The two articles written by Bill McKibben (2005 and 2009) were substantially eye opening, at least for me. Global warming and everyone’s carbon footprint are topics that are hard to ignore when one lives in a city like Eugene. Nationally it occasionally makes headlines and is mentioned a punch line for future generations because that is how it tends to be viewed, a problem for future generations. Humans aren’t going to be melting or living underground in this lifetime but perhaps that’s the catch 22 of global warming. It’s so noticeable that it goes unnoticed. It’s too big to notice. In his 2005 article McKibben stated “when something is happening everywhere, all at once, it threatens constantly to become backdrop, context, instead of the event” further promoting that in the ‘text’ of our lives the environment is ‘transparent’. You know it’s there and you see it as the background or setting of your life but you don’t focus on it enough to make it apart of your life. This fault humans possess has enabled “one species, ours, (has) by itself in the course of a couple of generations managed to powerfully raise the temperature of an entire planet” (McKibben, 2005). Humans, as a species, are either visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners so what better way to educate and bring awareness to ecocentrism than through art.

All forms of art can and should be used as a gateway to the average everyday person to help scientists and environmentalists shed light on this issue that will affect our children.  In an article published four years after his 2005 article, McKibben wrote that art had finally broken through claiming that “the immune system of the planet is finally kicking in” and “artists, in a sense, are the antibodies of the cultural bloodstream”. Lines I couldn’t agree with more. People understand antibodies, or at least their function as it pertains to humans. When people think of antibodies they think of healing all kinds of sickness and disease. Just like antibodies have a wide variety of uses and affects a wide variety of disease and I sickness, art has the ability to reach a variety of very different people in all kinds of ways. If you don’t like the abstract paining of the landfill where the color means more than the details then perhaps the deeply detailed photo of animals dying because of the heat will pull at your heartstrings. The point is to inspire a change. Out of sight out of mind has been the mentality so far but we only have one environment and art has the ability to physically remind you of the destructive habits we have and their impact on the precious environment we have.