A Climate of Hope – Utah FORGE Featured in NHMU’s Groundbreaking Exhibit

In this room, visitors are encouraged to communicate how they feel via a list of emotions displayed on a screen in front of them. The choice of aspen trees, as Thompson said, was no accident. Singular aspen trees exist not as individuals, but as a mere part of a much larger organism. The trees are unified by an interconnected root system, with the largest living organism on earth being Utah’s very own 106-acre Pando aspen grove. Like aspens, Utah communities need to come together and act as one to achieve climate solutions.

For Utahns to do this, they first need to recognize the tangible impacts of climate change that are relevant to them. After leaving the aspen grove, visitors land in the “Hotter Drier Smokier” section of the exhibit, where Thompson says one photo has had a particular impact on long-time Utah residents. It features people ice skating on the Liberty Park Pond in the 1930s — before shorter, warmer winters made it unsafe to do so anymore. Although the loss of an ice skating space may seem minor, the image has resonated with visitors who were made to realize how their local climate has changed markedly throughout their lifetimes.

This area also highlights how climate change impacts people differently within Utah. For instance, Utah’s air pollution and inversion episodes disproportionately impact those with pre-existing health conditions. This information, as well as a series of interviews displayed under “Results May Vary,” introduces a critical element of climate justice and equity to the conservation. There are even tools provided in the exhibit to help parents teach their kids about climate change. One play table uses the “Earth’s blanket” metaphor as a digestible way to communicate global warming to children.

Encouraging “Rational Hope” and Community Mobilization

 The rest of the exhibit leans heavily into the idea of “rational hope” presented in Katharine Hayhoe’s novel, “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.” In Hayhoe’s words, rational hope is a solutions-focused approach which “looks the crisis in the eye.” So having acknowledged the climate consequences experienced by Utahns, the next step is to learn about the solutions we have available to us. This begins with a stand of updateable panels portraying examples of green projects in Utah. As stories get filtered out, Thompson said that the museum will create a companion website to hold the exhibit’s archived stories.

The “Innovators Needed” section is also update-able, with new innovators featured yearly. This section highlights examples of clean energy innovation in Utah and emphasizes the economic viability of renewable technologies. Here, Utah FORGE is featured as “advancing a hot trend in clean energy” through the development of geothermal energy as a more accessible, affordable and constant source of clean power. Exhibit items donated from FORGE include a gneiss core extracted from one of the site’s monitoring wells — a 1.7 billion-year-old piece of metamorphic rock taken from its 460 degree Fahrenheit home 1.8 miles underground — and a polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) drill bit replica courtesy of NOV ReedHycalog. Because drilling costs are the main barrier to developing geothermal plants, Utah FORGE’s reduction of drill times by 50% is a great source of optimism.

Before leaving the exhibit, visitors pass through a final “Connect Around Climate” area that calls to action those who might not know how to engage with climate issues. It shows that each of us have opportunities at the community scale to create real change, whether it’s through having conversations with those around us, communicating with our representatives, volunteering our time or aligning with advocacy groups. The outro guarantees that no one walks away from “A Climate of Hope” without a little more inspiration for involvement.

Although climate change is an unfortunate reality of our time, we can’t afford to have people mull in hopelessness. Settling for defeat does nothing for modeling the kind of clean energy future we can still create — and are in the process of creating. Utah FORGE is honored to be a part of NHMU’s efforts to advance climate solutions, and we’re sure that many “A Climate of Hope” visitors will join us in the cause.