Posthuman Blues

Our Polar Impacts

In the 1990s the world successfully addressed the ozone hole by agreeing to phase out ozone destroying chemicals. Its now a waiting game as the hole will continue to fluctuate while slowly healing over the course of the next 50 years. It is a vivid yet disturbing lesson about the time frame of planetary recovery as we continue to play Russian roullete with the world's climate by failing to act with the urgency the problem warrants.

The reasons for this are myriad, but a major one is quite literally in our view of the problem. Unlike the ozone hole we have no shared image of global warming. We see receding glaciers and drying lakes, but nothing that uniquely captures the novelty and urgency of the problem we are now facing.