NPR

Artist Sets Futuristic Dinner Party In World Reshaped By Rising Seas

How will our diets shift as climate change causes sea-level rise and coastal flooding? Photographer Allie Wist attempts to answer that with pictures of an imagined "post-sea-level-rise dinner party."
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."

What will our dinners look like when temperatures and sea levels rise and water floods our coastal towns and cities?

Allie Wist, 27, 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 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.

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