lightblueline

In its first issue of this new school year, the Westmont Horizon student newspaper covered the dynamic happenings over the lightblueline environmental public awareness art project.
The article was authored by Jedd Goble.
With permission we are including the text of this article below:

Dividing Line
"Santa Barbara's public art projects have a notorious history of evoking differing opinions and mixed reviews, from State Street's oddly colored flying fish to giant McDonald's yo-yos. But perhaps no undertaking to date has seen as much controversy as the lightblueline project, which gained local media attention this summer. The plan was to draw a blue line marking the potential shoreline of the Pacific Ocean if sea levels were to rise due to global warming, as predicted by scientific studies. Costing about one percent of the city's art budget, lightblueline is "an educational project" aiming to raise awareness about the local impact of human-induced climate change.

"It's basically a little line on the street, a decoration," explained the project's creator, Bruce Caron, "and then on the curb is a curb marker so people can see what it is." He says that "raising awareness is really what it's all about...it takes the future and the global and turns it into the present and the local."

The light blue line would be painted at seven meters above sea level winding through downtown Santa Barbara, a representation of where our new shoreline would be if Greenland were to melt into the ocean. Why Greenland? According to Caron, who has collaborated with scientists from the IPCC, NSF, NASA, and UCSB, "If we raise the temperature of Greenland a certain amount, it will go into what they call 'negative response,' which means there's really nothing to keep it from continuing to melt." Of course, there are more large, frozen bodies than just Greenland to worry about, but Caron and his collaborators felt that seven meters was sufficient to get the point across.

The line was approved by Santa Barbara City Council in July, supplying $12,000 to be spent on "safety crews to help protect the safety of the volunteers" on the day it would be painted. There was little public and media attention at first, until the Santa Barbara News-Press published their opposition. Using the argument that the project was a fruitless endeavor and detrimental to the community for lowering property values, their dissenting voice gained popularity, and the lightblueline project was cancelled due to pressure from the publication. Although the line would only be painted on the street and not buildings or private property, the argument stemmed from the belief that real estate below the line would drop in value. The News-Press, who has had their reputation marred by recent controversies over bias, has not budged from their adamant stance against lightblueline.

When I asked Caron about the News-Press articles, he responded, "It's a curious argument...Public art doesn't affect property values. It never has, and probably never will. You're lucky if it makes people smile, think, or write an angry letter to an editor...and that's it." Regarding awareness and personal responsibility, he went on to say, "lightblueline isn't just a line on the street. It's really just people thinking, 'We have a lot to lose, and we should take a leadership position so we don't lose it.' Here in Santa Barbara we've been so blessed...so for us to sit back and say 'the rest of the world can deal with it, we're not going to do anything,' I think that's a really horrible attitude. I hope this helps people find a reason to get involved."

There are currently no plans to press forward with the painting of the line, but Caron says they will look for "some other thing that people find less objectionable" to accomplish their goal of raising awareness for sea level rise.

Despite the fact that lightblueline has been cancelled, the media coverage and controversy has at least gotten people talking. Earth's climate will follow its course regardless of a line on the street, and only people's actions can influence global warming. While the blue paint may have prompted more debate, I hope that the message and motive behind this project will be taken into consideration and discussed among Westmont students, regardless of their stance on global warming. After all, if you love Longboards as much as I do, you won't want to risk sea-level rise if for no other reason than to save the Cookie Monsters."