Museums concerning the environment

The public can get invoked about an environmental issue on principles alone, but often struggles to know the extent or the details of the problem. Perhaps one of the challenges is finding translation from science as to the extent of the problem. Perhaps similair to doing internet research on our own medical problems, we become frightened by the meaning of certain figures and commentary, and reactionary (which is not to say that sometimes our fear is well founded). Who do we trust to be the purveyors of truth? How do we get our own heads around it?

I imagine those in the know, who have a strong interest, have studied, or deal professionally with the environment know which sources to trust to form their general picture. For the rest of us, perhaps a small minority are too worried and concerned, and the large majority not nearly concerned enough.

There may be a lot of misinformation out there, a lot of transference of information resulting in an impure message. Problems may be really limited in scope and others far wider in the threat they impose…

This is why I believe it would be best to educate from a young age, so that environmental literacy is as common as literacy itself. If we were educated, we would be able to understand the meaning of a number of scales, an assortment of differing data, a real understanding of the interrelationships of various problems and the deeper causes.

For things we rarely come in contact with, museums are the standard way to present information. It makes a lot digestible for many of us, presenting and producing information in a relationship with a physical space which we can move through at our own pace. It allows for vivid and diverse presentations that feed our imaginations and our understandings sometimes a lot more clearly than a book or DVD or TV programme will allow.

I would love to see more museums concerning the environment and human’s interaction and effect on it through time. I would also like to see the relationship between this and between the evolving philosophy and priority of human.

Maps portraying varied problems can point to the extent of the problem, photographs and comparative photographs (such as glacial melt photos) can supplement it in powerful ways.

I believe much environmental information would suit certain displays such as maps, that could be updated annually, and the transition of the problem within time frames shown – an example of this would be the extent of Amazonian deforestation year to year.