So many of you are gonna be studying for your SATS by the time you get to
be like juniors, that's all you're gonna care about, your future, right?
So you can get into a good school and you can continue growing and your parents,
they work so hard to make sure that you study, they work so
hard to make sure you have a brighter future.
I want you to remind them that that future includes the air you breathe and
that future includes the water you drink.
And if Miami is gonna have two feet of sea level rise,
which is what we're planning for In the next 50 years.
That water is gonna be salinated, your water, the water your child will
drink will be salt water, your trees will not grow in salt water.
Your properties are not going to be as valuable.
So I need problem solvers, people like you madam Mayor, right?
People like you, chairman of the surgery department, people like you banker
who is gonna figure out what's going to happen to the mortgage of my house.
To understand the complexity of all these problems happening in Miami.
If you just crossed seventh street towards the Miami River,
it goes down, and if you go towards Brickell, it goes down and
if you go towards Kennedy park in the grove, it goes down.
So what good is it for you to live at 12 feet in the middle of Shenandoah if you're
gonna need a canoe to get out of your neighborhood, right?
So we're all in this together.
And even if you could stay in Shenandoah and never leave Shenandoah, what about
the people who live in Sweetwater in Doral in Florida city, don't we love them too?
Are they not our neighbors?
Right.
So a, I want you to care, right, I want you to love one another.
And two I want you to know that you can make a difference and
that's what this project is about.
In the future climate, it should be now, but in the future it will be indisputable
that there is no way about talking about anything.
Every decision made from the family decision to global decisions are all gonna
be informed by climate.
By the scarcity of food, by all the shortages that climate is going to bring
and all the health issues, the direct consequence of climate.
So climate is the issue of our time and for us not to put that on the table like
what I try to do in this class today, show the interconnection to that.
I think it's failing the students and I think it's failing them in two ways.
One in not being able to think that way and
in the most obvious way, not informing them of that.
Literally censoring in many ways, the ability for
these kind of discussions to happen if they have a tone that may sound political.
And what I try to do as an artist is look at creating a cadre of science literate,
empathetic or loving and engage citizens who are able to connect those dots.
Who are able to have that understanding, who are able to think critically.
And that's the biggest gift you can give a child.
You guys live in the house, your parents live in, I'm doing this for their house,
for your house, for your kid's house.
So that when you guys get to be my age and guess what?Y ou will soon look like me.
I used to have big hair, you have big hair but soon you'll look like this and
that house will still be there and
I want you to make sure that that house has some viability.
So what I want you to do is to understand the issue so
that you can work in your community and make this something that when
your parents talk to you about the things that matter in the future,
among all the things they include climate.
And again, if you have data, if you can see the future,
if you can visualize a problem, if you can name a problem,
then you'll be a little curious about it.
And you'll try to figure out well, how did that happen?
How can we stop it?
And then you start thinking about ways to solve it.
>> And Xavier mentioned it earlier that when you,
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Take one of these and you put your number on this with one of these sharpest,
when you take the elevation that you got and you put it here and
you take one of the metal stakes that I had that you just heard and
you stick it in your front yard.
People are going to ask you, your friend that comes over,
your uncle that comes over, they're gonna be like, what is this?
That's the whole point. It's weird, it's strange, it's different.
They're not gonna know what's going on.
It's not a political sign, it's not a for sale sign.
It is just a number that they're not gonna know about.
And so then when they see it, they're going to ask you, what's going on here?
And at that moment you have the opportunity to tell them about exactly
what that number means.
About what we talked about today,
about what you've learned about Miami's vulnerability.
You can have many conversations just from this.
>> I developed the underwater to help my neighbors understand their vulnerability
to sea level rise in global climate change.
And I wanted to give them the tools so that they could actually take action.
Here at Miami High where I sat in this very desk 40 years ago, I learned a lot
of skills about how to engage in community that happened a lot through volunteerism.
I wanna instill that sense of community to the 2,700 students who
attend Miami High today.
Because 20 years from now, especially 40 years from now,
the class of 2062 isn't a sea of Miami that's gonna have real issues to
address visa vis climate change, heat, sea level rise.
And I want to be able to allow them to address that now.
And I'm doing that by having them create an art piece,
a participatory art piece that spans the entire neighborhood.
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