Nature is Coughing
Thirty-six billion tons of energy-related carbon dioxide were released into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2021 alone. The accumulated carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses trap low-energy sun rays reflected from the Earth's crust, in the Earth's atmosphere, leading to an increase in this system's heat, and resulting in global warming-global warming leads to increasingly extreme weather conditions from which people suffer worldwide. Germany, for example, suffers from a generally reduced availability of water in agriculture, an increased proneness to storm surges, and a higher risk to loss of biodiversity and loss of topsoil and erosion. The Earth and future civilizations will pay the price for our current lifestyle established through excessive pollution (air pollution in particular), unless we do something about it. The climate is generally always changing, but through our polluting actions we are escalating this change. Carbon dioxide emissions have peaked in 2021 since the introduction of fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes in 1750.
We tend to think that industry contributes to the majority of pollution. This is true, but we tend to ignore how much we pollute ourselves.
My photograph aims to show a snapshot of how much smoke a tiny house in a small German city releases at a given moment in winter. It delineates how we utilize the earth's slowly formed fossil fuels to destroy our natural habitat. The photograph depicts the outline of houses from the reflecting snow in front of a tree background, where one house is releasing a great deal of smoke, highlighted by the sun shining through it as a partial trigger for global warming and hence, climate change. Even though the photograph seems heavily edited, only the color saturation and contrast have been elevated, to emphasize all the small components that contribute to global warming and how every household (in cold countries in winter in particular) contributes to this. The smoke captures all the different colors of light the sun emits and coherently juxtaposes nature's beauty with humanity's destruction of it. The sun seems to emit positive energy from the warm colors, whilst we as the civilisation just seem to absorb it and don’t give anything back, illustrated by the cool, surrounding colors. The smoke also looks like a volcanic eruption, portraying the dangerousness of our reckless polluting actions.
Therefore, we should start thinking more about our actions on the climate, so we can preserve its natural beauty for future generations to enjoy.