Environmental Visualization in the Anthropocene: Technologies, Aesthetics, Ethics

In 1996 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) semideclassified a series of satellite images taken, primarily, of the earth’s Northern Hemisphere during the second half of the Cold War. These planetary images were the result of programmatic US investments in technology development intended to secure the nation’s political and economic interests around the world. Aimed at documenting covert Soviet military maneuvers, the program involved not only extensive photographing of territory but also prototyping of new image- making technologies. The satellite images were semi- declassified in that they were made available only to a select group of “patriotic” environmental scientists working on the then nascent issue of climate change. In what appears to be an unlikely turnabout, the partial declassification of these images — specifically those that showed contractions in the polar ice sheets — provided scientists with a form of environmental visualization that proved vital to generating empirical evidence for and building scientific consensus about global climate change. The declassification project was called Measurements of Earth Data for Envi ronmental Analysis, or MEDEA. Its post – Cold War historical context indicates that the evocative acronym was not chosen lightly. After the fall of the Soviet