Is it going to be a message of doom and gloom, and outburst of anger, or even sadness? Could it even be a warning alongside an expression of hope? There is still a little time left… and time will tell.Coldplay’s Chris Martin sang Pearl Jam’s “Nothingman” with Eddie Vedder at the Global Citizen Festival in 2016. But Pearl Jam clearly have something to say, as they have in the past, and that leaves speculation that Gigaton could be a concept album containing a message about climate change. Of course, the band may never fully explain the details, and they may mean less (or more) than the current speculation. Is Pearl Jam’s bird perhaps an expression of hope – that something will survive the oncoming disaster… even if it’s not us?
Since the story of Noah’s Ark in the Bible, the concept of the bird representing a new future has been well used. Looking closely at one part of the ice photo, a single bird can be seen flying away from one of the waterfalls. (Interestingly, the “flame” was used on the interactive map from the Gigaton release tease splits in half on rollover, which could also carry some meaning.) The suggestion that global warming could eventually lead to a new ice age has been debunked, but it’s still an artistic concept – the likely consequence of the worst onset of climate chaos would be the end of humanity, the fire going out, the cold dead heart. The concept of one of those shapes being a sort of ice flame might merge the concepts of ice and heat into one idea. Perhaps a heart, perhaps a broken heart, perhaps even peace. The artwork also includes three white shapes which could represent a number of ideas. Based on estimates of how much permanent damage has been done, a “safe release” limit suggested we could get away with the continued emissions for 13 more years – but that was in 2012. It’s estimated that we release 32 gigatons of CO2 into the skies every year, and that we’ve released around 1,500 gigatons since 1850. Separate from the melting ice, there’s also another aspect of global warming that’s usually expressed in gigatons, and that’s the human output of carbon dioxide, which is the main contributor to the warming of the atmosphere and therefore the destruction of the ice. Maybe there's a comparison between how the tick-tock effect of climate change is continuing as our hearts beat and as we fail to do enough about the issue –– which regular event will end first, the beating of human hearts or the melting of another gigaton of ice? Maybe the blood-red color and the regularity of the pattern suggests a comparison between the regularity of a heartbeat and the regularity of another gigaton of water leaving the polar regions. Maybe there's a comparison being made between the effects of earthquakes and the effects of rising sea levels on our environment. (By comparison, the largest-ever nuclear weapon created “just” 32 megatons of energy.) Ice is also capable of causing earthquakes of a different kind, known as a cryoseism, and usually less powerful than tectonic movement. For example, the famous 1906 quake in San Francisco released around one gigaton of energy, while the Indian Ocean quake of 2004 released 32 gigatons. It could represent a reading from a heartbeat monitor, but it could also represent the output from a seismic monitor earthquakes are also measured in gigatons.
While the melting ice caps are a strong visual element, there’s also the new Pearl Jam logo in blood red.
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