Photo: Ryan Eilders via Flickr

This year, they are continuing that commitment with their So Much to Save campaign. Fans who recycle a can (or ten) at a Dave Matthews Band show this summer will receive a download code for the exclusive So Much to Save 2009 album featuring songs from the band and supporting acts from their tour like The Avett Brothers, Gomez, Umphrey’s McGee, and others.

Not planning to attend a show? No problem. The free download is also available to fans who take the So Much to Save pledge committing to at least one of the following eco-actions:

• Starting a recycling program at work or school.
• Doing an energy efficiency audit at home.
• Recycling an old cell phone.
• Using buying and voting power to motivate companies to take climate change seriously.
• Staying informed by signing up for one of Grist’s daily or weekly emails.

So make the commitment today — I know you’re already reading Grist, so why not sign up to stay informed inbox-style? All the kids are doing it.

Courtesy Brita Climate Ride

The Brita Climate Ride is a multi-day bicycle ride that raises money and awareness for climate change action. The riders will depart New York City on Sept. 26 having raised $2400, the proceeds of which will go toward three climate/bike advocacy charities: Focus the Nation, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and Clean Air – Cool Planet.

During their five-day ride, they’ll hear from experts like climate scientist James Hansen, No Impact Man Colin Beavan, Lazy Environmentalist Josh Dorfman, and Friis Arne Petersen, Denmark’s ambassador to the U.S. and the host of the COP15 U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen this December.

On Sept. 30, they’ll cycle past the Washington Monument to arrive on the steps of the Capitol building. Once there, riders will have a chance to sit down with their senators to discuss what they learned on the Climate Ride and why they want to see them supporting climate-change legislation.

But the Climate Ride isn’t meant to be all pedaling and politics. Along the way, riders will be joined by The Great Salt Licks, the first bluegrass band on bicycles. They’ll also have the chance to hang out in a solar-powered eco-lounge each night and check out a sculpture made from empty plastic bottles, which will be towed by one team for the length of the trip.

Want to make change while changing gears, to add some power to your pedaling? Join the Climate Ride — there are still 40 spots left!

Daniel plants showy fleabane, a prairie flower native to the Pacific Northwest, at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center.Photo: Sarah van Schagen

Rows and rows of small yellow cylinders fill the greenhouse where Daniel works steadily, beads of sweat forming on his round, bald head as he places tiny seeds in each container. He is planting showy fleabane, an endangered variety of prairie groundcover that will eventually produce purple-petaled blooms worthy of their moniker.

His work is part of a federally funded prairie restoration project, an effort to repair the native grasslands of the Pacific Northwest in areas like Fort Lewis, Wash. But Daniel, who asked that his last name not be used, is not your average horticulturalist. For one thing, his greenhouse is on the grounds of a maximum security prison.

Daniel, as well as many of the men tending seedlings around him, is part of the Sustainable Prisons Project at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in western Washington. The program is a partnership between Evergreen State University and several state correctional facilities that allows offenders to opt in to sustainability-related work projects.

Jason Chandler plants Walla Walla Sweet Onions in the organic garden at Stafford Creek Corrections Center.Photo: Sarah van SchagenThe liberal-arts university/state penitentiary partnership may sound like an odd pairing — the Evergreen alumni magazine likened it to Maya Angelou dating Dick Cheney — but so far, both parties consider the relationship a success. The scientists get cheap (and eager) labor, while the offenders get the opportunity to participate in meaningful work.

One inmate participating in the pilot program at the Cedar Creek Corrections Center was the senior author of a peer-reviewed paper about the project in an international sustainability journal, and upon his release began pursuing a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

“What I care about is that [the offenders] are exposed to what we can offer in the way of science, the wonder of nature, of thinking critically,” says Nalini Nadkarni, the Evergreen ecologist who helped establish the Sustainable Prisons Project. “Those are all things that when they get back out into society, they will carry with them … increas[ing] the scientific literacy of our country, and perhaps even more important … the civic engagement that they have with society.”

The tasks vary across the four prisons that are now part of the sustainability project (administrators hope eventually to expand it statewide), and include tending to organic gardens that provide fresh produce for the kitchen, separating recyclables from the waste stream, beekeeping, and minding composting worms.

The offenders can also participate in a variety of conservation efforts like the prairie restoration, a project being led by The Nature Conservancy. They are also helping breed endangered spotted Oregon frogs and “farm” mosses for the horticultural trade (which aids in preventing unsustainable harvesting from old-growth forests).

Photo: Sarah van SchagenAll of the offenders involved in the program get specialized training and guidance from scientists and other educators working with the corrections centers.

That green-collar job training is key, says Doug Raines, the man behind Stafford Creek’s new beekeeping operation. He knows there are lots of valid reasons to keep bees — honey production, pollination, protection from colony collapse — but he does it to provide job opportunities.

“If I can get one guy a job and he doesn’t come back, then I have paid for everything that we have done, and that’s my reason for having the bees,” Raines says. “It’s one more avenue for employment when they get out of here.”

The offenders aren’t the only ones at the correctional facilities who are benefitting from the project, though. The sustainability efforts are also saving money — a valuable incentive in an economy that has seen significant cuts to the state’s Department of Corrections budget.

When the Cedar Creek facility began to tap out its water supplies, efficiency upgrades like low-flow toilets and showers and a rainwater catchment system helped save 250,000 gallons of water in the summer alone. And the gardening, composting, and recycling efforts are saving the facilities thousands of dollars every year.

“[Correctional facilities] are essentially small cities running 24/7,” says Sustainable Prisons Project Manager Jeff Muse. “If we can make them more sustainable, not only will it save money, save natural resources, and save lives, but it would be an example for all kinds of other institutions, such as military bases, summer camps, hospitals, and schools.”

Image: Tom Twigg/Grist

That number is $1.4 million … or about 7 million disposable bags at two dimes a piece. Enough, apparently, to defeat the measure by a hefty margin with more than half of the (all mail-in) ballots counted.

In comparison, the pro-bag camp raised just $80,000, and they knew they faced a tough fight, said Heather Trim of People for Puget Sound and the Green Bag Campaign.

Still, Trim is happy with the amount of media attention the issue garnered in the run-up to the vote and says it has inspired more people to bring their own bags. “We’ve had a huge surge of awareness,” she said. “This is only going to help.”

For more on the BYOBag debate, see our rundown of disposable-bag restrictions around the world and our list of alternatives from fanny packs to lunch tins.

Photo: Yuriy via Picasa

But Acid Test is no Blue Planet, thanks to heavy use of green-screen technology. And what’s in front of those screens is a lot less pleasant than the fish porn projected onto them. (No offense to the scientists, commercial fisherfolk, and other experts who are doing the talking, of course — it’s more about what they’re saying.)

The 30 minute film, part of Discovery Planet Green’s “Blue August” month of online and onscreen ocean coverage, is about the threat of ocean acidification, the gradual chemical changes in our waters linked to increased levels of carbon dioxide. Just how much CO2? Turns out that since the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has absorbed about one quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels.

But don’t go celebrating all the sequestered CO2 that’s been kept from contributing to global warming, because it’s beginning to cause more problems than it’s solving, increasing the acidity of the water by 30 percent. And that acidity is starting to dissolve seashells in areas as close to home as the California coast, meaning tragic consequences for many organisms — and the millions more who count on them for food, including us.

It’s a scary phenomenon that scientists are only just coming to understand, and it’s only going to get worse — leaving us with “an urgent choice,” as narrator Sigourney Weaver puts it, “to move beyond fossil fuels or to risk turning the ocean into a sea of weeds.”

As you watch Acid Test, keep an eye on the beauty projected onto the green screen and the choice seems pretty obvious.

Acid Test premieres tonight on Planet Green and continues to air throughout the month. Catch the trailer below:

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.

Welcome to Cape Farewell. Population: earth.

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 historians get in on the act

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.

Learn more in the Grist art-chives

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

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.”