Postcards from the future
by Jonathan Hiskes.
U.K. artists Robert Graves
and Didier Madoc-Jones kept hearing discussion and conjecture about how violent
climatic changes would disrupt their world. But they couldn’t envision what it
would look like. So they started researching and created a set of “Postcards
from the Future” portraying a future London transformed by floods, harsher
winters (because of a Gulf Stream slow-down), and fiercer storms.
The illustrations also
show human responses—climate refugees encamped in Trafalgar Square and outside
Buckingham Palace, wind turbines in Piccadilly Circus, and tidal turbines in
the Thames River. They show rice paddies in Parliament Square and palm-oil
production in Hyde Park as responses to drought and crop disruptions.
“We didn’t want to
create the stuff of nightmares although we did make images showing the
potential disasters London could suffer,” the artists write. “We also strove to
show how resourceful we could be as a capital, and how by adapting we could
rise to meet the challenge of our changing environment.”
They released an
original set for the 2008 G8 meeting in London, and they’ve expanded on that
series for a new “London Futures”
showing at the Museum of London. Sixteen of them are online.
For my money, the more
important task is envisioning successful future places that are climate-resilient,
and also sociable, economically sustainable, and pleasant. Stuff like Steve
Price’s Flash
illustrations and the work we should see coming from the Living Cities Design Competition. But these London images are compelling too. (More below.)
Related Links:
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The Climate Post: Is Americans’ climate ignorance a tragedy or an opportunity?
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