The Fruits of Industrialization

Several years ago, the trees in my backyard mysteriously began to die. Currently, the leaves on our orange tree are now turning yellow, and the branches are turning white.

These systematic events made me wonder if something in the ground was killing our trees. After some thought, I remembered the chemical leakage from a tank on the PG&E telephone pole that saturated our soil a couple years ago. At the time, PG&E quickly fixed the leakage but never warned us about any detrimental affects the chemicals may cause. After watching multiple trees die in my backyard, I’m now afraid to eat the oranges from my tree because the chemicals seem extremely toxic.

The oranges reaching out of the frame appear to be healthy, round and bright. With further observation, however, one will notice the connection the branches have to the transformer of a telephone pole, which holds mineral oil and other electrical components. These oranges represent how inevitably we become the victims of our own advancements and industrialization, facing the new problems we created for ourselves.