A Tipping Point: Man and Nature
Read more from Perspectives in Climate Change.
Emily Wang is a junior at Cary Academy, where she co-captains the Lincoln-Douglas debate team. She is passionate about art as a means of personal reflection and reflection of the state of the world. Her work has received numerous accolades in the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition. Additionally, she is a Marketing Specialist at the Journal of Interdisciplinary Public Policy and has a passion for mathematics and chemistry.
“We, humans, carved out the hearts of forests to build sprawling suburbs.
We, humans, drained swamps to lay down belts of asphalt that we call roads.
We, humans, dug holes and filled them with water to create lakes where they do not belong.”
Whether it is destruction, conservation, or preservation, humans are constantly playing limbo with nature. Here we might bulldoze a forest to build our neighborhoods, yet over there we might lay down some fresh sod — build a park — to compensate. Nevertheless, a couple patches of freshly farmed grass do not ameliorate our destruction. In fact, they may make it worse through pounds of fertilizer, polluted runoff, and self-satisfaction from thinking that we have atoned for our destruction.
In this painting, I explore these sentiments through a surrealistic depiction of the natural and man-made. I felt this style, which juxtaposes seemingly disparate imagery in a dream-like manner, best captures the interaction between man’s artificial systems — like railroads — and Mother Nature’s natural systems — like fruit and the desert.
When humans encounter nature, one of our first instincts is destruction, for we are fueled by a vision of how we might make the land more suitable for our flourishing. Instead of laying down a path around a tree, we simply get rid of it, carving out the straightest path forward without regard for how that may damage the natural surroundings. I illustrate this interaction through the geometric cutouts in the pears that create a convenient throughway for the railroad track. These cutouts are precisely in the region of the pears where their seeds would be, demonstrating humankind’s disruption of nature’s natural reproduction—our decisions to destroy nature for our own flourishing undermine that of nature’s posterity.
Additionally, we are quick to slap labels of ownership onto any land that we stumble upon. Most, if not all, land has some kind of label — private land, public land, my land, your land. I capture this sentiment with the produce label on the nearest pear. Nature does not belong to us, yet we relentlessly commodify it: we draw lines to demarcate private property; we fight bloody wars over land ownership; we slap price tags onto everything in sight.
“Though snow-capped mountains still exist and many beaches are still wide enough for us to enjoy, every destructive action we commit and avert our eyes from creates a more uncertain tomorrow. ”
The nearest pear is the most damaged, with the peel near the stem pulled back, revealing oxidized and rotting flesh. This decomposing flesh symbolizes the corrupting influence that man has on nature: somehow, when we humans arrive on new land, we tend to destroy it. Each pear is tilted precariously with the last pear completely fallen on its side. This positioning signals the uncertain future that we are creating for ourselves. Though snow-capped mountains still exist and many beaches are still wide enough for us to enjoy, every destructive action we commit and avert our eyes from creates a more uncertain tomorrow.
Finally, pears were my fruit of choice because I feel that to the average person, pears are an unexciting, often overlooked fruit. They frequent the grocery store shelves and perhaps our kitchen counters, yet we pay little attention to them. In a way, we take them for granted. Similarly, we do not think twice about the blue sky over our heads or the tree outside the window. However, when the sky is orange from wildfire smoke or the tree snaps in ferocious hurricane winds, we will care about the blue skies and trees. Then, though, it may be too late.
In capturing this destructive human attitude toward nature, I want to focus on former President Trump’s leadership’s destructive impact on the environment. Throughout his presidency, Trump employed damaging rhetoric — such as labelling climate change a “hoax” — and spread misinformation to the overall detriment of efforts for a greener future (Worland). Unfortunately, the Trump Administration did not stop at words. In June 2017, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement (Gibbens). This withdrawal demonstrates an incredible lack of foresight on the president’s part since not only does this decision set up a more precarious future, but it also neglects the impact on the international stage. The United States, as a world power and international model, withdrawing from a concerted effort to combat climate change will deeply undermine that effort.
On the domestic front, during his presidency, Trump opened up millions of acres of protected lands in Utah for energy exploration, including nearly a million acres that were a part of Bears Ears, a Utah monument and sacred land to the native Zuni, Hopi, Navajo, Ute, and Paiute tribes (Davenport; Nordhaus). Unfortunately, these tribes’ pleas with politicians on Capitol Hill to spare the lands of their ancestors were to no avail. In his final full day as president, Trump issued oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) with tracts covering a total of 440,000 acres (DeMarban). Actions like this one are precisely what my painting addresses: greedy, short-sighted policymakers who carve out sacred, protected lands for a quick and easy path to profit. Trump and oil companies are drilling through the heart of the pear in their hunger for unsustainable profits from unsustainable fuel that is creating an unsustainable future. When Trump left office in January, he left behind a dying environment. His environmental legacy includes climate denial rhetoric, misinformation on climate change, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, and newly opened lands for drilling. Metaphorically, Trump built a railroad track that plunges through gaping holes in the hearts of nature’s fruit. Fortunately, on his first day as president, President Joe Biden signed executive orders for the US to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and for a moratorium on the oil drilling leases in ANWR Trump issued, and Biden laid out plans to reverse Trump’s policies on shrinking national monuments for oil drilling (Kavi). All of these actions together offer hope for a brighter future for our earth.
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