Fighting climate change with creativity: Zero Hour Arkansas' Collage ... - The Arkansas Traveler
Fighting climate change with creativity: Zero Hour Arkansas’ Collage for the Climate | News | uatrav.com
Zero Hour Arkansas held its second annual Collage for the Climate Oct. 12. Students combined art and activism by creating collages that express what climate change and environmental action mean to them.
Zero Hour Arkansas is gearing up to distribute the second edition of ROOTS, an independently-published magazine, which will feature some of the collages.
Amelia Southern-Uribe, a junior marketing, public relations and political science student, founded the organization with a particular interest in how climate change disproportionately affects different groups of people.
“When I moved to Arkansas it was clear the inequities were different,” Southern-Uribe said. “It wasn’t unequal impacts of natural disasters but unequal access to climate information and education.”
Zero Hour Arkansas is a branch of Zero Hour, a national youth-led organization founded in 2017. It focuses on educating young people on the impacts of climate change and pushes for environmental policy that acknowledges inequality in access to relief and food.
“When I was doing environmental work in Florida, I clicked with Zero Hour,” Southern-Uribe said. “Their message of marginalized groups being disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis resonated with me, and it was the first time I had met another Columbian, queer, climate activist. In 2019 I just thought ‘Let's do it, let's start a Zero Hour chapter in Arkansas.’”
Last spring, Zero Hour Arkansas put out the first issue of ROOTS, a short magazine distributed with the goal of educating Arkansans on the effects and impacts of climate change in the state.
“The aim with ROOTS is to fill the gap of environmental education in Arkansas,” Southern-Uribe said. “As Fayetteville becomes a leader in climate action, we can do more to compel statewide progress. We decided we needed to put together a platform for people to put together their experiences, their stories and what they know about climate action in one place.”
Remy Sebastian, a freshman graphic design student, wanted their collage to depict the effect climate change has on a variety of animal habitats in a way they felt could appeal to people’s emotions.
“A lot of people care about climate change,” Sebastian said, “but not everyone will actually do something about it. Typically a good point of view to start with for me is animals. People connect with animals emotionally and can empathize with them.”
Aleena, a junior computer science student, is studying abroad from Pakistan and wanted her piece to stress how dire a threat global warming poses.
“I don’t know that I can get it all across in one collage,” Aleena said, “but especially when you can’t always see the effects right in front of you, anything that raises awareness and makes people realize the seriousness of this thing is important.”
Southern-Uribe said that Zero Hour Arkansas’ goal with Collage for the Climate and the ROOTS project is to bring together as many different backgrounds and voices as they can.
The idea is that the more connected you feel to a person who you see speaking out, the more you connect with the message they are trying to spread, Southern-Uribe said. “ROOTS gives people an opportunity to learn from their community, their friends, their loved ones — even people they don’t know personally, but have some aspect of identity that they connect on. It gives them the empathy to take action.”
Zero Hour Arkansas is also accepting submissions for the next edition of ROOTSuntil Jan. 1. For more information on how to submit and other submission options, students can visit the Zero Hour Arkansas Instagram
Southern-Uribe said their main hope for Zero Hour and climate activism on campus in the future is that people can realize where their passions fit into the environmental movement.
“So many people living in the natural state love hiking, love camping, love biking, and I hope that can translate into doing something for the environment,” Amelia said. “Even if you feel like what you’re doing is small, doing something is better than doing nothing at all.”
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”