Julie's Bicycle - working for a low carbon creative economy

Diana Liverman maneuvers among the research, teaching, art, music, and video gaming worlds like a pinball.

Like other scientists, she authors papers. She serves on committees. And she co-directs the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment. But amid the panel discussions, plenary sessions, student advising, and staff meetings, she volunteers her time and science savvy to creative outlets, championing the idea that the paintbrush—or the video console—can be mightier than the PowerPoint when it comes to drawing attention to climate and environmental change.

Throughout the year—either in person or through Web conferencing—she meets with fellow board members of four organizations that spread the word about greenhouse gas emissions, climate impacts, and carbon footprints from unexpected yet engaging angles and perspectives.

“I’ve always been interested in the human dimensions of climate change. The cultural perspective is important in terms of how it influences how people understand and respond to climate,” said Liverman, a geography and development professor who specializes in climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, and climate policy.

Take London-based Julie’s Bicycle. Liverman sits on the board of directors of the non-profit, which is dedicated to helping the United Kingdom’s music industry reduce its carbon emissions and produce greener tunes. 

In 2007–08, she co-wrote the report, First Step, which analyzed the annual carbon emissions produced by the UK music business in 2007. Compact disc packaging, as it turned out, is a prime culprit in the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. As a result of the report and follow-up research, much of the UK’s music industry pledged to zap packaging emissions by 10 percent in 2009 by swapping plastic CD cases for cardboard.

“Getting them to go to cardboard is amazing,” Liverman said.

She also has taken Julie’s Bicycle on the road: she and Jazz Summers, manager of The Verve, Snow Patrol, and other bands, discussed the climate impacts of music tours during a workshop at the Pollstar Concert Industry Consortium, a music industry meeting in California, in January 2009. 

At the climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, this month, she helped escort singer KT Tunstall around the conference and delivered a petition signed by dozens of music executives who are pushing for a strong agreement on climate change and have promised to green their own operations.

Liverman plunged into the music–art–science scene in 2005, when she was director of the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at Oxford University. She was asked if ECI could help organize a conference to bring together climate scientists and artists concerned with environmental change. She agreed.

“I had funding from a donor interested in environmental ethics and humanities and the relationship humans have with nature. I thought this was a good thing to invest the money in,” she said. “It was a great success and very inspiring, and it generated a lot of interest from the arts community, which wanted regular briefings on climate change.”

TippingPoint, an organization that links artists to climate science, emerged from the three conferences ECI hosted between 2005 and 2007. TippingPoint exposes artists to the complexities of climate change so they can consider the urgency of the issue through dance, poetry, prose, painting, drawing, photography, song, and other avenues of creativity. Tipping Point has now gone international, hosting an event in New York in early December.

Another group Liverman works with is Cape Farewell, an organization that unites artists, scientists, and educators on expeditions to climate-sensitive areas to draw attention to climate change. Liverman sits on the board of trustees alongside author Ian McEwan, Bond producer Michael Wilson, KT Tunstall, and Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace’s senior climate advisor.

“That’s been fascinating because of the people on the board with me and because it allows you to see the way in which artists get inspired,” she said. “I helped persuade Cape Farewell to offer a voyage to the Amazon because that’s another tipping point.”

In 2005, she also helped Cape Farewell secure a spot in front of the storied Bodleian Library at Oxford for “The Ice Garden,” an exhibition of works inspired by expeditions to the Arctic.  The exhibit attracted thousands of people.

This winter, David Buckland, the head of Cape Farewell, was asked to curate the show ”Earth, Art for a Changing World” for the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Liverman joined other scientists and artists at one of the opening events to talk about the links between art and climate change. 

“The Royal Academy of Arts is the last place I thought I would be talking about climate change” she said.

And then there is Oxford-based Red Redemption, which has developed a series of socially responsible, interactive games including one called Climate Challenge. Players, taking on the role of an elected official, must balance national policy and combat climate change while remaining popular in the polls.

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) launched the first game on its Web site in 2007, which “got millions of people playing and downloading it,” said Liverman, who brought together researchers at Oxford to help create a strong science foundation for the game.

While TippingPoint and Cape Farewell are built on more of a scholarly and cultural framework, Julie’s Bicycle and Red Redemption have a stronger business focus and sock their messages right to young people.

“If you want to get the information out, then getting access to young people through popular music and gaming reaches kids,” Liverman said. “Julie’s Bicycle and Red Redemption also are examples of changing business approaches to climate change in that they represent major industrial sectors—music and video gaming.”

Liverman also champions the art–environment approach to awareness at the University of Arizona. Soon after joining the Institute of the Environment in January 2009, she brought Buckland to campus to share videos, readings, photographs, and stories that expose the effects of climate change. During the fall 2009 semester, the institute co-sponsored a poetry series about art and ecology with the UA Poetry Center and Center for Biological Diversity.

“Art can build more awareness and understanding, and some of it is very inspirational,” Liverman said. “It gets below the skin in a way that science doesn’t. Some people’s response to art is quite moving.”