Just outside Barcelona, new cracked, thirsty water beds appear after months of little to no rain. In Argentina, parched lands turn crops to gray. On land, farmers are at the whims of the weather, with patterns being altered by climate change. Residents of neighborhoods in Utah meanwhile, find water where it shouldn’t be – coursing through their streets and homes. In New Jersey, solar panels float in ponds, and in India, fishing nets sink into the lakes. In California, surfers straddle waves in the ocean. In megacities, like the rapidly growing Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, skyscrapers shoot upwards while in Guyana excavators dig deep into the earth for deposits of gold.
In Florida, the opposite problem: too much water clogs roads and neighborhoods, trapping cars and stranding people, with the burning of fossil fuels again partially to blame for erratic conditions. In Iraq, lakes shrivel and dry up as rain fails to fall, weather patterns altered by human-made climate change. The relationship between people and the natural world will have consequences for years to come. As the world commemorates Earth Day on Saturday, the footprints of human activity are visible across the planet’s surface. Charred, drained or swamped, built up, dug out or taken apart, blue or green or turned to dust: this is the Earth as seen from above.
0 kommentar(er)
