Climate Catastrophe - A Writer’s Place in the Sun
September 14th, 2009
My friend discoursed at great length on climate change as we walked along. He told me the gritty details about sustainable energy, the facts on solar radiation, the theory of Gaia and how we are doomed to be trampled by the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I asked if there was a sandpit nearby as I had an overwhelming need to stick my head somewhere. There being nothing available I let him ramble on about the termination of our species while I secretly re examined my character’s motivation for giving up on love so easily.
Yes, I am trivial. I stand before you exposed. But let me say, before you shave my head and march me down the Street of Shame in a tofu fibre sack dress, I do my bit. I recycle copious amounts of cardboard, I flush only when absolutely necessary (this is a reference only Australians will get), I have energy saving lightbulbs, I feel helpless and hopeless regularly and I don’t use plastic bags anymore.
Not good enough?
Well, there’s more. Climate change is taking us to hell in a handcart of our own making – so I’m told. And what is there to do in hell apart from be hot? Read, of course. And if you need books you need writers - writers of escapist amusing tales.
While we shelter under our solar reflective shields we’ll want something to laugh at, apart from each other, so why not a funny book? Yes, I predict sales of books will skyrocket right through the ozone layer. The bits of it that are left, that is. And note that I say books, not stories.
I say books because my friend tells me that in the next ten years over half the world’s power will be used to drive the Internet. And this, as we all know in our brave new world of sustainability, is not sustainable. We won’t be downloading at will or Kindling whatever we’ve browsed for. We’ll be huddled around our solar powered air con reading fifth hand copies of books that are handed around in exchange for the last pots of bio dynamic yoghurt.
And some of those books will be romantic comedy. Now the comedy bit we all get. Nothing like a bleak end-of-world scenario to bring out the gallows humour. After 911 it was noted that sales of sweets and chocolate skyrocketed, people stayed home in bed and shagged more, and also drank more. Sort of like that scene from the film Downfall where, as the Russian army advances on Berlin and Hitler has done away with himself, the German officers run around with women in French knickers drinking and carousing. I know I’d be in bed swigging from a bottle of crème de menthe, surrounded by chocolate wrappers and worn out from some final fling of the senses.
And the ‘romantic’ bit? Right up to the last pre annihilation moment there will still be couples. And where there are couples, there are issues – ranging from wild jealousy to who should put the garbage out. The last loved up pair may be dressed in solar reflecting, urine recycling, substitute polymer hemp, pollution resistant, full body suits but they will still be psychically intertwined, full of lust, bewildered by their mate’s way of seeing things, pissed off at some housework issue, full of tenderness, guilt, denial, boredom, passion and ambivalence.
We all experience it, and some of us like to read about it, or even write about it - because we can’t all go around on our daily business thinking about how many nuclear power plants we must build to power our net addiction.
I rest my case.
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Categories: on reading | Tags: desire, publishing, reading, writing
2 Comments
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You’ve given me hope — that books might be like the roaches and survive whatever catastrophe befalls us!
2 seconds ago · Delete
Dude, i haven’t had that much fun in a while.
i heard y’alls toilet water goes the other direction. Could this mean that the earth is not the center of the universes?
your lines, “…walk down the street of shame in a tofu fibre sack dress.” and the next to the last paragraph were dazzling and great writing, even if i sometimes schnoz in towards the safe end of Pascal’s Enviromental Wager?