The visual and literacies

How do we interpret world overpopulation?  One way to consider learning about the earth and about overpopulation and the demands we place on our planet is through powerful images.  How do these pictures write across the curriculum?
Click here for an article on The Guardian about overpopulation and overconsumption in pictures.  What do images provoke that merely talking about these problems in the abstract doesn't?

Trash waveIndonesian surfer Dede Surinaya catches a wave in a remote but garbage-covered bay on Java, Indonesia, the world’s most populated island

‘Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.’Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Photograph: Zak Noyle

Waves of humanitySprawling Mexico City rolls across the landscape, displacing every scrap of natural habitat

‘If our species had started with just two people at the time of the earliest agricultural practices some 10,000 years ago, and increased by one percent per year, today humanity would be a solid ball of flesh many thousand light years in diameter, and expanding with a radial velocity that, neglecting relativity, would be many times faster than the speed of light.’Gabor Zovanyi

Photograph: Pablo Lopez Luz

The return of the ancient mariner?

Dead birdOn Midway Atoll, far from the centres of world commerce, an albatross, dead from ingesting too much plastic, decays on the beach – it is a common sight on the remote island

‘Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals – the same fate awaits them both; as one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath.’ Ecclesiastes 3:19

Photograph: Chris Jordan

British Columbia clear-cutSometimes called the Brazil of the North, Canada has not been kind to its native forests as seen by clear-cut logging on Vancouver Island

‘Human domination over nature is quite simply an illusion, a passing dream by a naive species. It is an illusion that has cost us much, ensnared us in our own designs, given us a few boasts to make about our courage and genius, but all the same it is an illusion.’ Donald Worster

Photograph: Garth Lentz