Hope springs forth from lush, haunting images

I really want to believe our Prime Minister’s — what, pledge? Hope? Prediction? — that we will be a fossil-fuel-free nation by the year 2100, as he told the rest of the Gang of 7 at their Bavarian get-together last week.

But any hope I have for a truly green-fueled nation is drying up like a California swimming hole. My bet is not on political will but epic disaster as the catalyst for truly altering our course — a perfect storm of events that will push us thisclose to the collapse of the very (and varied) ecosystems that spawned our species.

But I still find faith in the forces of nature, which may be why I am attracted to any images of the natural takeover of our failed or abandoned constructions. 

The sparkle of that emerald gem of hope lies in this now-famous image of the executive offices of the Henry Ford executive offices at the Model T headquarters in Detroit.

I first saw this image by American artist Andrew Moore in a New York Times Magazine photo essay following the economic collapse of Detroit’s all-consuming auto industry. Where once business titans swaggered now was a thick carpet of moss.

The entire industrial complex may have caved in but as long as the moss still grows, well, I guess we have a chance. (Detroit is now shrinking, with derelict houses returning to forest.)

I was reminded of that image again this week when big-league newspapers such as the Independent and the UK Mirror picked up on the social-trending images of an abandoned fishing village being reclaimed by nature, by Shanghai photographer Jane Qing.

I could find nothing in those Google pages of links that would explain what happened to the inhabitants of this island community, part of a large archipelago at the mouth of the Yangtze river. The particular circumstances are shrouded in vines, absorbed back into the lush island hillside, but local economic collapse is likely the culprit.

It is the moss, the vines in these images that reveal human folly and frailty.

They are the green shoots of hope that cool the creeping drought — and doubt.