The Atlantic uses the opening scene of Blade Runner 2049 as inspiration for an exploration of the near-future rural countryside.
The author weaves together scenes of death and catastrophe with iconic imagery of humanity’s attempts to keep the dystopia at bay: fields of heliostat mirrors, a green wall across the breadth of the Sahara, cloud-seeding chambers high in the Himalaya, and AlmerÃa’s tapestry of plastic greenhouses.
With climate change, humans are beginning to appreciate that cities are not separate from the environment. They are environments. We should also recognize that the rural is, at least in part, man-made. Cities approaching the changes already in motion with a sense of the Earth as a biological network, rather than adopting psychological siege positions, will be essential for survival. Technology and engineering will need to be deployed in what is currently regarded as wilderness. In turn, what seems rural will have to be deployed in cities: rooftop and vertical gardens, wetland buffer zones, greenery as a sponge for rising waters, and towers that channel polluted air into greenhouses…