Diamonds in the Sky is an artwork created for Cloud Crash, an art exhibit headlining the 2016 Manchester Science Festival. The work makes visible the invisible pollution that is leading the world into an uncertain future; the CO2, the nitrogen dioxide, the ozone swirls in the air around us, and in Diamonds in the Sky, around the Beetham Tower, a skyscraper in Manchester, UK. Fed by data from air quality maps, each pixel in the swirling image represents a part per million of a pollutant contributing to climate change.

This week’s election adds considerable uncertainty to the future of everyone on this planet; even just four years of increased emissions by the United States will significantly impact the carbon budget we have left and the future generations who will be dealing with the fallout of this man-made catastrophe.

On January 20, 2017, the United States will be the last government on the planet still denying the climate change crisis.

Who could have imagined that this country, a country which considers itself to be so exceptional, a country which likes to think of itself as the leader of the free world, would turn out to be the country that leads the world into the next dark age?