My presentation at NACIS 2023 has been uploaded to youTube:
In retrospect, I’d emphasize the contrast between the nostalgia invoked by the vintage maps, and the catastrophic climate consequences of our addiction to oil.
Also, the inherent white privilege of these maps…at the time they were printed, it was unsafe for people of color to visit many of these places. Sundown towns still existed. Jim Crow still existed. Black people relied on the Green Books to travel safely, while images of smiling white gas station attendants beaming at smiling white travelers practically glowed on the covers of these gas station maps.
The 66 meters of sea level rise is the future. When all the world’s ice sheets have melted, this is what our world will look like–flooded coastal cities, valleys, and plains. This is a world thousands of years in the future, that none of us will live to experience.
All sea level rise depicted in these maps is based on estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
