The Deadly Drip

This awareness poster is effective in showing the threats of global warming. This poster focuses on one major risk, which is the rising sea level as the ice caps continue to melt. The poster presents a clear hourglass containing two different images. The use of an hourglass in this case effectively indicates that time is running out to fix the growing scare of global warming. The top bulb of the hourglass contains an image of cracking, melting ice caps floating apart with a polar bear and a penguin on two different ice caps. The poster depicts only one polar bear and one penguin to emphasize that global warming is causing the population of these two animals, and other animals living in arctic habitats, to decrease.  The slow drip of the bright blue water into the bottom bulb of the hourglass indicates the false impression of many people that time is not of the essence and global warming is not an imposing threat.

Unlike the top bulb of the hourglass, the bottom bulb is filled with a sphere-shaped image of a bustling city surrounded by bright green fields. The sphere-shape reminds the viewer of the earth and the city reminds he or she of a bustling city like New York or Chicago. However, the city image is being engulfed by water as the slow drip of the bright blue water from the top bulb of the hourglass begins to fill the bottom. The water creeping along the sides of the sphere-shaped city image show that the rising level due to global warming is occurring more quickly than thought. The water already fills a quarter of the bottom half of the hourglass and continues to rise. The lowercase words, “we are running out of time act now before it’s too late”, are placed above the images to emphasize the importance of acting quickly. In conclusion, the poster effectively emphasizes the importance of working to stop global warming before time runs out, or before the hourglass runs out.