By Anthony Marcusa / Source: Ecorazzi

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It’s hardly an issue of the past; in fact, it’s a phenomenon that is ever-changing and continuing to affect the globe as its inhabitants scramble to deal with it.

Climate change, however, may soon be the subject of a new museum in New York City, in what would be the first of its kind in the United States, and perhaps the biggest in the world.

“The ambition of the museum is to be a lab and a hub of climate awareness by making things concrete and giving people a shared space,” said Miranda Massie, the woman at the centre of this idea. “It’s critical to building people’s confidence that what they do and say and think about climate can matter.”

Inspired by the effects of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Massie moved to create a Climate Change Museum, having found nothing comparable.

“If we have a museum for skyscrapers, mathematics, Himalayan art, food and drink, the First Amendment, then we absolutely should have a museum of climate in the United States,” she told the New Yorker.

Massie, who was a historian at Yale before becoming a lawyer, has architectural renderings, approval from the New York Board of Regents, and a first round of funding coming this fall. She hopes that in six years time, the museum will be up and running with exhibits that unite people, instead of dividing them on an issue that still is contended in American politics and discourse.

“We’ve figured out pieces programmatically, but we haven’t figured out how to do it in an exhibit,” said David Rabkin, director of science for technology at Boston’s Museum of Science. They have struggled finding the right tone for a piece on the issue. “It’s why this museum doesn’t have a permanent exhibit on climate change. We want to figure out something different and effective, how to actually not just preach to the choir but create an exhibit experience that can teach a very broad segment of the population to think for themselves.”

For now, Massie has a team in place and a website set up with a mission statement. While years away, the Climate Museum “will catalyze public discourse and spark the optimism, ambition, and teamwork needed to ensure, in the decades to come, leadership in a climate-safe, vibrant world.”

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