The art of the matter

Art is being used to highlight climate change to world leaders.

Installations have been set up outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009, at the Bella Centre metro station, in Copenhagen for the past week.

The metro building and water pond have been illuminated with red LED lights, with the light controlled by computer to simulate the breath of the Earth.

The lighting installation is an artistic interpretation of the Earth as a living organism, geologist Bo Holm Jacobsen says.

The rate of the breath will change according to the achievement at the summit.

"Like a medical measuring of the heart-rate at an intensive care unit, the essential pulsation will be the one of the Earth," Mr Jacobsen says.

"We'll make a sort of a rating of the results of each day's negotiations.

"The rating is then entered to the computer controlling the breath."

The exhibitions have been organised by environmental watch group 7 Meters.

The group is named after the distance the sea level will rise if all the ice in Greenland melts.

New Zealand's image was dented at the climate change talks when we were presented with an award for dragging the chain on global warming.

New Zealand came third in the "fossil of the day" awards, after Prime Minister John Key's comments in Parliament last week that he would not increase our 2020 greenhouse gas emissions target.

The dishonourable mention is for countries seen to be obstructing progress in the talks.

New Zealand came third, behind Poland and Germany.

The award was a cup filled with coal and a toy dinosaur.

 

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