Within the next 30 years, climate change is projected to displace roughly 143 million people. Photographer B.A. Van Sise’s third exhibition at the Kansas City Public Library, Warming | Warning is what he calls a visual conversation about human-made climate change and the inequality and other threats to life it will create for generations to come.

His photographs capture what’s left in the wake of the destruction: cracked earth and withered vegetation on acres once covered by bodies of water; desolate parking lots that only hint at human use; and bridges that no longer span rushing creeks.

The exhibition points to warning signs, both metaphorical and literal, all along the way, as well as the nonchalant response most people have to the greatest human crisis of this or any lifetime.

Van Sise is the author of three books: Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry; Invited to Life: After the Holocaust; and On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues.

He’s shown his work at venues nationwide, including the Rockefeller Arts Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and several of his portraits of American poets are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

This touring exhibition originates at the Kansas City Public Library with future dates and locations to be announced later.