Art,  Climate Change,  Featured,  Global Threats,  Sustainability

It’s Not Warming, It’s Dying: A New Campaign to Raise Awareness of Climate Change

By The Editors

Milton Glaser, one of the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States, has launched an environmental campaign to raise awareness of climate change. He is known for the ubiquitous I heart NY logo, his Bob Dylan poster, the Brooklyn Brewery logo, and a lot more. You can view a collection of his work here

The campaign — It’s Not Warming, It’s Dying —  is based on a strong message that is meant to create a sense of urgency around climate change, a well-established major global threat.

its-not-warming-its-dying-campaign

For his campaign, which defines climate change as “The most important fact on Earth“, Glaser designed a visual for buttons and posters — our planet seen as a green disk covered by black smoke, with only a narrow band of life (in still visible green) remaining at its bottom. The green section is printed in glow-in-the-dark ink for maximum impact.

“There is no more significant issue on earth than its survival,” Glaser told Dezeen, one of the world’s most popular and influential architecture and design magazines. “The questions is, ‘how can anyone not be involved?'” And he added: “If half the people on earth wear the button even the ‘masters of the universe’ will be moved to action,” referring to the large corporations he says have prevented significant action to protect the planet against the changing climate.

“Global warming” does not convey the seriousness of the problem. Glaser wants to point out what global warming really is — a death sentence — and make people more receptive to truly understand what it’s at stake here. He told Brian Lehrer (listen to the interview here): “Global warming in its own way sounds sort of reassuring and comforting … that’s terrible. You begin by attacking the phrase itself — the word and what the word means — because the truth of the matter is that the earth is dying. And wouldn’t it be nice if today was the beginning of the most important date in human history which is the date we decided not to let the earth die?”

A Twitter account provides a stream of news reports and updates about the campaign. Follow this link to buy buttons ($5 for five). All proceeds will be used to produce and distribute more buttons.

4 Comments

  • Celestial Elf

    Interesting post, i think its clear that the world has got a problem, which is why i made this animation, to try and raise awareness of climate change;

  • Thomas N

    Renowned economist and Nobel laureate Gary Becker with former secretary of labor, director of the Office of Management and Budget, secretary of the Treasury and secretary of state George Shultz purposed a “carbon neutral” tax last year. Republicans tend to balk at the idea of taxes that interfere with market forces, but although met with a lot of criticism and opposition from both Republicans and Democrats, the idea essentially is a tax swap that may appeal to many Republicans opposing any regulation on energy. The tax swap would switch taxing profits of greenhouse gas producers into taxing carbon emissions alongside reducing subsidiaries. Although reducing subsidiaries would be a tough sell due to the large amounts of money that influences politics from that sector, they say that switching from taxing profits to taxing more on carbon emissions would drive the market into a position where companies would innately try to reduce emissions to increase profits. Thereby creating and driving innovation of more efficient carbon emissions while providing profits to companies who do so. The only issue with this is that carbon is not the only greenhouse gas, nor is it the only important one. Even the Wall Street Journal that originally published the article published a series of counter arguments from individuals pointing out the flaws in the idea. Although there are flaws to the idea, this is a step in the right direction where important players are trying to produce a plan that would appeal to opponents or deniers of global warming.

  • Mark Safry

    “Islip, New York, got slammed with 35+ cm of rain in less than a day on Aug. 13, 2014, causing widespread flooding. New research suggests global warming may be a root cause of extreme weather events like this…….A paper just came out by a team of climatologists possibly linking global warming to these extreme weather events. It’s based on an idea that’s been around a while, but hadn’t been verified. Now we’re seeing evidence for it.” You can read the entire story (New research links extreme weather to global warming) by Phil Plait here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/14/extreme_weather_new_research_links_it_to_global_warming.html

  • Alex Farmington

    already got some buttons….. let’s spread the word
    this campaign promises to be very successful
    everyone must be aware that climate change is a HUGE problem

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