Artists graphically convey dangers of climate change.

• Author: Herro, Alana

At an April 20 panel discussion in Washington, D.C., three artists and a communications professional spoke about the unique ways art can be used to raise public awareness of global climate change. Held at the Center for American Progress, the event, "Climate and Culture: Using the Arts to Galvanize the Public on Global Warming," provided a forum for participants to showcase and discuss their varied work.

Gary Braasch, a photojournalist whose work has appeared in Time, Life, and National Geographic, has documented such realities as the encroaching ocean on Tuvalu (a small Pacific island) and starving polar bears in the Arctic. He said he gets the strongest emotional reactions from his glacier comparisons, which show recent snapshots alongside historic images dating back to the late 19th century. The differences are striking: miles of open land or lakes exist where sheets of ice used to be. Dramatic changes can even be seen between photos from the 1990s and those taken after 2000.

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Another featured project was Melting Planet, an effort by award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand to champion the unsung heroes of the fight against global warming. A clip of the work-in-progress showed Hollywood...