Climate Change Festival - a sign of consumption

A dramatic, shiny pylon is the centrepiece of the Birmingham Climate Change Festival. It has been installed in Victoria Square for nine days.

The pylon brings home the reality of climate change – it makes the issue of climate change visible and local. It isn’t just happening far from home and in the future: it’s happening here and now.

A symbol of consumption, the pylon acts as a reminder of how much we need to reduce the amount we consume. Not just energy. Its massive structure poses some brutal questions about the kind of unlimited consumption of all kinds which dominated the prodigal last century.

This is the first time that a pylon has been seen in a city centre. It even looks “lifted” straight from its usual home, the field, into a city square – it comes complete with its corn base.

The climate change festival has been designed to make the invisible (carbon emissions) visible, and the idea lies at the heart of our problem with energy: we are rarely conscious of how much we use.