Climate Change Barbie

Climate Change Barbie Hits the Road

Introducing the newest false product from Stuff You Can't Have: Climate Change Barbie. She joins the ranks of the predicted 25 million to one billion refugees who will be forced to flee their homes over the next 40 years due to drought, floods, famine, and other climate-related threats.

Because water is scarce and temperatures are rising, Barbie has chopped off her locks and seldom shampoos or bothers to comb it. She sports the "black mask" many eco-migrants have painted on around their eyes to reduce glare from the sun.

Click to enlarge

During hot weather Barbie wraps a versatile single piece of cloth around her waist and then between her legs to form cropped, baggy pants. 

Click to enlarge

All eco-migrants who consider themselves Sixth Extinction adherents carry pouches of heritage seeds. Ever since the Global Seed Vault located in the arctic circle in Norway flooded due to global warming at the end of 2016 as the permafrost began to melt, Barbie and others realized a fail-safe back-up method was needed. That method was to give individual migrants small doomsday pouches of precious heritage seeds so that when and if climate change can be slowed or reversed, humans will have a shot at growing a wide variety of crops again.

Doomsday seed pouch

Pack with retractable solar panels

Barbie's backpack has retractable solar panels that are hooked up to a rechargeable battery inside the pack.

More about the pack and its contents below.

Close-up: Pack with retractable solar panels, side pockets for water bottles

Pack straps

Pack solar panels deployed

Inside the pack there is an assortment of supplies.

Click to enlarge

Tools

Solar oven closed for storage

Setting up the solar oven

Solar oven fully assembled

Climate change isn't only about heat, drought, and deserts — there are also superstorms, floods, and periods of unseasonably cold weather. As a seasoned eco-migrant, Barbie is ready for whatever happens next. Or at least she hopes she is.

And finally, Barbie needs a place to rest her head on her long trek to nowhere (most countries have closed their borders by the year 2025, refusing to accept any eco-migrants). Her poncho converts into a tent.

Note that development of every item and accessory in Barbie's wardrobe and equipment is based on the anticipated needs of human eco-migrants as predicted in a range of scientific reports and academic papers. And that failure of the Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic Circle? It really happened: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts.

Search terms: Climate change Barbie, eco-migrant Barbie, global warming Barbie.

Eco Barbie - Experiments in Fused Plastic

The stimulus: a garbage can by Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, overflowing with plastic bags.

Note, as we come in for a close-up, an illuminated message glowing on a discarded coffee cup inside the bin, created by: a) letters cut out of the metal container; b) sunlight; and c) the fact that someone put a paper cup in the can section of the bin, creating a perfect screen for the illuminated letters.

Whatever mishaps contributed to this transmission, it is clearly a message from on-high. In fact, it is so very cool that we move in for an even closer shot.

Message received, we move into action, collecting assorted colorful plastic bags and ironing them together to create 8-ply sheets of fused plastic, suitable for sewing into just about anything (if you can put up with the stiff texture and multiple needle pricks). There are many good instructions for how to fuse plastic bags on the Web. Try this one from Etsy on YouTube.

Now we have any number of beautiful sheets of fused plastic material at our disposal. What to make, what to make?

The decision was easy—a recycled, fused plastic raincoat, hat, and boots for Barbie, who is herself entirely made of plastic and will be here long after we are gone, maybe even longer than the Venus of Willendorf. There is no better spokesperson for the uber-plastic world we have created.

Eco Barbie, decked out in fused plastic rain gear amidst a plastic landscape.

Eco Barbie tries to run from the problem but she can't run away from herself.

Eco Barbie realizes that before she can solve the problem, she must come to terms with the fact that, being plastic herself, she is the problem.

Note that all art pieces I have ever made using a Barbie doll (such as the Wonder Barbies) always recycle the same Barbie doll. Because there is no good way to throw her away, I will keep her until I am dead and will then will her to my oldest grandniece and so on through the generations until the end of time.

Barbie Hits the Road

 

A necklace made from severed Barbie parts, little silver spirit boxes from Thailand (originally made to hold religious charms or relics), paper images, assorted chains, and genuine rubble from the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. 

From left, clockwise: Barbie on the beach; Barbie hits the road (that's a Barbie foot, severed at the ankle with the raw cut painted gold, viewed from above); and Barbie in the '89 quake, stepping over genuine earthquake rubble.

Wonder Bread Barbies

Country Barbie

Sophisticated Shopping Barbie

Prom Barbie

Jersey Shore Barbie

Miss Wonder Bread Barbie

If you like Barbies, check out a more recent piece, "Eco Barbie."