ABSTRACT

The world has changed dramatically, however, and internal museum concerns have been overtaken by societal threats with staggering consequences – the most notable being climate change and disruption. Our inescapable challenge as global citizens is to now phase out more than half of the global use of fossil fuels by 2050, in order to forestall the worst impacts of climate disruption (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2013: 3). Yet, our actions continue to ignore the consequences of not doing so – the carbon footprint of excessive and trivial jet travel is a case in point. Aviation has been growing faster than any other source of greenhouse gases. For example, the greenhouse gas emissions from aviation in the European Union increased by 87% between 1990 and 2006 (Wikipedia 2014). With no apparent political will to address the reality of climate disruption globally, it’s as if “we’re in a car, heading toward a cliff, and we’re arguing about which radio station we should be listening to” (Rand 2014: 33). The public conversation about climate change has entered the theatre of the absurd (Rand 2014: 27).