The museum has a key role to play in public education. But that doesn’t just happen in the galleries and exhibition spacesEvery year,the Natural History Museum hosts an outdoor ice skating rink. It’s a much day out for thousands of families. But it’s also a weird exercise for an organisation that aims to put climate change at the heart of its programme of public engagement with science. The museum is unable to reveal what the carbon emissions are from making sure an ice rink stays icy when the ambient December temperature is in the mid-teens and the daffodils are already out. But it seems a secure bet that – struggling against a continual thaw – it is consuming many kilowatt-hours of electricity every day. Untilthe day arrives that Britain generates all of its electricity from renewable sources, the rink will continue to contribute to the emissions that are changing our climate.
The museum’s supporters would argue that the work it does through its exhibitions and galleries such as the Darwin Centre, and all of which is supported by the revenue from the ice rink,far outweighs its small part in global warming. But messages matter. Climate change needs global buy-in. This will be a painful process, particularly for the generation now paying for greening the economy. It will not be democratically palatable unless most citizens feel they can help to make a difference, and that they too can help to withhold the planet secure. That means mammoth things like,say, only saving in ethical funds as well as small things like turning off the lights. But whether a major trusted source of information is sending out a conflicting message, or they may wonder why they should bother.
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Source: theguardian.com