North Carolina Introduction
https://www.dpi.nc.gov/
Our journey across North Carolina gives us a unique perspective into the effects of climate change. In a 2017 study, Science Magazine laid out the facts and figures that provide proof that the United States’ South will experience the climate crisis at its worst in America. While places like the North East may experience a milder winter, North Carolina and her Southeastern siblings and Southwestern cousins will suffer at a disparate rate over the next century.
Traveling from east to west, we look at each of North Carolina’s distinct regions: the Coastal Plains, the Piedmont, and the Mountains. Each of these regions exhibits its own diverse ecological magic. Native and endemic flora and fauna each hang in a delicate balance, a balance that can and will be thrown off by a rise of just a couple degrees Fahrenheit. North Carolina’s waterways, forests, and farms have been dammed, deforested, depleted, and stolen over five centuries of settlement in the state. In this exhibition, we look at how colonialism and racism are thickly woven into the climate crisis. Racism has played a major role in North Carolina’s history of land conservation and usage and its wildlands still hold reminders of centuries of oppression.
Approaching Maximum asks questions of corporations and government agencies--those who are contributing most to Earth’s collapse. It addresses the impacts of our changing climate on those who are most affected by these changes.