has much more information. New York Times science reporter Andy Revkin teamed up with Artist as Citizen to conceive and promote the contest; after the July 31 deadline for entries, they will be judged by the public on Revkin’s Dot Earth blog.

The competition rests on two appealing premises—that communicating climate change to the public requires a diversity of media, and that scientific art should be held to the same standards of accuracy as traditional forms of journalism: “data compared should be faithful to the IPCC, MIT, or other scientific primary source. (Please include the name of your source.)”

Know a student artist? Pass this along.

Related Links:

Disappearing slave history

This Halloween, cut flesh for the climate

New interactive map shows devastating effects of global temperature rise

One of the thorniest questions I used to get as a recycling educator for the awesome grassroots recycling company EcoCycle in Boulder, Colo., was why 'astrobright' papers weren't recyclable. You know this stuff: the super-dyed paper used by everyone from bands to Girl Scouts to make posters announcing their bake sales and death-metal guitar battles. It's often bright orange, but also comes in every other shade imaginable.

The dye used to make these papers is so bright that it has the effect of washing your white clothes with one dark blue T shirt and are hence called 'beater dyes' -- they beat the paper recycling process and must be sorted out of the paper stream by recycling facilities and then burned or landfilled.

I called my pals at EcoCycle recently to see if the story has changed, but alas, it has not. We should all avoid their use. Bright yellow manila envelopes fall into the same category, I'm afraid. But what EcoCycle is telling its curbside customers and dropoff center users is to compost these papers with leaves and grass clippings. Better than nothing!

What to avoid: any brightly colored paper that is dyed throughout: tearing part of it will expose a white middle in papers that are OK to recycle. Pastel colored paper is the one exception, so use this for your posters.

In a country like the US producing an estimated total of 413 million tons of garbage generated annually, with only 28.6 percent recycled and composted, 6.9 percent combusted in waste-to-energy plants, and 64.5 percent landfilled (see BioCycle magazine's 2008 State of Garbage Report), we should do all we can to ensure that the paper we use (post consumer recycled, please!) and recycle is the right kind. 

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

What's better than attending the Fortune Brainstorm Green 2009 and hearing Ford Chairman Bill Ford and Founder and CEO of A Better Place Shai Agassi speak? Shaking hands with Former President Bill Clinton, of course!  Not too shabby for a couple of days in Orange County.  Beyond the speakers and the networking, the artistic angle of the conference was phenomenal. "Ultimately, it was the most comfortable and eye-pleasing conference I’ve ever attended."

Herman Miller

Who would have thought that a chair could be chique, ergonomic, and green all at the same time? Herman Miller did. "One of Fortune’s Most Admired Furniture Companies," Herman Miller has kept a strong focus on the environment from concept to distribution. So much so that Paul Murray, Director of Environmental Affairs and Safety at Herman Miller, says they have "very aggressive goals of zero footprint and no water emissions by 2020."  It's not that far-fetched: Murray reported the company has achieved 50% of this goal already.

    Their Aeron chair line, used on stage and in the audience at the Brainstorm Green event, was sourced for its eco-friendly features.  Murray says the chair "can be disassembled, is manufactured using renewable electrical power, parts are delivered using returnable packaging from suppliers and has over 60% recycled content."

    Even more commendable is Herman Miller's effort to go back to their suppliers and change the way they source their materials. Murray comments, "Our suppliers might not make the dyes or colors used, so we call their suppliers -- anything harmful, we ask suppliers to take it out." I love that Herman Miller can be profitable while reducing hazardous waste in the groundwater outside supplier plants worldwide.

These chairs are definitely on the wish-list for Opportunity Green!

 Junk Wall 

The backdrop of the conference was intriguing, but it wasn't until I got up close and personal when I realized it was a collage of junk.  Artist Tom Deininger's autumn-themed wall collage, reaching a height of twenty feet, was a mapped masterpiece comprised of shoes, plastic items, and our favorite - action figures!

    Deininger started constructing these abstract wall collages in 1999 with materials plucked from beach wash and "literally dumpster-diving" for items.  He even perused garage sales, offering $15 for all leftover goods.  Eventually, friends and other artists caught on and unloaded piles of junk to his ever-expanding studio.  Deininger described his organized chaos saying, "The studio started to look like a painter's palette, all reds in one section, greens in another, blues, pinks, blacks and so on."

    Built in under three weeks by Deininger and his team, the junk wall for Brainstorm Green started with a base wall constructed from recycled wooden shipping containers.  He then fastened green, red, and orange plastic junk onto twenty individual panels, which were then encased in plywood and shipped to California.

    Deininger, whose work is in numerous public and private collections through out the world, is a resident of Bristol, Rhode Island and an advocate for Save the Bay.  He prides himself on creating works that are "bold and subtle at the same time" and most definitely achieved that at the conference.  Attendees were in awe of how discarded plastic could convey such a unique message.

The biggest tidbit I uncovered was the mystery of the whereabouts of his artwork after the event.  Neither Deininger nor myself know whether the pieces were discarded or displayed elsewhere.  Where in the world is the junk wall? It would be great to repurpose it for our conference. How's that for collaboration!

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Toxic suds want to watch you shower

Ask Umbra on shower caps, computers, and junk mail