Hannah Forbes Black

It's a not-very-true truism that politics and art don't mix, so there was a note of uneasiness at this day at the Barbican on climate change and art, linked to the current Radical Nature exhibition. "We're not telling artists what to do!" a couple of speakers said. I don't know why people worry so much about telling artists what to do. Most artists are as stubborn as camels anyway.? ?

Joe Smith, a lecturer in environmental politics, made it clear in his talk that the climate crisis demands more than adjusting your thermostat and buying a reusable bag. The coming years will require a major cultural shift. The talks by climate change specialists, in the morning, set up a context for the afternoon talks from artists and curators. Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey's architectural use of grass and their responses to landscape were all beguiling and often beautiful.

Michaela Crimmin, head of arts at the RSA, rattled off a list of works she admires that have in some way engaged with environmental politics. I wished she'd taken a harder look at climate change as a curatorial issue. Besides the content, is there an obligation on the part of galleries to use resources better, to act more locally, and so on? These procedural questions can seem dull but they reveal something of the moral murk of the art world, with its apparently contradictory symbiosis between progressive iconoclasm and corporate finance.?

Both these talks tended towards equating climate change and the use of natural materials. At first, the inclusion of Cornelia Parker's work seemed just as literal - much of her practice involves provocatively semi-reconstructed disasters - but her talk provoked far more interesting questions about climate change as a cultural introjection. Parker spoke about her long-standing fascination with disaster, which may have been what prompted Smith to warn against aestheticising the beauty of climate change, not just the melting glaciers and polluted sunsets but also the gorgeous gravity of impending doom. Between an art 'about' climate change that uses hemp and the colour green, or an art that gasps admiringly at destruction, there must be another, more complex alternative.? ?

Parker showed an excerpt from a video installation that consists of a 42-minute interview with Noam Chomsky, who looked as usual like an angry prophetic frog. We heard him speak about how commercial interests manufactured political consent over the latter half of the last century, so that the politically freest countries - the US and the UK - became the most in thrall to consumerism. It was exciting to think about this in an art context. For those who doubt art's ability to change the world, here is someone describing an aesthetic that has done just that. This sensibility might be found on billboards rather than in galleries, but it's still a cultural product that has transformed the way we live.?

Maybe we're pessimistic and unmotivated about tackling climate change because at some level we feel the project of being human has failed. And all the anti-human miserabilism that passes for eco-consciousness, berating us for our messy short-sighted ways and exhorting us to save the rainforest, save the ocean, save anything but ourselves, doesn't help. An art, or indeed a politics, that addresses climate change has to celebrate the human, far more than it's obliged to celebrate nature.

Radical Nature: Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009 continues until 18 October 2009 at theBarbican Art Gallery. For forthcoming talks and events accompanying the exhibition click here.