The Environment - Goethe-Institut Projects in North America
In the areas of science, everyday life and the arts, the Goethe-Institut is exploring the consequences of climate change in an interdisciplinary fashion.
Hybrid taxis in the streets, cloth shopping bags in supermarkets, green roofs in cities, recycling in many households: public opinion in the US, Canada, and Mexico has changed in regard to environmental issues. People are seeing themselves as part of the endangered Planet Earth.
Where thinking green was once the niche province of environmental organizations, now they are reaching wide groups of citizens. Even television is showing what the individual can do to increase energy efficiency: insulation, eco-light bulbs, water filters. Environmental action days have become commonplace in many schools.
Europe is seen as a good example for things related to the environment and Germany is seen as an ecological model. Germany is one of the world’s largest producers of organic food, 53 percent of household waste is recycled, 14 percent of its energy needs are produced from renewable energy sources, more than four million Germans are members of an environmental organization.
The environmental issue that most bothers people in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Mexico at the moment is climate change. A BBC study reports that 76 percent of Canadians are somewhat or very concerned about the consequences of climate change. No wonder. In Canada the ice packs are melting and changing the living conditions of human beings and animals alike. But in Mexico and in the southern states of the USA the results of climate change are becoming apparent as well: warmer temperatures, desertification, tornados.
The Goethe-Institut locations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico will contribute to the discussion about the environment, sustainability, and climate change with more than fifty projects and events in ten cities over the next two years. In these ways, the Goethe-Institut will aim to follow the recommendation of Peter Unfried, the editor-in-chief of the Berlin daily, die tageszeitung, who wrote that we should “get out of the Eco-Niche, get away from the poetry of certificates and emissions, of images of catastrophe and the business pages. The subject has to be looked at in an interdisciplinary way and especially as a social project.”
