By Bijal V
3,000 Ryan International School (Rohini) children joined aerial artist Daniel Dancer in New Delhi formed the image of an elephant to remind their leaders that they can’t afford to ignore climate change – the elephant in the living room.
Photo credit: D Dancer / artforthesky.com
On October 22 of this year, India's Environment Ministry, Jairam Ramesh, declared the Elephant a “National Heritage Animal” to highlight it's unique role in India's history, culture, and ecology. It is for that reason that thousands of school children came together to form a giant image of an elephant in the country’s capital as a symbol of the history, culture, and ecology Indian's wish to preserve by countering the threat of climate change and taking actions that can lead the world back below 350 ppm CO2.
Like the tiger and other fauna of India and South Asia, the elephant too is affected by climate change. Increased drought from climate change as well as increased competition with humans, both as a result of development practices and climate migrations, could lead to significant loss of that habitat. Not only is that bad news for the elephant, but that habitat is now one the vital remaining carbon sinks across the globe, which if lost, could only further exacerbate climate change, including rising seas along India's coasts.
The art is one of several major public art installations in over a dozen locations across the planet that will be photographed by satellites 400 miles above the Earth’s surface starting today and through November 27 as part of a planetary scale art project, 350 EARTH: http://earth.350.org.