Luca Buti, Questions about imminent desertification, from PRIVATE 37 – an Ecological Question
2005-2006 USA
There is a fascinating flatness in the desert scenarios. In its silence-without-silence there is something like a primordial call to this dry wildness. Maybe the reason is that mankind can’t escape to such a wild future? Maybe only cold-blooded animals and cacti will survive this century? A century that is moving fast and faster toward tropicalization and desertification.
Maybe everything was written since the beginning… Maybe mankind has not – and has never had – all that amount of intelligence we believe to have. We are approaching the time where the progress wants its bill to be paid and it seems that the progress likes to be paid in sand, in °C and CO2 pollution. So, future will be wild? Maybe! Water will be something existing only in traces? Probably! Sunrays will become so strong to destroy your eyes, to burn your skin? It could be… Ecological holocaust seems far to arrive, but it’s a wrong perception. It’s a wrong perception because things starts to smell funny… Things start to smell the flavor of the desert. The flavor of hot air: nothing more than hot air!
Cities and human agglomerates look like huge radiators. Everything produces heat, drains oxygen and everything smells hot. The same hot, exhausted stuff produced by our beloved cars, and discharged by our air conditioners. But there is an even worst news. Yesterday, when I was in the desert with my camera, I talked to Mother Nature about this fact. The bad news is that, this time, Mother Nature seems really tired to make up once again for our disasters… What I understood is that this time she will not do nothing for us. She will only wait and see… Enjoy the pictures, but be worried about future!
