10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17052
application/pdf
2038-3460
17052
2
en
Amy Balkin
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Public Smog (Cover’s Comment)
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
3
Editorial
2013-01-06
2023-05-28
2013-01-06
2023-07-14
TS
Amy Balkin
2012
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17052
2038-3460
2
en
Public Smog (Cover’s Comment)
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17052/15940
3
                                     copertina / cover

Public Smog (2004-ongoing), by Amy Balkin et al.

Public Smog is a "clean-air" park in the atmosphere that fluctuates in location and scale. The park is
constructed through financial, legal, or political activities that open it for public use. Activities to open
Public Smog have included the purchase and retiring emissions offsets (NOX and CO2) in regulated
emissions schemes in the US and European Union, making them inaccessible to polluting industries.

This activity resulted in the opening of parks above Southern California (June 2004), the European
Union (2006-7), and the United States (2010). When Public Smog is built through this process, it
exists in the unfixed public airspace above the region where offsets are purchased and withheld from
use. The park’s size varies, reflecting the amount of emissions allowances purchased and the length of
the contract. Other activities to create Public Smog impact the size, location, and duration of the park.

The work is currently focused on building a larger, permanent atmospheric preserve through an effort
to inscribe Earth's Atmosphere on the UNESCO World Heritage List, begun in 2006, but developed
more fully in collaboration with Documenta (13) since 2010. This undertaking has involved an
invitation first presented to Germany, then to all UNESCO States Parties, to act as lead State Party in
initiating an extraordinary nomination process for inscription of Earth's atmosphere. With the
exception of the Kingdom of Tonga, no reply of interest was received, so a petition was launched from
within the exhibition, requesting the audience to further petition their respective governments via
signed postcard. Over 100,000 audience-participants supported this call while the exhibition was open.
However, the outcome of this activity is uncertain.

Other activities to articulate Public Smog have included a climate-futuring breakfast (2006), and a
series of thirty billboards presented across Douala, Cameroon in 2009, prefiguring the benefits,
complications, and implications of enacting Public Smog over Africa. The cover image, by curator
Benoît Mangin, documents this iteration of the work.

In addition to activities that open Public Smog, the work attempts to examine and enact a response to
the increasing impacts on the climate system from anthropogenic activities. It is also concerned with
the politics of participation, particularly around claims of markets and states to act on behalf of local
and global publics to mitigate the impacts of climate change. To this end, the project has involved a
growing group of interdisciplinary participants and advisors, including climate scientist Dr. Alexandra
Thompson. A full credit list is online at publicsmog.org.

                                                                                   Amy Balkin

(photograph by Benoît Mangin)
