Climate Signs | The New York Review of Books
At two degrees, our best-case climate scenario, melting ice sheets will still pass a point of no return, flooding NYC and dozens of other world cities. In fact, we’re on track for over four degrees of warming and an unfathomable scale of suffering by century’s end. For my part, I’m only beginning to see that the question of how to prepare our kids for the horrors to come is collateral to the problem of how to deal as adults with the damage we’ve stewarded them into. What helped me see this was a road sign—one of those LED billboards you normally spot on a highway alerting drivers to a hazard….
Me: The writer provoked by a piece of climate change art embarks with an initially random acquaintance to visit a series of these LED artwork signs around New York. This journey intertwines art, New York, the future, climate, the nature of art and the writer’s life. It’s a long read (20 to 30 minutes, if you stop and think), for me it struck a whimsical note although I can’t pinpoint why - perhaps it was the mix of the personal non-fiction narrative with the art and the journey. Raises many questions and answers almost none.
Emily Raboteau’s piece here: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/01/climate-signs/
The artist’s (Justin Brice Guariglia) work here: https://www.climate-signals.org/the-exhibition