Carbon and Corporate Responsibility

For years, the actions of corporations have been hidden behind a consumer democracy, insinuating that we as consumers alone hold the responsibility to prevent this climate crisis. We are blamed for our consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and single-use plastics. Placing the blame on us obscures the fact that it is often difficult and expensive to be “green,” especially for those most affected by the climate crisis. Instead of asking why we live in an unsustainable world with overconsumption, we are left pointing fingers at one another for not doing enough. The concern over our individual “carbon footprint” (the amount of carbon, and other gases including methane, emitted through the consumption of fossil fuels) is a propaganda campaign created by the fossil fuel industry (spearheaded by BP among others), making the individual feel responsible for lowering their “carbon footprint” (rather, fossil fuel emissions). This propaganda was concocted by the fossil fuel industry to deflect their responsibility in rapidly accelerating our fossil fuel emissions without substantial efforts into using renewable energy. No matter what we do, from reducing our use of personal vehicles and taking flights, to eating vegan and recycling, if corporations don’t move away from fossil fuels as the basis of the energy system throughout the world, an individual has no way of making a significant dent in reducing fossil fuel emissions. 

Just 100 companies in the entire world have been responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming since 1998 (from CDP Carbon Report). This list is predominantly made up of oil and coal companies, including public companies Chevron, Exxon, BP, and Shell, and state-owned companies in China and Saudi Arabia. The resulting emissions from use of these materials that are extracted from the earth are responsible for almost half the rise in global temperature and almost a third of the rise in sea levels. America is the most significant contributor to historical global emissions, while the country as a whole has not yet beared the brunt of the lasting effects. While America is currently the 2nd most polluting country, each year, the American military alone emits more than many other countries. Our futures rest in the hands of international governments and corporations to take responsibility for their devastating pollution and creating actionable plans immediately. 

Kudzilla Casey Lance Brown

Casey’s work reveals the perverse ways in which human systems use, abuse, and subdivide the planet’s surface. Through digital visualization techniques, he uses large, super-resolution images to dramatize the novel environments of the  Anthropocene. Abandoned sites, invasive species zones and decaying ruins all serve as waypoints in navigating human folly. By mixing his designer skill set with scenic speculation, he seeks to expand the hybridizing potentials of the current Anthropocene era. Just like companies need to dedicate profit portions to climate change solutions, creators need to dedicate proportional efforts to making those solutions irresistible.

In Kudzilla, Casey devises hyperrealistic tableaus from kudzu vine barrens in southern Appalachia. Kudzu’s quasi-mythic levels of aggressive, girdling growth make it analogous to another import from Japan—Godzilla. With the atmosphere constantly growing in carbon enrichment, this mythic comparison may become more than an analogy. Casey projects kudzu's  tenacious tendencies onto economic sectors that are being cannibalized by technological disruption. Growth and decay form a perpetual, entangling embrace in Kudzilla.  

Casey’s work pursues moments of cyclical turnover as a low-rent method of time traveling along our technological path. What is currently in a state of entropic decay or ruination will inevitably form the basis for new growth. Obsolescence, anachronism, and abandonment are the ever-present  signatures of human folly. The detritus of the past contains all the foibles, systemic failures, and economic foci of our collective pursuits. These sites are memento mori writ large in landscape form.

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