NPR - Rhitu Chatterjee
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Allie Wist's "Flooded" dinner spread includes burdock
and dandelion root hummus with sunchoke chips; jellyfish salad; roasted
hen of the woods mushroom; fried potatoes with chipotle vegan mayo;
salted anchovies; and oysters with slippers. Most of these are foods
that might be more resilient to climate change and, therefore, what we
could be eating in the future, Wist says. Heami Lee/Courtesy of Allie Wist, food stylist C.C. Buckley, prop stylist Rebecca Bartoshesy
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What will our dinners look like when temperatures and sea levels rise and water floods our coastal towns and cities?
Allie Wist, 29, an associate art director at
Saveur
magazine, attempts to answer that question in her latest art project,
"Flooded." It's a fictional photo essay (based on real scientific data)
about a dinner party menu at a time when climate change has
significantly altered our diets.
Wist has been following news
about climate change with a growing sense of urgency. Global
temperatures have risen in recent decades and extreme weather –
droughts, floods, hurricanes – is more common. Sea levels are rising,
causing coastal erosion and flooding and even the disappearance of
small islands
in the South Pacific. Our oceans are becoming more acidic from
dissolved carbon dioxde, hurting marine life. And, in some parts of the
world, farmers are struggling with unpredictable growing seasons.
Climate change has "become this future vision that's right in front of us," Wist says.
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The fishing village of Nueva Venecia is situated in a
lake deep in the marshlands of northwestern Colombia. The marshlands
could be inundated with ocean water by 2100, if sea levels rise by 3
feet or more as projected by scientists. Courtesy of Allie Wist
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But the issue is a politicized one in the United States, she says.
Many people don't believe climate change is real. And many find it
difficult to understand, because it's too abstract.
"I felt this need to subversively convince people," Wist
says. "I wanted to hook them more emotionally, with something they can
relate to."
So she chose food. "It is so integral to how we see ourselves and how we live every day," she says.
Climate change is already having an effect on food production. In 2011, a study in
Science found
a small, but measurable decline
in the world's wheat and corn production. As global temperatures rise,
some places will become more favorable for agriculture, while many
others will become too hot and dry to grow crops. Extreme weather will
also influence food prices, as we saw in 2010-2011, when drought in some
parts of the world and unusually big cyclones and floods in others
led to a spike in wheat prices. Warmer ocean temperatures have and will continue to affect fisheries.
All
this means we might be forced to change what we eat in the coming
decades, says Wist. People "have to start to realize that their daily
activities could change, will change, because of this thing that they
consider abstract," she says.
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A dinner plate floats in New York City's East River. "It
said something about just getting swept away and belongings being
flooded," says Wist. But it also implied "us persevering... and eating
dinner despite that." Courtesy of Allie Wist
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Wist and her team, fellow photographer Heami Lee, food stylist C.C.
Buckley and prop stylist Rebecca Bartoshesy, started out by making a
list of foods that scientists think "are either threatened by climate
change or would be more available in an era of climate change," she
says. They chose to anchor the essay in New York and New England to
think more specifically about the kinds of food and eating habits that
would have to change.
Rising sea levels
put coastal cities like New York, where Wist now lives, at a greater
risk of flooding. That means in the not-too-distant future, residents
might have to turn more to the ocean for food, says Wist.
So her fictional menu includes an array of foods harvested from the sea.
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This dish features a scallop in its shell. Bivalves,
like scallops are threatened by rising ocean acidification. Wist left it
in the shell, so people would think of it "as an animal and not just a
scallop on a plate." Heami Lee/Courtesy of Allie Wist, food stylist C.C. Buckley, prop stylist Rebecca Bartoshesy
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Bivalves, for example, play a key role in protecting the ocean
environment, by filtering out pollutants. But they are threatened by
climate change
– the increasing acidity of ocean waters is eroding their shells. If we
can save bivalves, they could become a good source of food in the
future, Wist suggests.
Wist says they chose mustard greens to
serve alongside the bivalves on her menu because the hardy plants "can
survive volatility in climate."
And Wist thought about what might be in our glasses as well as on our plates.
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Left: Mollusks in broth with mustard greens. Mustard greens are hardy plants that could withstand climate fluctuations. Right: A DIY method for desalinating ocean water for cooking and drinking. Heami Lee/Courtesy of Allie Wist, food stylist C.C. Buckley, prop stylist Rebecca Bartoshesy
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According to the U.S. Geological Survey, rising sea levels are likely to
contaminate ground water.
"I don't think anyone thinks about it, that we might have to desalinate
ocean water in order to have drinking water," says Wist.
Some
countries, especially in the Middle East, already desalinate ocean water
to provide more fresh water to their citizens, but Wist envisions the
use of an at-home method involving a bowl, a rock and plastic wrap.
When
it gets too hot or dry to grow crops, we could turn to mushrooms for
food, too, suggests Wist. They grow in all sorts of environments and can
even detoxify soil.
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Left: Mushrooms have incredible potential as a future food source and can absorb toxins from the soil, says Wist. Right: Carob
agar-agar pudding with whipped cream. Carob is substituted for
chocolate, as cocoa production is threatened by rising temperatures. Heami Lee/Courtesy of Allie Wist, food stylist C.C. Buckley, prop stylist Rebecca Bartoshesy
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The picture on the right above, depicting a pudding made with carob
and an algae-derived gelatin called agar-agar, is one of Wist's
favorites. It forces viewers to "acknowledge that chocolate's being
replaced," she says. It's a reality cocoa farmers in West Africa are
already facing.
"West Africa is thought to rise by about two
degrees in the next 100 years," says Wist. "It will be too hot, too dry
for cocoa production." And carob, which is less vulnerable to climate
change, may be a good substitute.
Another major ingredient in these recipes is seaweed.
A recent study has suggested that seaweed farming could be a good source of nutrition, as well as help mitigate climate change.
"Seaweed
can absorb five times as much CO2 as land plants," says Wist. "I was
really inspired by that research and thought what if someone did that?
What if we started farming this more earnestly?"
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Kombu, kelp, oysters, clams and other mollusks. If we
farm seaweeds like kelp and kombu and protect bivalves, they could
become a reliable source of food in the future, especially for coastal
communities, says Wist. Heami Lee/Courtesy of Allie Wist, food stylist C.C. Buckley, prop stylist Rebecca Bartoshesy
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"Part of this [essay] is dystopic," says Wist. "Because we're losing
all these things, and that's bad." But part of it is utopic, too, she
says, because it shows how human creativity can help us find alternative
sources of food.
You can see Wist's entire essay and some creative recipes for the dishes above
on her website.
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