More Machine Politick Art

Current Show

Title: Hockey Sticks and Polar Ice Caps.

Completed: 2005

Medium: Acrylic and mixed media on board.

Price: $1950

Dimensions: 20w x 24h x 3d

Notes: Framed by artist.

Description: This diptych addresses the environmental movement and, in particular, the inherent hypocrisy and fear tactics so prevalent in the movement. It goes without saying that I have only just begun to start working on this topic. A whole series of works on the environmental movement and the current global warming hysteria are on my list of upcoming projects.

This pair of paintings is a statement regarding the way in which environmental activists play on the short memories and attention spans of the masses to push their agenda. It also calls to light the way in which statistics are skewed to fit a particular dogma, and then completely ignored a few years later, when a more frightening dogma is being preached.

The first painting in the diptych employs a graph from the 1970's, when global cooling was the huge scare. People were made to believe that we were on the verge of Armageddon: crops were failing, people would soon be starving to death, and the new Ice Age was coming. Since then, I can remember the big acid rain scare of the 80's, and now we have global warming, which started in the 90's. The most recent trend seems to be a convenient catch-all called "catastrophic climate change". I guess somebody noticed that we haven't frozen to death yet and we can't have global cooling and warming at the same time, so the new catch-phrase covers all the bases.

The juxtaposition of the hot and cold paintings is an alarm bell for those who can't see what's in front of them: the environmental movement is a sham. If you look a little deeper at the agenda of most environmentalists, you can see that they are waging an anti-capitalist onslaught against America. They mean to scare people into submission and work to enact legislation and environmentally conscious practices that would cripple the economy and make the average person's life more complicated and less efficient, as well as more expensive to maintain.

In future pieces, I will address the changing dogma of the movement further. In particular, I will address the current shift toward catastrophic climate change as a convenient term that makes everything we do and every change in climate an impending Armageddon and evidence that we are doomed by our own actions. I plan to address the way in which the environmental movement is eroding our freedoms. I'm particularly interested in, and appalled by, the inexcusable deaths of people in third world countries due to disease and malnutrition - all directly attributable to environmental sanctions.

The book, State of Fear, by Michael Crichton was the main inspiration for this painting. He puts into frightening perspective, the point made by this painting. The articles used for reference are listed below.

Links:

The Cooling World, Newsweek: April 28, 1975

A Graphic Used in Climate Debate Faces Attack, The Wall Street Journal: February 14, 2005

CONTACT: frances@machinepolitick.com
All images and political rants on this page are the property of Machine Politick and are not to be used or reproduced in any way without permission from frances@machinepolitick.com. All images are copyrighted creations of the artist behind Machine Politick unless otherwise noted and are not to be used or reproduced in any way without permission from frances@machinepolitick.com. Copyright 2006.