Op-Ed: Is smearing food on the ‘Mona Lisa’ a productive form of climate change protest?
The idea that a certain kind of work that is harmful to the planet can be done to an artwork that has great significance to the planet may have first taken hold in the 1980s, when the idea of climate change emerged as a serious problem. But the idea has gained momentum this century as a way of trying to bring awareness to the fact that humans are responsible for about half of the 5.8 degrees of temperature increase that has occurred over the past 100 years.
Climate change is a term that was first coined in the 1970s by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of scientists that is tasked to report on the state of the planet and the state of the global climate. The IPCC is tasked with making sure that climate change is “on the agenda” for the world.
The term “global warming” is also a term that was first coined in the 1970s, by then-US President Jimmy Carter.
The idea that a certain kind of work that is harmful to the planet can be done to an artwork that has great significance to the planet may have first taken hold in the 1980s, when the idea of climate change emerged as a serious problem. But the idea has gained momentum this century as a way of trying to bring awareness to the fact that humans are responsible for about half of the 5.8 degrees of temperature increase that has occurred over the past 100 years.
The global warming label was first used in the 1980s, at the same time as the IPCC was first formed in 1988. One of the first actions that the IPCC took, was to report on the rise of greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans.
While the ‘global warming’ label was first used in the 1980s, it wasn’t until this century that the term became a catchier, more powerful and persuasive way to describe the world-wide problem of climate change.
One of the many people that began to talk about the connection between climate change and art was Richard Heinberg, who was an activist and professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Heinberg became very involved in the issue around the time that the IPCC was founded around the world