Fleet

• Published in: One earth (Cambridge, Mass.) Vol. 4; no. 5; pp. 694 - 695
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 21.05.2021; Published by Elsevier Inc
• Subjects: Visual Earth
• ISSN: 2590-3322; 2590-3330; 2590-3322
• DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2021.04.024

The shipping of goods around the world is continually increasing, especially since the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. If you don’t live in a port city such as Seattle, it’s hard to imagine the enormity of commerce and its impacts. Mary Iverson’s artwork raises questions about the consequences of the growing consumerism, particularly how carbon footprints of the shipping industry contribute to climate change. Fleet illustrates a post-apocalyptic vision of what rising sea levels would look like in our cities. In the depicted great flood, a group of stranded container ships (the backbone of today’s global trade) are floating around, calling attention to consumerism and its huge impacts on climate change. Imagining the big flood in cities with floating shipping containers in a climate-changing world, Fleet, a post-apocalyptic vision, asks us to consider our growing demand, consumerism, and their environmental impacts.