What’s Next for Earth: Population & Consumption Art Call

Michele Guieu | March 5, 2021 | Leave a Comment

You are invited to participate in @WhatsNextForEarth’s art call “Population and Consumption” open until March 31st, 2021. What’s Next for Earth is a participative art project based on Instagram that invites the community to respond to a monthly topic, reflecting on the human predicament. A selection of the contributions will be published on the MAHB Arts Community Page.

The Art Call

In 2021, What’s Next for Earth proposes to go through The Post Carbon Institute’s FREE online course THINK RESILIENCE, one lesson at a time. Please sign up at education.resilience.org (it’s easy). Please watch the introductory video – first lesson (5 min) and the third lesson: Population and Consumption (12 min).  “Energy” is the second lesson and we encourage you to watch it too (12 min).

Excerpt from the video: [Human impact on the environment results not just from population size, and not just from the per capita rate of consumption, but from both together. In this video we explore how adoption of tools, language, agriculture, and most especially fossil fuels allowed humans to temporarily overcome the carrying capacity of the planet to support our growing population and consumption, and why those trends can no longer continue.]

"Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury."

Think Resilience is hosted by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s leading experts on the urgency and challenges of moving society away from fossil fuels.

We live in a time of tremendous political, environmental, and economic upheaval. What should we do?

Think Resilience is an online course offered by Post Carbon Institute to help you get started on doing something. It features twenty-two video lectures—about four hours total—by Richard Heinberg, one of the world’s foremost experts on the urgency and challenges of transitioning society away from fossil fuels. Think Resilience is rooted in Post Carbon Institute’s years of work in energy literacy and community resilience. It packs a lot of information into four hours, and by the end of the course you’ll have good start on two important skills:

1. How to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. What are the underlying, systemic forces at play? What brought us to this place? Acting without this understanding is like putting a bandage on a life-threatening injury.

2. How to build community resilience. While we must also act in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, building the resilience of our communities is an essential response to the 21st century’s multiple sustainability crises.

How to participate in the Art Call

1. Watch the Population and Consumption video (12 min)

2. Create your piece using any format/technique you wish. 

3. Post it on your Instagram page. Include a description of your piece in your photo’s caption: title, technique, and size, and the relationship with the theme.
Copy and paste all these tags at the end of your description:

#Populationandconsumption #artcall
@WhatsNextForEarth
@mahbglobal
@postcarboninstitute
#WhatsNextForEarth
#ecoart
#artactivism
#artinthetimeofcovid
#humanpredicament
#mahbstanfordarts
#mahbartscommunity
#anthropocene

Follow What’s Next for Earth on Instagram!
If you have any questions, please send a message to michele@mahbonline.org

The views and opinions expressed through the MAHB Website are those of the contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect an official position of the MAHB. The MAHB aims to share a range of perspectives and welcomes the discussions that they prompt.