We have in Santa Monica, in America, throughout the climate-catastrophizing developed world, a pleasure problem we dare not address. Sure, we have to find solutions. But must we give up dairy and almonds, let alone meat? Our cellphone? A good chunk of our Netflix-Spotify-Facebook-Instagram-Google-Apple-Amazon-bitcoin digital life? Overseas vacations? Cars? And pretty much the rest of what we’re convinced makes life worth living?

For all the high-minded talk promised by COP26, the climate change conference to be held in Glasgow next month, we still, inevitably, bury our heads in the sand.

[The Lithuanian installation opera “Sun & Sea” proved a sensation at the Venice Biennale two years ago and last weekend finished up an American tour at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary]. It is an opera for a few. An hour long, it is given five times a night, accommodating an audience of only 102 for each performance. The $25 tickets for the 15 performances Thursday though Saturday sold out in minutes. Funnily, a work about the horrors of global heating is said to be the hottest ticket in town.

In the end, what makes “Sun & Sea” horrifying is that a leisurely day at the beach is depicted not with the terrors of climate change but with the ostensible lack of them. It is an opera about caring but not doing, about environmental ennui, which just may turn out to be our biggest threat of all.

Read full article in Los Angeles Times.