We initiate real action to mitigate climate risk and empower resilience to vulnerable communities by using innovative technologies and art practices.
Sirius Initiative is a collaborative platform for future thinking that places art, technology, and social entrepreneurship at the core of its activities to catalyze climate-conscious social changes.
We bring disruptive gentle force to resculpt culture landscapes in both the physical and virtual worlds.
We connect unique, creative, and the kindest humans to solve the knottiest
societal and environmental challenges step by step.
We are the peacemaker in the age of civil war towards the planetary eco-system and all life within it.
We care about the wellbeing of Earth and all life on it because there is nothing to match it anywhere, not yet anyway…
We named the place we live in the world long ago, from the Indo-European root wiros, which meant man. We now live in the whole universe, that stupefying piece of expanding geometry. Our suburbs are the local solar system, into which, sooner or later, we will spread life, and then, likely, beyond into the galaxy. Of all celestial bodies within reach or view, as far as we can see, out to the edge, the most wonderful and marvelous and mysterious is turning out to be our own planet earth. There is nothing to match it anywhere, not yet anyway.
[Earth] is a living system, an immense organism, still developing, regulating itself, making its own oxygen, maintaining its own temperature, keeping all its infinite living parts connected and interdependent, including us. It is the strangest of all places, and there is everything in the world to learn about it. It can keep us awake and jubilant with questions for millennia ahead, if we can learn not to meddle and not to destroy. Our great hope is in being such a young species, thinking in a language for only a short while, still learning, still growing up.
We are not like the social insects. They have only the one way of doing things and they will do it forever, coded for that way. We are coded differently, not just for binary choices, go or no-go. We can go four ways at once, depending on how the air feels: go, no-go, but also maybe, plus what the hell let’s give it a try. We are in for one surprise after another if we keep at it and keep alive. We can build structures for human society never seen before, thoughts never thought before, music never heard before.
Climate change is happening, climate risk is real. One of the most severe climate risks is that more frequent and dangerous heatwaves will threaten more people and other humans ’ life in the future.* The very young and elder people are the most vulnerable ones to overheating. In 2018, the EU recorded 104,000 heat-related deaths amongst older people, over one-third of the global total.* Other-than-human heat-related deaths number is not monitored and can’t be found. Based on the existing green gas emission level, some of the climate risks like heatwave attacks are already locked which means that 3.1 billion people would at risk from chronical extreme heatwaves by 2050.*
We, humans, are always sensitive to temperature change, the ancient Greeks noticed that summer’s most intense heat occurred during the approximately 40-day period in the early summer when Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, rose and set with the sun.
Sirius appears as a single star to the unaided eye, but it is really a binary star system, composed of a white main sequence star belonging to the spectral class A1V, known as Sirius A or Alpha Canis Majoris A, and a dim white dwarf with the stellar classification DA2, designated Sirius B or Alpha Canis Majoris B.
Sirius is also known as Dog Star. Homer noted:
“Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky on summer nights, star of stars, Orion’s Dog they call it, brightest of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat and fevers to suffering humanity.”
“The dog is useful both for hunting and for guiding: wherefore they depict the dog whom they call Anubis with the head of a dog, to show that he was one of the bodyguards, Isis, in her search for Osiris not only protected her from wild beasts and from the people that she encountered but also, being sympathetic to her plight, joined with howling in her search.“
Diodorus Siculus
We got inspired by this cosmic wonder (eternal binary companionship), the fearless search of Isis for her lost love, and the faith that no one should be left alone in this universe, especially the most vulnerable ones who are lost and in pain. Therefore, we started the Sirius Initiative to connect dedicated artists, scientists, designers, and bold individuals to tackle the hottest and knottiest problem of our time – climate change and bring innovative solution fueled with creativity, collaboration, and kindness to the most urgent societal and environmental challenges which impose tremendous risk to all life on earth.
However, in ancient Egyptian mythology, a dog is not bringing any evil effect to humans but proves the powerful guidance and protection for Isis 4 in search of her dead lover Osiris’ corpse. Dog as the guardian here is guidance for a soul-to-soul reunion.
1 Estimates of heat-related mortality vary by location and population. In the United States, extreme heat exposure is the leading cause of death in all meteorological phenomena, responsible for over 7,000 deaths from 1999 to 2010 [7]. Previous studies have shown that heat-related mortality is punctuated by high-profile acute events like the HW in Europe in 2003 which claimed 70,000 lives and in India in 2015 which was responsible for 2,300 heat-related deaths [8]. As global temperatures warm, temperatures that are currently thought of as extreme will become more common [9]. The changing climate has important heat-related public health implications.
2 https://www.preventionweb.net/news/one-hundred-thousand-deaths-year-europe-tops-mortality- league-extreme-heat
3 McKinsey sustaibility https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our- insights/protecting-people-from-a-changing-climate-the-case-for-resilience
Climate change is happening,
climate risk is real.
104,000 Fatalities
In 2018, the EU recorded this number of heat-related deaths amongst older people, over one-third of the global total.*
3.1 billion people
would be at risk from chronical extreme heatwaves by 2050.*
