MNN - Mother Nature Network

NOTE: This is a guest post from Trevor Reichman, a musician, writer and contributor to TreeHugger.com, PlanetGreen.com, and MNN. He lives off-grid in the middle of the desert, giving him a unique perspective on how to mix old-school sustainability with modern-day technology.

 

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Some pictures are worth billions of lives, as was demonstrated in the CoolClimate Art Contest of 2010. Since art can communicate in a way that politics can't, the focus of this competition was to provide an illustration to the environmental rhetoric that has been largely glossed over in the political arena.

 

Selected from more than 1,000 entries from artists around the globe, the image finalists in the contest might even make a professional skeptic pause and contemplate our fragile existence. After a panel of art experts narrowed the competition down from more than 1,000 to 20 selections, ranging in visual styles including sculpture, graphic design and photography, the public chose five of those to serve as the most emblematic and profound works of art to best display our changing environmental and political climate.

 

 

You can swoon over the rest of the winners and finalists here:

 

The contest further encourages you to use any of these images as you see fit but does offer some guidelines, such as correctly crediting the artist. Perhaps you will find yourself seduced by one of the many compelling pieces that weren't chosen as winners or finalists.