The Petrofuture series is an attempt to reimagine our memories, to alter the tropes of our nostalgia. By re-branding, re-titling, and editing the maps to show the maximum level of sea rise when the ice caps melt, these maps take on the promotions of petro-corporations, and turn them back on themselves, depicting the ultimate consequences of car culture and the burning of fossil fuels. They are counter-cartographies, showing us the future superimposed on the past, the consequences laid on top of the propaganda. Nostalgia gets in the way of needed change. The NIMBY attitudes that get in the way of more sustainable housing forms; the mythos of the open road that gets in the way of sustainable transportation modes; the racist ideals of white suburbia that perpetuate inequality…nostalgia needs to be reimagined, remapped. If the imaginations of a society are stuck in the past, they will struggle to find a way forward.

Using vintage gas station maps as a base, I add 66 meters of sea level rise, the highest predicted by the IPCC if all the ice sheets melt. 

Thank you, david rumsey maps, for making these base maps available.