Delivering A Nature Positive Future With Art At London Climate Action Week

London Climate Action Week (LCAW) is an annual festival founded in 2019 by E3G in partnership with the Mayor of London. It brings together over 45,000 individuals, organizations, and communities as it hosts over 300 diverse events and collaborations, focusing on finding global solutions to climate change.

LCAW aims to demonstrate the whole-of-society engagement needed to support the delivery of decarbonization and resilience and stimulate other global cities to host similar events.

Delivering A Nature Positive Future

The theme of LCAW 2024 is “Delivering a nature positive future.” On this theme with acknowledgment from Malini Mehra, the chief executive of GLOBE International, the environmental legislators organization founded by Al Gore and John Kerry; Nick Mabey, the Founding Director of E3G and E3G’s co-CEO and Julie’s Bicycle, a pioneering non-profit which is a member of Climate Heritage Network that is mobilizing the arts and culture to take action on the climate, nature, and justice crisis I prepared 4 series of new art shows on exhibition at LCAW 2024 which are very personal to me.

With my art shows, the Healing Waters series, Moody Blue Crab series for Havre de Grace Maritime Museum, and the Healing Hudson series for Putnam History Museum, I celebrate the environmental movement that began in the Hudson Valley of New York in 1962, three years before I was born.

The environmental movement began with a 17-year legal battle when power company Consolidated Edison Company (Con Ed) proposed building a giant hydroelectric plant on the Hudson River at Storm King Mountain near Cornwall. My father lives in the Hudson Valley straight across the Hudson River from Storm King Mountain in Cold Spring, NY.

Despite pressure from local residents, Con Ed went forward with its plan, applying to the Federal Power Commission (FPC) for a license to operate such a facility. Three years later, the year I was born in New York City, after hearings and appeals and more hearings, the U. S. Court of Appeals set a major precedent when it sent the Con Ed case back to the FPC to start the process over again.

Its reasoning was based on the commission's refusal to hear much of the environmental impact testimony the first time around. For the first time in U.S. history, a court had decided that protecting natural resources was just as important as economic gain. It prompted Congress to pass the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, which requires an environmental impact study on all major projects needing an OK from the federal government.

In 1969, the same year the EPA was passed, Pete Seeger, a folk singer and environmental activist, formed a new organization called Clearwater. This organization built a sloop that is free for the public to ride to explore the beauty of the Hudson River. In 2004, the sloop Clearwater was named to the National Register of Historic Places for its groundbreaking role in the environmental movement and its dedication to the preservation of the Hudson River.

My first job after graduating from college at the age of 19, was at a CPA firm, working as a staff accountant on Pete Seeger’s account. My client’s influence on my life and career as I went to law school after passing the CPA examination would last for a lifetime.

So with my Healing Water, Healing Hudson, and Moody Blue Crabs series of art shows, in a very personal way, I celebrate the environmental movement that now protects not only the Hudson Estuary but also the  Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the U.S. and a National Treasure with the landmark Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement (adopted in 2014, amended in 2020) that calls for, among other things, conservation and restoration of the treasured water, sea, and landscapes with participation from six states - New York, (where I am from) Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

My fourth art show, Flowers and Butterflies, will be on exhibition at LCAW 2024. With this series I made for Havre de Grace Maritime Museum, I would like to draw attention to the fact that a new study estimates that nearly half of the world’s known flowering plants are threatened. Butterflies face a wide range of threats, including habitat loss, climate change, disease, pesticides, and invasive plants.