Carbon Topologies

“Carbon Topologies” is a three-dimensional planetary mapping of the locations, amounts, and flows of CO2 resulting from the activity of the global economy from the 1970s to the present. It shows how we can read planetary inequalities through data that is mapped across the planetary surface. The model captures what is normally invisible, extruding data describing fossil fuel emissions, energy usage, manufacturing, transportation, travel, and food production. The crustal geologies, scars, ridges, and archipelagos of carbon production describe a planetary condition catastrophically subject to unsustainable patterns of consumption and extractivist economics. The structural figuring of the model’s stalagmite forms manifest how CO2 emissions have arisen predominantly in the global North evidencing a historic responsibility and connecting them to wider political processes of inequality and power distribution.