The Leap Manifesto – a wide-ranging document signed by more than 100 prominent progressive Canadians – lays out an ambitious plan to end fossil fuel subsidies, increase income taxes on corporations and the wealthy, cut military spending and implement a progressive carbon tax.
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Art has long been a means to comment on and analyze culture and humanity, so being an artist should not prevent one from speaking on issues that affect these areas even if the issue is scientific in nature. A common tactic taken by right-wing republicans when faced with questions about climate change and the environment is refusing to comment, saying “I’m not a scientist.” But the fact is that one does not need to be a scientist to understand the urgency of environmental protection and the possible intersectional implications of climate change on a long-term scale. Artists spend a lot of time looking at how people act and interact, and how one interacts with their environment is just as relevant. Using our voices and our work, artists can help verbalize, visualize, contextualize, and communicate issues that are too obtuse to grasp in their entirely scientific state. The facts are coming in daily, but the scientists cannot be the only ones to consider what food shortages, resource crunches, and weather emergencies will have on society.
Seeing artists and other prominent figures come together on an issue like this (in Canada, of course) is very encouraging, especially when we’re looking at concepts like Carbon Taxing, which a few years ago were thought to be an impossible idea.
I can’t believe how little artistic support there is for environmental issues. When I went away to a pre-college program, it was the first time I was introduced to “environmental theatre” and it was awesome. Playwrights like Duncan Macmillan were writing incredible pieces of theatre that weren’t just pieces of theatre. Plays like Lungs could really do something. Because our environment is not in our hands anymore, we can’t save enough by just turning off lights and dripping taps, we need to enact large scale political change. We can’t win this battle alone, we need to ensure that our entire country is making an actual effort at changing things. Art is perfect for things like this, art is able to make that lasting effect on a huge group of people at once. It’s crazy that so few artists make things about this, when the environment literally effects every single person. The potential of the audience along with the potential of the effect should intice more artists to be actively involved and follow in the footsteps of the Leap Manifesto signatories.
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