Imagine That (Art and Global Warming)

From Grist Magazine via Alternet:

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21851/

Imagine That
By Bill McKibben, Grist Magazine
Posted on April 25, 2005, Printed on April 25, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21851/

Here's the paradox: if the scientists are right, we're living through the biggest thing that's happened since human civilization emerged. One species, ours, has by itself in the course of a couple of generations managed to powerfully raise the temperature of an entire planet, to knock its most basic systems out of kilter. But oddly, though we know about it, we don't know about it. It hasn't registered in our gut; it isn't part of our culture. Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas? Compare it to, say, the horror of AIDS in the last two decades, which has produced a staggering outpouring of art that, in turn, has had real political effect. I mean, when people someday look back on our moment, the single most significant item will doubtless be the sudden spiking temperature. But they'll have a hell of a time figuring out what it meant to us.

Why is that? Well, some of the reasons are obvious. It's way too big, for one. When something is happening everywhere all at once, it threatens constantly to become backdrop, context, instead of event. And in this case, since the context is the natural world that more and more of us have forgotten how to read, the changes seem small. At my latitude, spring comes a week earlier than it did in 1970. The ice on the lake melts, and the snow in the fields; and the fields commence to drying out, which has real implications later in the season. That's an almost inconceivably huge change in a basic physical system over a short stretch of time -- but not quite big enough to be noticeable, unless you're paying attention with, say, the vigilance of a farmer. In a society that has more prison inmates than farmers, that's unlikely.

Conversely, when global warming does attempt to show its teeth, the immediate event is usually overdramatic, so vast that the event itself grabs all the attention, leaving none behind for the motive cause. Four hurricanes sweep across Florida in a summer, which is just the kind of result computer modeling says is becoming more likely. But who has time for computer modeling and carbon when there is Storm Surge and Blown-Over Mobile Home and Waiting in Line for Ice, all of which are a lot easier to take pictures of?

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The two large-scale attempts to achieve mythic status for climate change thus far -- the movie The Day After Tomorrow and Michael Crichton's State of Fear -- prove most of these rules. To dramatize the first story, the producers postulated a series of physically bizarre and silly events: global warming somehow leads to a kind of flash-freezing, with supercyclonic storms ripping chilled air from the stratosphere and forcing it down on midtown Manhattan. Oh, and watch out for the wolf escaped from the zoo. Crichton, meanwhile, postulates enviro-spawned tsunamis and cannibal kings in order to prove the whole thing a fable.

In the face of all this, how to proceed? ...

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