The vision
“Are you sure you don’t just, you know, want remove it?” asked the artist assertively.
I considered this before making my appointment at the open-air studio. It is, after all, a relic from a bleak time. But history was not meant to be erased.
“Yes, let’s stick to the plan.”
I’m nervous I’ll stimulate too much once the algae-ink-coated needle pierces my forearm, now loved and wrinkled. But the process ends up being a lot less painful than I remember.
After a few pokes, the tattoo of my youth, The climate has changedhas a new ending: And us too.
— a drabble by Emma Loewe
The spotlight
About half of LA tattoo artist Sonny Robinson Bailey’s clientele come to him for climate-themed tats: a motley crew of surfers, scuba divers, scientists and environmentalists no doubt drawn by his Instagram bio: “tattoos for the relevant climate.”
Originally from the UK, Robinson Bailey started focusing on climate tattoos after moving to the US and feeling overwhelmed by all the mess he was seeing. Some of his designs are quite dramatic (think: a cartoon sun with red-hot lasers emanating from its eyes; “MIND LESSONS CONSUMED” written in commanding letters), while others are more subtle nods to planetary thresholds and tipping points.
“I did a flash tattoo day a few years ago where I wrote a few paragraphs of climate facts and figures, put all the numbers in boxes and tattooed them on people,” he told me during said a video call. Five people showed up to get inked with numbers like .9 (projected sea level rise by the end of the 21st century, in meters) and 1.5° (the warming threshold set out in the Paris Agreement, in Celsius).
He also added a new tattoo to his personal collection that day, he said, maneuvering the camera to show me the 2.12° above his left elbow—the approximate amount global temps have risen since the Industrial Revolution. in Fahrenheit.
Sonny Robinson Bailey’s “2.12” tattoo. Courtesy of Sonny Robinson Bailey
Although this figure will eventually become obsolete, Robinson Bailey doesn’t mind. “I like to look at my tattoos as a journal,” he said. “[They] will always be a sign of the times.” And, he said, watching it helps him sit in the discomfort of global warming. While many climate disasters feel distant when he reads about them in the news, tattoos bring things back to reality.
Robinson Bailey’s clients all have their own reasons for getting climate-themed tattoos. He remembers a researcher who asked for a coral tattoo to celebrate their work to make reefs more resistant to heat waves, and a New Yorker who got the .9 sea level rise tattoo in solidarity with their endangered coastal city. Robinson Bailey said talking to people about their connections to the climate is “the best part” of his job.
I took a page from his book and talked to several people who have climate-themed tattoos about why they got them and what they represent. For some, they are reminders of what to fight for; for others, an ever-present reminder of what has already been lost. Almost all of them said they plan to get more. Here are their tattoos and the stories behind them.
Most of visual artist Justin Brice Guariglia‘s photography, sculpture and installation work explore human relationships with the natural world, built on a foundation of climate science. So when he felt the itch to get broke in 2016, it was only natural to turn to the latest NASA data for source material.
Brice Guariglia sat in a beanbag chair in his downtown New York studio and pulled up his sleeve to reveal a NASA surface temperature analysis chart that ran up his right arm.
Justin Brice Guariglia’s Surface Temperature Analysis Tattoo. Studio Justin Brice Guariglia
The tattoo, which shows the planet’s surface temperature from 1880 to 2016, is accurate and to scale. Brice Guariglia even emailed the scientist behind the work, James Hansen, to fact-check before making it permanent. “If you’re making art about climate or the environment, it’s so important to know the science,” he said. “Otherwise it’s just decoration.”
Although his tattoo is essentially global warming immortal, Brice Guariglia isn’t fazed when he looks at it — or when he explains it to others who inevitably mistake it for a mountain range or an electrocardiogram reading. “It doesn’t feel negative to me. If it felt negative, I wouldn’t have gotten it.” Instead, he said, it reminds him of his mission to keep working for a better future. “Climate change is the moral imperative of our time.”
Sanjana Paul is currently a graduate student at MIT focused on conflict negotiation in the energy transition, but she has worn many hats throughout her career in climate. Trained as an electrical engineer, Paul (which appeared on the Grist 50 list in 2023) collected atmospheric science data with NASA, hosted environmental hackathons, and pushed climate policy as a community organizer.
The tattoo on her right ankle — the “ground” symbol, which looks like an upside-down T with two lines underneath — is for her a symbol of what has been constant through these diverse experiences.
“In circuit diagrams, the ground symbol is where the electrical potential of the circuit is zero, so that’s your starting point,” she explained. She got the tat after graduating from engineering school as a way to mark the beginning of her new career. Now it pushes her to stay “grounded” — that is, motivated by her deep love for the planet — as she engages in different forms of climate work. And, she added, “Seriously, it was just funny.”
Sanjana Paul’s Earth Symbol and Green New Deal Tattoos. Courtesy of Sanjana Paul
As for the “GND” letters above, Paul added those after her community successfully advocated for a Green New Deal in Cambridge, Massachusetts — a package of environmental policies that passed the legislature in 2023.
“It took us two years of concerted effort,” Paul said. “[The tattoo] was kind of a commemorative thing to say, ‘We did it.’” She has another screenshot of the photo of it that she sent to her group chat when the legislation passed.
Paul, who also has a likeness of the NASA satellite Calipso on her arm, is currently dreaming up her next climate tattoo: an ode to the North Atlantic in honor of an offshore wind project she is involved with. The tattoos in her growing collection are reminders of the unexpected places her work has taken her, and she also sees them as gateways into climate conversations with all kinds of new people asking about what the designs mean.
France-based photographer Mary-Lou Mauricio started something of a movement two years ago when she began taking photos for a campaign she called “Born in… PPM.” In the run-up to COP27, the UN climate summit in 2022, she used temporary make-up to “tattoo” subjects with the measurement of the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere the year they were born – a way to capture how much our over-reliance on fossil fuels has changed the Earth’s chemistry – and photographed portraits of them.
The campaign caught on, and to date she has collected more than 4,000 images of people around the world marking their personal ppm on their hands, faces and stomachs. The portraits provide a way to visualize rapidly rising global greenhouse gas emissions, especially when juxtaposing older subjects with younger ones.
She knows of at least two people who have had their numbers permanently colored – and she has too.
Mary-Lou Mauricio’s ppm tattoo. “Born in … PPM” / Mary-Lou Mauricio
For Mauricio, the 340 ppm tattoo on her right shoulder represents the marks that climate change has already left on her and her family. “My parents live in the south of Portugal, where droughts are getting worse,” she said. “In 2022, a fire destroyed my parents’ region. … Sometimes they call me when it’s raining, because it’s getting so rare.”
She told me that this ppm tattoo probably won’t be her last: “I’d like to add the ppm of my children’s births, because they’re what I’m rooting for.”
— Emma Loewe
More exposure
A parting shot
A collage of flash tattoo designs by Sonny Robinson Bailey, with climate, sustainability and conservation messages.
