The Canary Project

Thousands of protesters gathered at the Capitol power plant in Washington, DC this week. They were urging Congress to pass legislation to reduce greenhouse gases. Organizers claim it was the largest US protest on climate change to date.

Many people agree that climate change is a major threat. But most don’t take to the streets because we don’t really know what it looks like. A paper published last month at Columbia University points out that the dire warnings about climate change are too abstract to trigger the brain’s risk alarms. It is not through analytic understanding that people are moved to take action, but the emotional impact of concrete examples of danger. That’s where The Canary Project comes in. The husband and wife team of Susannah Sayler and Ed Morris use photographic evidence to persuade viewers to action. Their collaboration documents signs of climate change, from Bangladesh to Peru, and from Alaska to Venice. Their work is on view in museums, public art installations and advertisements.

Susannah Sayler and Ed Morris join us to talk about their work from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where they are Loeb Fellows this year. Here are a few of their photos; click on the images to see larger versions.

The Canary Project

Susannah and Ed are also working on a project called Green Patriot Posters

Social Science Research Network: "Communication and Mental Processes: Experimental and Analytic Processing of Uncertain Climate Information"

(Photos courtesy Susannah Sayler / The Canary Project )