A Photo Essay for the #ClimateVisionaries Artists’ Project for Greenpeace
Perhaps the monster hurricanes of the past three years—Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence, Michael, and Dorian—are telling us that we are fundamentally altering the climate.
In the wake of Hurricane Michael
Scientists have been telling us for many years that in the Age of the Anthropocene, our global carbon addiction will fuel a new breed of superstorms.
Perhaps the monster hurricanes of the past three years—Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence, Michael, and Dorian—are telling us that we are fundamentally altering the climate.
It appears a new normal may be upon us, and we could be in for a rough ride.
A week after Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida panhandle in October 2018, I went to Mexico Beach to see for myself a land transformed.
With 160 mph winds and a 14-foot storm surge, the damage was, in a word, cataclysmic.
Flying west from Apalachicola towards the path of the storm, I begin my picture report with a beauty shot of St. Joseph Peninsula. Seen from high above, it’s easy to think of Florida as resilient.
It was hard to imagine a Cat 5 hurricane blasted through here just a week earlier. But let’s look more closely…
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As we begin this critical new year in the fight against climate change, Greenpeace is giving over space on our channels to authors and artists working within the climate crisis. Acclaimed author Lauren Groff prompted artists and thinkers to write essays and art about climate change for us, and so every day this month we’ll have a new piece from that project that addresses, in some form, what it means to create in the midst of this crisis. The forces fueling climate change have the most powerful networks in history pumping out their devastating propaganda at unimaginable scale. It’s going to take everything we have from all of us – imagination equal to the task – to create the climate we’ll need to stop the crisis.
We need these voices and these visions, but they won’t be enough. We need you, too. We encourage you to check back on the Climate Visionaries Artists’ Project every day to see what’s new, and to join the conversation by sharing your work on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and tagging it #ClimateVisionaries.