Museums in a Climate of Change: Chatter Marks EP 69 Imagining the future with Lath Carlson of the Museum of the Future in Dubai

Crude Conversations

crudemag

Society & Culture

5 • 884 Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2023

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lath Carlson is the Executive Director of the Museum of the Future in Dubai. The Museum of the Future is dedicated to telling stories about how humans might adapt to current global crises. Right now, the climate crisis is the most pressing issue. For example, the main story takes people on a journey to 2071, where they experience a world where people have adapted to climate change by collecting solar energy from the moon and beaming it back to earth, giving clean energy to the majority of the world. In order to ensure the science behind these ideas, the museum worked with collaborators from around the world who vetted the science, including people at NASA and at the European Space Agency. Recently, Stanford University proved that this technology wasn’t just something created by a museum, it was actually possible. The Museum of the Future opened its doors in 2022 and since then over 20 world leaders have visited. Lath says that this is important because climate change is an issue that requires international collaboration. These leaders are among the ones in a position to make changes that will positively impact their countries. Because climate change is an issue that requires large-scale structural changes, the best thing individuals can do is lobby their governments for change. Lath goes on to say that the best hope we have for addressing some of these complex challenges is more Indigenous knowledge than scientific understanding because scientific understanding and reductionist understanding is, in a lot of ways, what got us to where we are today. In this Chatter Marks series, Cody and co-host Dr. Sandro Debono talk to museum directors and knowledge holders about what museums around the world are doing to adapt and react to climate change. Dr. Debono is a museum thinker from the Mediterranean island of Malta. He works with museums to help them strategize around possible futures.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What we're trying to do in the museum is present some of these, you know, significant
0:16.5	challenges and obviously the climate crisis being the largest of those, right?
0:20.7	And right now that seems like, you the most important thing to look at from the
0:26.8	perspective of how might we you know creatively adapt to that challenge at this point
0:31.4	you know we are talking about you know mitigation and adaption I mean it would be to that
0:33.0	at this point you know we are talking about you know mitigation and adaption I mean we are you know going to be faced with these you know impacts of climate change for at least the next two to three hundred years
0:41.0	even if we end all admissions today.
0:43.2	That was Laith Carlson.
0:45.3	He's the executive director of the Museum of the Future in Dubai.
0:49.9	The Museum of the Future is dedicated to telling stories about how humans might adapt to current global crises.
0:57.0	Right now, the climate crisis is the most pressing issue.
1:01.0	For example, the main story takes people on a journey to
1:05.0	2071, where they experience a world where people have adapted to climate change
1:10.0	by collecting solar energy from the moon and beaming it back to Earth, giving clean energy to the majority of the world.
1:17.0	In order to ensure the science behind these ideas, the museum worked with collaborators from around the world who vetted the science, including people at NASA and at the European Space Agency.
1:30.0	Recently, Stanford University proved that this technology wasn't just something created by a museum.
1:37.0	It was actually possible.
1:39.6	The Museum of the Future opened its doors in 2022 and since then over 20 world leaders have visited.
1:47.2	Laith says that this is important because climate change is an issue that requires international collaboration.
1:54.0	These leaders are among the ones in a position to make changes that will positively impact their countries.
2:00.0	Because climate change is an issue that requires large-scale structural changes,
2:05.0	the best thing individuals can do is lobby their governments for change.
	...

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