While I was making this charming postcard of our adventure on the Great Barrier Reef, Padma and I realized that, to be honest, we had to show you one more illustration…
Yes, but how was I supposed to do it? How do you show the impact of global warming, man-made pollution, and the vast underwater landscape full of deadly starfish (known here as Crown-of-thorns) we encountered while diving?
So I decided to use a “before and after” slider/plugin! It allowed me to bleach corals in one dramatic display, contaminate the dirty water with plastic, and cover the entire sea bottom with the Crown-of-thorns starfish (which, according to scientific research, got out of control and devoured 50% of corals in the last 30 years!)
But wait! The visionary artist, Janusz Christa, drew something similar more than 50 years ago! He envisioned a race of human-like beings destroying every living plant or animal (except the one “sometimes flowering” tree).
An image from Christa’s famous “In the space” story published in Wieczór Wybrzeża newspaper between 1968 and 1972.
In the late 1960s, few were interested in environmental topics. Even in 1980, when I lived in the Yukon, no one heard of the danger of oil pipelines crossing routes of migrating caribou. There was no talk of damage loggers were doing to animal habitats or entire river systems. But now, in 2023, we face the consequences of such actions every day.
So please don’t be mesmerized by this idealistic postcard, but take a look at the “before and after” illustration, and join us in supporting our planet’s environment, even by one plastic bag (or bottle) at a time.
Please move the slider between left and right to see the “before and after” changes.
