Downtown | Environment | Politics | Arts & Culture | New Haven Climate Movement
Divider of ocean facts and messages created by NHCM members. Adrian Huq Photos.
Kids chalked drawings of fish, beaches, and octupi onto the sidewalk. Intergenerational conversations filled the air. New Haven Climate Movement (NHCM) youth members attached cards with ocean facts and environmental testimonials from local students onto cardboard fish cutouts.
These activities and more unfolded last Friday in front of New Haven City Hall, where NHCM hosted an hours-long artmaking action in honor of World Oceans Day. First proposed in 1992 and recognized by the United Nations in 2008, the day seeks to inform the public of the impact of human activity on the globe’s oceans and promote sustainable management of them.
NHCM took a climate-focused angle on the day, educating attendees about how the oceans are impacted by climate change as well as how the oceans positively contribute to a healthy climate.
Emcees Anderson (front left) and Rivkin (front right) delivering remarks and sharing ocean facts. Adrian Huq Photo.
Local environmental arts organization Lots of Fish also collaborated on the event, bringing a multitude of protest signs depicting colorful fish to the front steps of New Haven's City Hall.
“This day is an important reminder for us to take care of the oceanic ecosystems we have, and in the world of climate change, is an incredibly important reminder to all of us, and to the city, that we need to take drastic action to mitigate the impacts of climate change,” said Sophia Rivkin, a rising senior at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School and NHCM summer intern. She co-emceed the event with fellow intern and Co-Op rising senior Jayla Anderson.
The two also shared statistics with the crowd, such as the fact that Connecticut will see about two feet of sea level rise by 2050 from melting ice and water expansion, and that oceans could become 150 percent more acidic by the end of the century from absorbing carbon dioxide, making them uninhabitable for a wide range of marine species.
Disability rights activist Elaine Kolb. Contributed Photo.
While the city approved a flood wall and pump station along the Long Wharf waterfront and a stormwater tunnel to protect New Haven from coastal flooding from storm surges and sea level rise, NHCM members asked that the city prioritize climate mitigation efforts, not just adaptation to its impacts.
“The New Haven Climate Movement strongly urges the city to fund climate mitigation projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rather than just the remedies to climate disasters after the fact,” Anderson said.
Anderson also acknowledged the Canadian wildfires that impacted New Haven County’s air quality in the days prior to the event. “The recent fires are a clear and tangible reminder to all of us of the sudden and debilitating effects climate change can and will have on our daily lives,” she said.
During the week leading up to the event, NHCM members distributed cards to their New Haven high school classmates to fill out. Along with ocean facts, the cards included prompts, such as “I am upset about lack of climate action because” and “I care about the ocean because.”
Top: Some of the card distributed in City Hall. Bottom: Rumaisa Islam holding a World Oceans Day poster. Adrian Haq Photos.
During the action, NHCM members attached some of these cards to a fish-shaped cardboard cutout to make a collective art piece for Mayor Justin Elicker. Other cards were set aside to be slipped into the 30 matching mailboxes of the New Haven Board of Alders.
Maya Harpaz-Levy, a rising sophomore at Wilbur Cross High School and NHCM summer intern, said she found the event important because while there are a lot of people who love the ocean, they are often unaware of how at-risk it is.
“They love going to the beach and they love the animals that live there,” Harpaz-Levy said. “But they’re not really aware of how much it affects us, in terms of the flooding that’s happening right now and how acidic [the ocean is] becoming. This [action] is a great way for us to tell people what they can do to help.”
Wilbur Cross High School rising sophomores June Lanpher, Harpaz-Levy, and Faggion. Adrian Huq Photo.
Maria Hatje Faggion, also a rising sophomore at Cross and NHCM summer intern, emphasized the crucial role of oceans. “I think it’s very important for us to fight for [the ocean] since it will impact our lives every day.”
In the process of organizing the event, Harpaz-Levy learned more about how the ocean contributes to oxygen levels and the negative impacts of ocean acidification. A fact that stuck out to her was that “warmer oceans hold less oxygen.”
Event attendee Rafiad Islam, who is originally from Bangladesh, said that his country has been subject to a lot of environmental change, such as rising oceans that leave lands in saline water and force residents to move to higher land.
He described where he lived in Bangladesh as similar to a desert, where it was hotter there than other parts of the country given the lack of trees.
Islam holding a jellyfish sign created by Lots of Fish. Contributed photo.
From an early age, Islam tried to engage with the environmental movement. Now, he tries to educate his children, too. Islam cited the Hamden Public Schools' “Invention Convention” STEM program that his fifth-grade daughter, Rumaisa, participated in at school as a catalyst for her to engage with environmental topics.
Rumaisa’s project, which she proudly brought to the event, was a poster she illustrated to create a more engaging sign to encourage beach goers to stop littering. It depicted her made-up creatures, which she called “kins,” putting their waste into the proper receptacles on the beach.
“This is a very important thing to educate our next generation about the environment, about the oceans, about what’s happening around us,” Islam said.
Another event attendee, Kathryn Jupiter (pictured above), brought her child as well. By partaking in the event, she learned something new. “I didn’t know 50 percent of the [world’s] oxygen comes from the ocean. I thought it was just coming from plants,” Jupiter said.
JoAnn Moran, the CT Program Director of Lots of Fish, said that given the impacts that climate change has on the ocean, she finds it “more important to try to translate the science through art, and through ways that people can understand and be moved to be better stewards.”
“[Art] has a way of reaching people that just words or data can’t. I’m really motivated by that aspect of it because I work with a lot of scientists and they have a hard time communicating to the general public,” Moran said.
To close the event, NHCM members walked into New Haven City Hall to deliver the cardboard fish to the Mayor’s Office. They then slipped the remaining bright yellow cards into the alders’ mailboxes.
For a sweet touch, they attached a packet of Swedish Fish to each card for the alders to chew on their call to climate action.
Learn more about NHCM through their website. You can also keep up to date on their work through their Instagram and Facebook. In the interest of full transparency, this writer is a cofounder of the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team.