to start - it's boring

Coincidentally, a couple days after starting this blog - and trying to start to formulate what I think and what I want to figure out - I saw this article in The Guardian, about how climate change - like looming economic disaster - is important, but not interesting. Partly because it's about systems, which are difficult to hang narrative hooks on. We are better at connecting to a satisfying narrative.

It reminded me of learning about Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' and its impact on the beginning of the contemporary American environmental movement. I haven't read it (I should add it to my to-read list), but from what I hear it's pretty direct non-fiction. What made it compelling? How did it become a hook?

It also reminded me of a childhood reading sci-fi novels about nuclear apocalypse - imaginings of what it could mean to be a person in the midst of a large-scale, out-of-control, regular-people-can't-cause-or-prevent-it set of events.* Less because of any practical impact the books themselves had, but because it meant that it was part of a collective culture.** It was something I and my friends imagined. Do the nerdy kids these days imaging growing up into a world of changing and extreme weather and landscape, disrupted resources, uncertain future?

What are the environmental novels that give us that narrative hook to imagine how things might be, how we might respond, how things might be different? I have Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Forty Signs of Rain' sitting in my to-read pile, but can't think of any others off-hand. Another thing on the to-do/to-read list.

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I'm not just interested in motivations – I'd like to get a sense of what sorts of actions I believe would actually be effective (and ultimately connect up motivation and action). It's just that the motivations are easier for me to start thinking about. Closer to my areas of expertise, easier to dig into.

Frustratingly - and part of the whole problem, really - it's hard to get a reasonable start on the facts and the science. I'm still in the casting-about stage, but I haven't found a solid middle ground between full-on research papers and patronizing advice to use more efficient light bulbs and drive less often. The plan for this week, I think, is to make some headway in that area, find some sources that seem trustworthy and accessible to a scientifically literate lay person.



*And how does this connect to the zombie stories so popular these days? They capture the same sense of out-of-control, but in a clearly fantastic context. Actually, I get that completely - safe fear is a great thing to explore. So maybe the question is rather, when and why do we write fantastic imaginings about possible/plausible disasters, where the fictional fear overlaps with the real?

** America and England of the fifties through eighties, based on the books I read. When I got a bit older, I also encountered some Japanese fiction about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, offering some perspective outside of my limited one.