Event - 24th Annual Santa Monica Sustainability Festival

Many would consider ‘sustainable’ to be a scientific term. The 24^th Annual Santa Monica Festival held at Clover Park did a fantastic job of using art to convince people to adopt simple sustainable practices. The recent heat wave in India killed 2300 people, making it the 5^th deadliest heat wave in history. Climate change is not a myth; it is a threat to future life on earth. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases do not allow heat from the sun to escape the earth’s atmosphere. While this insulation is necessary to keep the planet warm, excess carbon dioxide emissions due to burning coal and driving gasoline-powered cars, are trapping excessive heat within the earth’s atmosphere. The result is an increase in global temperatures that could cause deadly droughts and floods. As part of its Save a Ton campaign, at the festival, EcoMotion inflated a large balloon to simulate what a ton of carbon dioxide looks like. Greenhouse gases are invisible and we can see the dangerous amounts we are emitting every day. The balloon is so big that it would dwarf a large double-decker bus. Yet it is a month of emissions for the average Californian. This is an extremely innovative way to bring about awareness as physiologically, once one has a visual frame of reference it is much easier to comprehend the scale of the problem.

Another sustainable endeavor that would prevent pollution, preserve depleting natural resources and restrict the release of greenhouse gases, is using solar energy in our very homes. There were several stalls at the festival with easy and convenient solutions to use solar energy. The HERO program for example, is a very affordable way to make renewable energy upgrades to your home. It facilitates the installation of under floor insulation, small wind turbine, roof solar panels, etc. that allow households to harness renewable energy, in a manner which is sustainable and energy efficient.

In order to promote recycling, one of the stalls displayed bottle cap art. It is elaborate art work made from recycled bottle caps. While everybody knows that we should recycle plastic bottles, we often forget or don’t bother. Yet such displays of art illustrate that even seemingly useless things like used bottle caps can have value, and we should really endeavor to preserve and reuse things.