Environmental art as remedial action : from meditating on to mediating in Earth's energy imbalance

Since 1992 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has met every year in an attempt to implement a global mechanism for averting runaway climate change. Over these 25 years the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone from 352 Parts Per Million (PPM) to 408 PPM in 2017. Even at the time the UNFCCC was conceived, the CO2 concentration was already above 350 PPM, the conservative notional maximum concentration that would not precipitate runaway climate change. Concentrations of greenhouse gases have resulted in Earth having a net energy imbalance since 1971, whereby more energy is retained in the atmosphere and hydrosphere than emitted back into space. In addition, the roughly four decade inertia of the climate system is such that the climate currently being experienced is due to emissions from around the time the Earth went into positive energy balance in 1971. Given the volume of emissions since then, a substantial increase in climate is already committed even if all releases ceased today. In light of how global mitigation attempts have manifestly failed to decrease Earth’s Energy Imbalance, the last decade has seen a substantial increase in scientific research and proposals for an altogether different response: intervention through climate engineering. The consequences of inaction (mitigation as intentional influence) or action (climate engineering as intentional intervention) have planetary scale consequences. In response, this article explores an emerging body of art practice that has shifted from meditating on the manifestations and consequences of climate change, to mediating in Earth’s Energy Imbalance. The article explores this shift in practice of environmental art as remedial action from invoking forms of climate engineering to intentionally intervene in the causation of climate change. The discussion of this emerging body of practice speculates on how art that mediates in Earth’s Energy Imbalance offers a portent of the Anthropocene as the re-making of the world-as-artifact