Global warming is happening. The scientists say it, the mayor says it, and even the president is talking the talk. Now, one Brooklyn artist is walking the walk.
For almost a year, Eve Mosher has been a one-woman campaign for awareness, drawing a chalk line on Brooklyn streets to show where the rising waterline will be in 100 years if human beings keep warming the air.
Using the same device used to mark baseball fields — except filled with an eco-friendly pigment — Mosher lays her line over and around curbs and anything else in her path.
The project is called “High Water Line.”
“Climate change is a silent, invisible threat,” said Mosher. “This project gives voice and makes visible the affects it will have.”
Along the way, Mosher hopes to increase awareness by showing residents exactly how rising temperatures and waterlines will affect them — and, perhaps, their soon-to-be-underwater properties.
“They know of global warming, but they don’t realize parts of Coney Island, Canarsie and Red Hook will be gone,” said Mosher.
That much was clear during a recent chalking session in Mill Basin (which, frankly, is almost below sea level already).
“I had no idea my neighborhood could be under water one day,” said Dean Blafford, whose front door was on Mosher’s line. “I bought this house because I thought it was a good, safe place to live.”
A man behind the wheel of a red SUV drove over and asked, “What, do you work for Al Gore?” But Mosher, unfazed, explained the project and the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet and melting the polar ice caps that keep New York above ground.
Mosher was undeterred by his skepticism.
“That’s part of the point of the project,” Mosher said. “I love when people come over and say, ‘What are you doing?’ Interaction is part of the art.”
Eve Mosher will be drawing the Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO portion of her chalk line during the weekend of Sept. 28. Check her Web site at www.highwaterline.org.
