Is there a solution to climate change?

• Main Author: White, Margaret Claire
• Other Authors: Egan, Matthew, School of Art and Design
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: East Carolina University 2019
• Subjects: printmaking; midterms; Climatic changes in art; Environmentalism in art; Art > Political aspects; Ocean acidification; permafrost
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10342/7271

This document supports my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition consisting of two digital prints, ten lithographs, vinyl text corresponding to each print and 5 stickers with listed references, in the SOAD gallery. The artwork is divided into two sections: mitigation and adaptation, and subsections detailing specific predicaments including ocean acidification, energy production, and thawing permafrost. Accompanying text explains the scientific and social relevance behind the imagery. In this way, the art acts as a framing device for the science and social issues of climate change. As I made the work for this exhibition, contemporary events included the 2018 mid-term elections and the International Panel on Climate Change released their report on the impacts of our rising global temperature. These are both relevant and pertinent to the thesis. While the media acknowledged the overwhelming alarm generated by the IPCC report, climate change was forgotten by the midterm campaigners in favor of policies on immigration and healthcare. Climate change is a pressing concern that will affect us for generations even if we solved it today. I believe it worth discussing, especially in the context of a university, but I hope this thesis will one day be irrelevant.