Students help send message on global warming

PARK CITY — Hundreds of Park City middle-school students sent a message to the world on Monday: "Step it up. Go carbon neutral."

By sitting and lying in the snow, the students used their bodies to spell out the giant global-warming message along with an eco-friendly bear-paw print for photographers and cameramen. The message was organized by activist and aerial artist John Quigley, who has created dozens of such body messages around the world.

"Are you ready to make history today?" Quigley shouted to the group of excited students. "It is going to send a powerful message about climate change, and we're asking our leaders to step it up. We want to save the snow in Park City."

Quigley and numerous other people featured in the Sundance Film Festival documentary "Everything's Cool" gathered at Treasure Mountain Middle School to talk to the students and be part of the art piece. Filmmakers Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand had followed Quigley for a similar aerial shot in 2005 in the town of Iqaluit, Canada, and they followed him with cameras Monday morning to Park City.

For the Canadian statement, thousands of arctic dwellers spelled the message "Arctic warning" around an Inuit drummer and the word "Listen" in the Inuit language.

The Park City message, Quigley said, is the response to that Inuit message. Students first spelled out "Step it up" and an Inuit phrase that means "I heard you, and I'm going to respond." They then morphed "Step it up" into "Go carbon neutral."

Sheila Watts-Cloutier, who has gained international attention for her message on global warming as a human-rights violation, is from that Canadian village and was one of the many people featured in the documentary who attended the Park City event. She is in town for the Sundance Film Festival and spoke to the Park City students before they took part in the giant artwork.

"In the Arctic, because our hunting culture depends on it so much being cold, we are having huge challenges" because of global warming, she said. "We are counting on you as American young children to do this and be part of the global solution."

The documentary "Everything's Cool" began in Park City, said Gold, who co-directed the film with Helfand. In 2003, the two attended the film festival, where Gold met a New Zealander who was in Park City for the winter season to make snow for the ski resorts. Unfortunately, 2003 was a warm winter.

"We wanted to show the effects of global warming on everyday people," Gold said as he crouched in the snow with the students to help form the "S" in "Step it up."