Jane Barney, Green Car, photo collage animation, 2024

Place your tray tables in their upright, locked position…*

Jane Barney

NASA reports that, in 1950, when TVs were just becoming a thing, atmospheric CO2 equalled the highest level it had reached previously - 300 parts per million (ppm) recorded in ice samples from 350,000 years ago. Today it is at 420ppm and rising rapidly.

In 1960, the year I was born, G. I. C. Ingram wrote that: …The process of ‘understanding’ something seems to consist of building a structure of thoughts which links it to the great scaffold of ideas which our minds already possess. (Ingram, G. I. C. “Displacement activity in human behaviour.” American Anthropologist 62.2 (1960): 994-1000.)

This travelogue of CO2 emissions (aka hot air) went into, and then came out of, my mind. It is a record of our time. I can’t guarantee any links to the great scaffold in your mind, but I suggest you adopt the brace position.

* Laurie Anderson, From the Air lyrics, 1982