Artefacts of a
Burning World

Opinionated collection of 34 articles, films, podcasts and other artefacts related to the climate crisis.

Image
Overview of mitigation options and their estimated ranges of costs and potentials in 2030

One of the most striking and instructive graph in the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report: It lists the potential contribution to net emissions reductions by 2030 for different migration options in sectors such as energy, AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses), buildings, transport and industry. In addition to the width of the bars, it also shows colour ranges for the cost of the reduction potential of the options.

The areas with the highest potential contributions are solar and wind energy, halting deforestation, better agriculture, strengthening ecosystems and hydrogen in industry.

Wind and solar energy are cheap up to 2 GtCO₂-eq per year, while the often-promised carbon capture is expensive from the outset and has very little potential.

The graphic is part of the Summary for Policymakers in “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.


Book
The Oldest Living Things in the World
“It is imperative to the health of the planet, to the longevity of humans as a species, that we connect with timescales that are longer than our own.”

Since 2004, Brooklyn-based artist Rachel Sussman has explored harsh climates from Antarctica to the Mojave Desert to photograph the world’s oldest living organisms. This includes Pando, an aspen colony in Utah with a root system around 80,000 years old, and the Llareta plants in South America, which grow 1.5 cm annually and live for over 3,000 years. Despite their longevity, such ecosystems face threats from climate change and human activity.

Her photographs are meditations on “deep time” – timescales that are outside of our human, physiological experience of time – and often show the most versatile adaptation to the harsh climate conditions these organism are living in.


Shortfilm

The shortfilm (2022, 25′) documents walrus haulouts – large gatherings of walruses seeking refuge on shore when their search for remaining sea ice forces them to swim much farther and farther distances.

The marine biologist Maxim Chakilev records these dramatic gatherings in Cape Serdtse-Kamen, Russia. Living together with the scientist in a small, wooden hut surrounded by thousands of walruses, the film team captures the intense atmosphere and suffering of the animals. And the helplessness of Maxim.

The film is produced by The New Yorker (which provide valuable background information on the film), is shortlisted for the 2023 Oscars and premiered 2022 at Berlinale. It is currently disabled on YouTube, which might be due to the Oscar nomination, but is still available at Yahoo.



Game

Scenarios about our future are generated with models that calculate climate impacts based on various variables like energy mix, policy decisions and population development. What if you could set these variables and let the simulation evolve? The planetary crisis panning game Half Earth Socialism allows for just that. Using the open-source model HectorFrancis Tseng and Son La Pham (with the help of other designers, researchers, and artists) created a format that kept me engaged for 4 hours straight with the myriad of tweaks and trade-offs of climate policy. The game is lovingly designed and embellished with myriad narrative details and an entertaining political embedding by borrowing from the book Half Earth Socialism. And when no settings you try, works out, a look at this IPCC figure might help.