As attendees start making their way to Glasgow, Scotland, for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, a collection of 6-meter-high orbs is also traveling up the length of the British Isles for the event.
Pinsky says the aim was to give people a “bodily emotive experience” of air pollution—which has many of the same root causes of climate change—rather than a set of intellectual data. “My point was that people are fundamentally quite egocentric,” he says. “The old polar bear on the glaciers makes people sad, but then they get into their four-wheel drive and drive their kids to school.”
Since the original concept was displayed for the first time in Norway, the pods have traveled to Melbourne, Australia; Madrid; Geneva; and Vancouver. They first went to London in 2018, and just came back for a second stint in mid-October, a week beforethe expansionby 18 times of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone, which requires drivers entering the capital to pay 12.50 pounds (roughly $17) per day. Now, the pods have packed up and are moving, one by one, across the countryon a tour; when Pinsky spoke, he was on a train from Birmingham, the first stop, to Lancaster, the second.Accompanying the pods on bikes will be 30 National Health Service pediatricians, participating in Ride for Their Lives. The 500-mile trek from London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital to Glasgow—by way of Birmingham, Sheffield, and Newcastle—is intended to raise awareness for the respiratory risks that children face due to air pollution. Along the route, the doctors will meet the public in venues by the pods for question-and-answer sessions.
Both the pods and the doctors will culminate their journeys in Glasgow, in time for the conference, where the pods will display as a unit again, for visiting politicians. Pinsky has previously exhibited the pods for environmental ministers of France and Spain, and for the president of Costa Rica, but he remains skeptical at changing politicians’ minds (in part due to his agreement withreports of poor managementof the organization of the event). “I’m not feeling brilliant about it,” he says. “But, we’re on our way, and we’ll see what happens.”Incidentally, the results of the Climart study have been relatively inconclusive. Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology interviewed guests at the initial viewings of the installation in Norway and England and reported in 2019 that: “Intentions to act were strong and slightly increased after visiting the art installation. . . . Despite favorable intentions, however, taking advantage of an actual behavioral opportunity to track one’s climate change emissions behavior after visiting the [pollution pods] could not be detected.” In Pinsky’s words: “It does have some impact, but with quite a lot of caveats.”
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