I am a sculptor who is currently working on a collaborative project on climate change. With the help of Zach Smith and Scott Battaion from the Wright Center for science education at Tufts University, I have been building very low-tech data-collecting devices that extract climate data from a particular coastal environment. This device consists of a simple, 3-D cube made out of PVC pipes that is filled with cheap science instruments through which I record daily changes in the physical environment. I strap this cube onto my back every morning and bike out to the beach, where I measure temperature (air, water, soil), wind speed and direction, wave direction and speed as well as make notes of any flora and fauna changes I may see. I also make note of the daily erosion changes that seem to constantly sculpt the sand into new formations everyday.

Perhaps the most intimidating aspect of working in the realm of climate change is how immensely complex it all seems to be. Where does one start to unravel this big, huge blinding web of information that all seem to shout the warnings of a warming planet? I sought to find my way out of this cacophony by looking in my own back yard.

My backyard right now is the coastal environment of Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is a particularly fascinating place to be looking at climate change, since its geological history is the result of climate constantly reshaping the coastline of the Cape. It is also a particularly vulnerable place in which a slight rise in sea level will drastically increase the coastal erosion that already takes away about 3 feet every year. Migration patterns will change and increased salinity levels and rise in sea level will alter the flora and fauna balance in freshwater ponds and salt marshes all around the Cape. While I know about all these changes slowly happening in the very environment I am sitting in, they happen in a different time frame. They happen in years, decades, and centuries, while I record the changes that happen daily.

At the beginning of my project, I concentrated more on the readings of my instruments, wanting to make sure I got all the numbers that would eventually find their way into my sculpture. In the process of waiting for the science instruments to do their readings for me, I spent a lot of time just watching the world around me – the migrating birds, wave movement, sand erosion, and cloud formation. What I never expected was that my doorway in getting a better grip on the complexity of climate change was not in the precision of the instruments, but in that waiting period where I simply observed and listened to what was right in front of me – hundreds of systems that make up life on the beach and the ocean, constantly reacting and responding to the miniscule changes I was recording. And these hundreds of systems are equally connected to millions of other systems that happen on a global level. And I, this little person on the beach, am a part of these systems. I influence, I respond, and I change things within this cacophony of systems, as much as they change me.

Everyone enters the issue of climate change differently – some people notice it when their beachfront property is slowly edging towards the open sea, others when their favorite ski resort is closed for the winter. For me it is those daily visits to the beach, when I see the land, the sea, the air and all the life it contains interact, depend and influence each other. Perhaps more than another alarming newspaper article of glaciers melting in the French Alps or another frog species becoming extinct because of global warming somewhere in Costa Rica, it is seeing this interconnectivity in my own backyard that makes me think and realize how much I am a part of global warming.

-- nmiebach