Edward Burtynsky's monumental chronicle of the human impact on the planet
If there was one absence in Burtynsky’s account of our time, however, it was the single greatest result of all that mining, burning, and consuming: the transformation of the atmosphere. Nothing else comes close in scale to the chemical disruption of the air—the flood of CO 2 now rapidly overheating the Earth and producing a series of changes so titanic they dwarf even the forces that these photos depict. But carbon dioxide is invisible, which is a problem for photographers. That’s why in some w