After June 2, 2017, and Untitled, photo collages, leaves, acrylic, and resin on wood panels, by Fred Tomaselli © The artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York City

Hydrocarbon fuels can now be produced with sunlight and air, making them carbon-neutral; the hole in the ozone layer was shrinking; and the first successful climate model of the early Eocene showed that temperatures are increasingly sensitive to additional CO2 as its atmospheric concentration rises. The cooling effect of fragrant terpene aerosols from coniferous boreal forests was decreasing, and aeolian accumulations of dust on the Loess Plateau indicated that human…