Artefacts of a
Burning World

Opinionated collection of 59 articles, films, podcasts and other artefacts related to the climate crisis.

You are viewing 1–10 of 59 posts.
Article
A three-axis scatterplot with India, China and United States placed over time between Bio & other, Fossil and Electrons

Many compare India and China’s energy systems as they stand today, noting China’s lead. Yet a more meaningful comparison looks at equivalent stages of development. At a similar GDP per capita, India is generating more solar electricity, using far fewer fossil fuels and electrifying transport faster than China did. By harnessing some of the world’s cheapest solar power, India is fueling its industrial rise while bypassing a costly and insecure fossil-fuel interlude. Solar’s advantages lie in cost and speed: its modularity allows deployment in months rather than years, and because it can be installed at almost any scale, from Mumbai rooftops to Rajasthan desert sun farms, far more actors take part in the energy revolution.


Article
Arial photograph of three ponds located in a forest

Photograph
This is a blue-shaded photograph showing a landscape from above. There are arrays of solar panels mounted on a lake, with tiny boats and mountains in the background.

Chinese photographer Weimin Chu has captured Shan shui-inspired images of China’s solar and wind industries. The series, which was mostly captured using drones, was shown at Greenpeace East Asia’s Beijing office in an  exhibition called “Lighting the Future: People’s Hope and Power in China’s Green Energy Future”.

The photograph above shows the Zhejiang Xiangshan Changda (Datang) Mudflat Solar Farm. This closer-angled photograph better illustrates the construction of the farm.


Study
A ridgeline plot, with a line for each year. The height of each curve is proportional to the number of days on which a given temperature anomaly was experienced. As the years progress, the curves shift to the right, indicating higher temperatures.
Globally, no single day in 2025 was cooler than its 1991–2020 average.
, Bluesky

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) just released the Global Climate Highlights 2025 report. The “report provides authoritative climate data and concise insight on a global scale about 2025's climate conditions, covering surface and sea surface temperature, heat stress, sea ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic, among others”.

It includes a “Joy Division chart”/“Ridgeline plot”, that was inspired by Erwan Rivault’s work (included in the Information Is Beautiful Longlist 2024). The chart created for this report compares the years 1940 to 2025 with the 1991–2020 average daily global surface air temperature anomalies (°C).


Artwork
Collage of examples where Matthew Hinders-Anderson’s fonts have been used.

Activists struggle with the high costs when designing the visual identity of protests, which often lack sufficient  funding. Matthew Hinders-Anderson took it upon himself` to create “good-looking, freely-distributable fonts” that could be used by any “activist, an[y] academic, or anyone just trying to make this world a better place”.

Another designer who cannot go unmentioned in this context is Tré Seals, whose typefaces are inspired by social justice movements, especially those within the Black community.


Website
Area chart of weekly atmospheric CO₂ at Mauna Loa, Hawaii
Almost all the variation from week to week is natural, probably a result of shifting wind patterns bringing different air parcels to the sampling site, such that it is highly unlikely that we can discern anthropogenic effects from week to week. The steady increase from year to year, however, is clearly driven by our global emissions.

Robbie Andrew’s area and line charts are updated weekly to include the current atmospheric CO₂ concentration at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, sea surface temperature anomalies, and the global average atmospheric CO₂ concentration.


Newsletter
Line chart showing China’s CO₂ emissions rising since 2017 until 2024.
The 22m tonnes of steel used to build new wind turbines and solar panels in 2024 would have been enough to build a Golden Gate Bridge on every working day of every week that year.
, Economist.com

China's expansion of solar and wind power is breathtaking, both in terms of scale and technological progress. In contrast to Trump’s USA, China’s CO₂ emissions have remained constant or even fallen over the last 18 months. (A result, as Dan Wang argues, from China being a state run by engineers whereas the USA is run by lawyers.)
As a result, the West is losing its pioneering role and more and more countries are turning to China. Countries that in the past were assured “common but differentiated responsibilities” for climate change, but which are now making astonishing progress. In his newsletter post, Bill McRibben shows how India, Pakistan, Jordan, Brazil, India, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Nepal are finding progressive and innovative climate solutions.


Photograph
A collage of two images of a couple standing in front of the Rhône Glacier.

In August 2009, Duncan Porter visited the Rhône Glacier in Wallis, Switzerland, and took a selfie with his wife in front of it. Fifteen years later, in August 2025, he returned and took another selfie with his wife in front of the glacier. The viral post shows the glacier’s staggering retreat.

Others who have documented the glacier's retreat include Christian Åslund of Greenpeace and Neill Drake.


Article
Ultimately, it is symptomatic of the larger injustice of the climate crisis, which is that the people who have done the least to cause it are the ones who will suffer the most from its impacts.
, New York Times

Cooled people “work mostly indoors, bathed in the soothing breeze of manufactured air.” Cooked people are those, who are delivery drivers, oil field workers, farmworkers, construction workers, …

In his opinion peace for The New York Times, Jeff Goodell, author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, describes the divide between these two groups as “The New American Inequality: The Cooled vs. the Cooked.” However, this uneven suffering can certainly be extended to people outside the USA.