Science fiction writers create stories that take place in the future and include inventive settings and imaginative elements such as new universes and societies, time travel and extraterrestrial beings. American writer Robert Heinlein (1907 – 1988), often considered the “dean of science fiction writers” and author of classics, Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers, referred to the genre as “realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.” Effective science fiction challenges us to examine the physical, moral and political consequences of new technologies and scientific inventions as well as aspects of governance, society and human behavior. As global warming and climate change have become an increasingly important part of our collective consciousness, a number of science fiction writers have imagined how future worlds will function without adequate sources of water, the fundamental requirement for life.

Frank Herbert: Dune

Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) is the classic story of a society where water is almost non-existent.Often considered to be one of the best science fiction novels of all time, Dune is seton an inhospitable desert planet called Arrakis. The planet is populated by the Fremen, a species of human-like people who, in adapting to their arid environment, have developed behaviors that revolve around the conservation of water. Access to water is so critical to their existence that they consider the acts of spitting and shedding tears to be signs of extreme reverence to the receiver, since those who respond in this way are willingly releasing what is desperately needed to live. The Freman have even designed clothing that captures and recycles perspiration, and they regularly make what we would consider to be cruel life-and-death decision based on the needs of their whole community: they do not waste their limited supply of water on the wounded or fatally ill.

Rereading Dune recently while severe drought conditions were occurring over large areas of the Earth was an eerie experience and has reinforced my admiration for Frank Herbert who, as early as 1965, anticipated the aridification happening today.

Emmi Itäranta: Memory of Water

In her 2014 novel Memory of Water, contemporary Finnish author Emmi Itäranta has set her story of a near-waterless future society in a military state called New Quan, located in the far north of the Scandinavian Union. Residents of New Quan receive monthly water quotas, which are strictly enforced by water guards who execute those caught building illegal water pipes. Water is so valuable in Itäranta’s world that it is used as currency for food and other daily necessities.

Noria Kaitio, the book’s main character, is a young tea master. A “guardian of water and its servant,” she is responsible for maintaining a secret spring that has served the tea masters in her family for generations. Noria has found a series of discs from “the past world,” which tell the real, hidden story of what happened to the earth. They tell of “ruin and devastation, of oceans reaching towards the centres of the continents, swallowing land and fresh water. Millions fleeing their homes, wars fought over fuel resources revealed under the melting ice until the veins of the earth ran dry. People wounding their world until they lost it.”

In addition to water, a central theme running throughout the story is the moral dilemma many of the characters must face when they are given the option to betray their friends and neighbors in exchange for water rewards. The characters who make the choice to become informers of water violators must witness the dire consequences and live with their decisions for the rest of their lives.

I was very moved by the poignant passages in the novel that describe the yearnings of a people for a time when water flowed freely and snow and ice existed in their land. Noria described how:

I once did an experiment. I filled a bucket with water and emptied all the ice I found in the freezer into it, sneaked it into my room and locked the door. I pushed my hand into the icy wrap of water, closed my eyes and summoned the feel of past-world winters about which I had read so many stories. I called for white sheets of snow falling from the sky and covering the paths my feet knew, covering the house that held the memory of cold in its walls and foundations. I imagined the snowfall coating the fells, changing the craggy surfaces into landscapes as soft as sleep and as ready to drown you.

In another passage, Noria relates how tea masters have always told a story passed on from previous generations that described how water has “a consciousness, that it carries in its memory everything that has happened in this world from the time before humans until this moment.” Other artists in other disciplines who are working with the topic of water have considered this concept, including spoken word artist, Roni Horn, whom I’ve highlighted in a previous post. Horn imagined how the Thames River contains â€œnot just the rats and sewage but the viruses and bacteria like hepatitis, dysentery, E. coli, biles and even a remnant of the plague.”

Memory of Water, Emmi Itäranta’s powerful science fiction novel, ultimately refers to both water’s memory of everything that has already occurred and the memory of what the world was like when fresh water flowed freely and abundantly.

Paolo Bacigalupi: The Water Knife

Another speculative, contemporary version of a future society without enough water, American author Paolo Bacigalupi’s 2015 science-fiction thriller The Water Knife, is set in the American Southwest of the near future. States experiencing life-threatening drought are fighting over access to the limited waters of the Colorado River. Texas is uninhabitable; Nevada and Arizona are competing for water rights; California is plotting to take all of the water; water refugees are seeking sanctuary, and; Las Vegas stands as the model community where water is constantly recycled.

The Water Knife reads like an updated version of the classic western with gun-slinging bad-guys-for-hire protecting the water rights of corporations. Angel Velasquez is the Water Knife, whose job is to find and keep as much water as he can for Las Vegas through whatever means possible. Angel feels no remorse for the lives he has taken or the work that he has done. In a 2015 Kansas City Star interview, Bacigalupi describes his fascination with how people in dire circumstances make moral choices that they otherwise would not make. As in Itäranta’s Memory of Water, characters in The Water Knifemust decide how far they will go to survive.

Frank Herbert, Emmi Itäranta and Paolo Bacigalupi have written three chilling versions of societies where the once-fertile land has turned to desert, water has become a valuable commodity, corporations and governments use access to water to control populations, wars are fought over water rights, and individuals are forced to betray their friends and family in order to survive. As effective science fiction writers do, they have provided us with a realistic warning of what is at stake. We would be foolish to dismiss their predictions as simply stories that are meant to entertain us when the real world tells us otherwise. In just the first two months of 2019, journalists from the New York Times have reported how India has threatened to “cut back on water flowing through its rivers to arid Pakistan” as a weapon of retaliation for a suicide bomb attack, how “In the face of a prolonged drought, the federal government could step in and reduce water use in the Southwest” and how “around the world, vanishing glaciers will mean less water for people and crops in the future.” Just as visual artists, musicians, playwrights, poets and other creatives have used their art to call attention to the predicted impact of climate change, so do these science fiction writers appeal to our love of stories in order to help us understand what could be the future of water.

For more on Emmi Itäranta, see our previous article by Mary Woodbury.

This article is part of Imagining Water, a series on artists of all genres who are making the topic of water a focus of their work and on the growing number of exhibitions, performances, projects and publications that are popping up in museums, galleries and public spaces around the world with water as a theme.

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Susan Hoffman Fishman is a painter, public artist, writer, and educator whose work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries throughout the U.S. Her latest bodies of work focus on the threat of rising tides, our new plastic seas and the wars that are predicted to occur in the future over access to clean water. She is also the co-creator of two interactive public art projects: The Wave, which addresses our mutual need for and interdependence on water and Home, which calls attention to homelessness and the lack of affordable housing in our cities and towns.

As the International Day of Forests dawns, Persistent Acts reflects on American and human questions in the face of climate change, through two authors grappling with conventional notions of growth, prosperity, and progress. I call on The Mushroom at the End of the Worldfor cues we can take from plants, and discuss inspirations for Madeleine George’s latest play Hurricane Diane.

Earlier this year, I finished Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World. With the tagline “On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins,” this book called to me, and is a beautiful portrayal of “arts of noticing.” Through anthropological study, Tsing highlights the matsutake mushroom, and the biology, economics, and socio-politics which make this mushroom possible. Despite only growing in human-disturbed forests, matsutake is integral to a global commodity chain from Oregon, US to Kyoto, Japan, and beyond. The book zeroes in on this one type of fungus, weaving ethnographies from the places where it’s grown, eaten, and treasured as a gift. Tsing asks provocative questions for this age of the Anthropocene: “What kinds of human disturbances can we live with? Despite talk of sustainability, how much chance do we have for passing a habitable environment to our multispecies descendants?” Her arts of noticing remind me of my human perspective, however limited.

By exploring some very particular mushrooms, Tsing traces alternative ways of being, producing, and consuming in our world. All the while, she maps our current climate situation:

We might look around to notice this strange new world, and we might stretch our imaginations to grasp its contours. This is where mushrooms help. Matsutake’s willingness to emerge in blasted landscapes allows us to explore the ruin that has become our collective home.

Tsing looks at patterns of matsutake growth (the environmental conditions for optimal mushroom growing), harvesting (who are the people picking the mushrooms, and how did they get to where they are), selling (what are the systems that sustain a matsutake economy and how do they function in relation to mainstream commodities), cooking (how do cultures cherish matsutake and bring about optimal flavors), and beyond. Throughout Mushroom, I felt called to slow down, take notice, and dig past my cultural constructs of how the world is supposed to work.

Climate changes everything, as Tsing highlights through mushrooms. She utilizes climate change as an opportunity, an implication to expand our individual and collective imaginations. Earlier this month, I experienced a play with a comparable mission: Hurricane Diane, presented at New York Theatre Workshop and co-produced by WP Theater. Featuring a world where Dionysus – the Greek god of fertility, nature, and theatre – returns to earth, the play employs specificity to pinpoint societal questions about climate change. I had the privilege to chat with playwright Madeleine George about her latest play, which Vulture calls a “Tragicomedy of Eco-Collapse.”

Our conversation began with mushrooms, our cultural revulsion to fungus, and the life-affirming qualities of the species in its role as a necrophage. The origins of Hurricane Diane rest with a different organic matter, apple trees, as described in Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire. For Madeleine, questions arose out of Pollan’s description of Johnny Appleseed as the American Dionysus: “What if Dionysus actually came back today? What would the god’s agenda be? What would a bacchanal in a suburban backyard look like?” In the play, Diane (Dionysus, disguised as a permaculture gardener) returns to the modern world to gather mortal followers and restore the Earth to its natural state – starting with four housewives in suburban New Jersey. The play is set in the specific New Jersey suburb where Hurricane Diane was commissioned. This town was hard-hit by Hurricane Sandy, and Madeleine spent time with residents talking about what has changed for them since the superstorm almost ten years ago.

Rooted in the theatre tradition of Greek tragedy – Madeleine considers the play to be “a sequel to The Bacchae” – she also utilizes the American tradition of sitcom. Though there’s no laugh track accompanying Hurricane Diane, the play is deeply hilarious, and had me laughing from Dionysus’ opening monologue, through the introduction to each of the housewives. While sitcom has particular associations (like being reactionary), Madeleine utilizes this “stealthy American tradition” to drive mainstream thoughts and hook us, as “ideas can move from edges to the center.” I felt a certain level of comfort, because I’d laughed at and with the characters. The end of the play exemplifies a certain notion of comfort, in the context of “how we handle our thoughts and feelings about climate change.” What Hurricane Diane offers is “not a play to tell us what we should do,” but time and space to hold questions like “how are we tolerating what we’re doing wrong.”

Tsing summarizes: “We are stuck with the problem of living despite economic and ecological ruination. Neither tales of progress nor of ruin tell us how to think about collaborative survival.” Hurricane Diane reminds me why I make theatre about climate change, and highlights the potential for theatrical spaces to shift consciousness. Madeleine offers an example of a climate play that tackles nuanced questions without relying on doomsday images. By the end of the play, we see an individual gripping onto her remnant notions of consolation. Her outburst reminded me of how easily our culture forgets the limits of our individualism; what Tsing calls out as the potential dangers of fantasizing “counterfactually that we each survive alone.”

As a species, and as part of a larger ecosystem, we need each other to sustain the conditions for life on earth. Through specific narratives, characters, and geographic location – like with Mushroom and Hurricane Diane â€“ I’ve found some universal questions for our current era, about what kind of world we want (and are able) to live in. I’m taking the optimistic route, because we can’t go it alone, agreeing with Madeleine that “from wherever we’re standing, we can make a difference.”

(Top Image: Becca Blackwell, Danielle Skraastad, Kate Wetherhead, and Michelle Beck in Hurricane Diane, presented by New York Theatre Workshop and WP Theater. Photo by Joan Marcus.

This article is part of the Persistent Acts series which looks at the intersection of performance, climate, and politics. How does hope come to fruition, even in the most dire circumstances? What are tangible alternatives to the oppressive status quo? The series considers questions of this nature to motivate conversations and actions on climate issues that reverberate through politics and theatre.

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Julia Levine is a creative collaborator and vegetarian. Originally from St. Louis, Julia is now planted in the New York City downtown theatre realm. As a director, Julia has worked on various projects with companies that consider political and cultural topics, including Theater In Asylum, Honest Accomplice Theatre, and Superhero Clubhouse. She is the Marketing Manager at HERE and is Artistic Producer of The Arctic Cycle. Julia writes and devises with her performance-based initiative, The UPROOT Series, to bring questions of food, climate, and justice into everyday life.

When I first talked with author Brian Burt a couple years ago, we sat in on a SFF World panel about climate change in fiction, and I was surprised at the things we had in common: we both hail from Indiana (go Hoosiers!), still dream of our golden (albeit separate) journeys to Ireland, and love red wine. And we like cycling and hiking. After a few talks about writing, I invited Brian to become a moderator at our Google+newsgroup, “Ecology in Literature and the Arts.” Despite things in common, I was even more impressed that a debut novelist had had such success at creating a following for his books.

Brian’s Burt’s biography: While on a consulting assignment in Dublin, Ireland, Brian became sufficiently inspired by the magical scenery and the rich literary tradition to try writing his own short stories. He had more than twenty science fiction and fantasy tales published in small press anthologies, genre magazines, and online publications over the years. Along the way, a short story entitled “The Last Indian War” won the Gold Award (grand prize) in the Writers of the Future Contest, and a dark fantasy story called “Phantom Pain” received an honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. These encouraging experiences finally gave him the motivation to try his hand at a full-length novel.

That debut novel, Aquarius Rising Book 1: In the Tears of God, won the 2014 EPIC eBook Award for Science Fiction. It was followed by Aquarius Rising Book 2: Blood Tide, also released from Double Dragon Publishing, which won the 2016 Readers’ Favorite Gold Award for Science Fiction. Book 3: The Price of Eden was recently published. This trilogy of novels stems from Brian’s passion for environmental themes, exploring a potential future in the wake of accelerating climate change when a disastrous attempt to reverse global warming goes horribly wrong. The series focuses on human-dolphin hybrids called Aquarians, who have built thriving reef communities among the drowned human cities along the coasts but are caught in an escalating struggle with human scientists determined to restore the continental wastelands at any cost.

From the following passage in the trilogy, you might see how hard it is to put these books down – how myth-building to page-turning thrill starts to suspend the reader immediately.

We were born in the tears of God.

When the First Creator wept at the fate of His Creation, His tears fell like burning rain to melt the polar ice and swell the seas, the cradle of all life. His grief swallowed the mighty human cities of the coast and gave them over to the realm of Mother Ocean. Humanity, who did not aggrieve the Maker out of malice but out of ignorance, wished to atone for their sins against the Earth. We are that atonement. We are Humankind’s offering to the First Creator, the Maker of All. The Great Father-a man, and nothing more-crafted his transforming virus and infected his own kind, so that we might be born as the children of Man and Mother Ocean. Humanity became the Second Creator, Aquarius the Second Creation, and we the stewards of its bounty.

We owe much to Man, who is our father and our brother. We must honor our debt to him. But we must always remember this: he who has the power to Create also has the power to Destroy.

—Delphis, Third Pod Leader of Tillamook Reef Colony, from a speech to commemorate the Fiftieth Aquarian Birth Day

You can read excerpts of the first two books at the Dragonfly Library, here and here.

In the series are various human and hybrid species living in a futuristic world where global warming and geo-engineering have greatly altered the planet ecologically and socially. Earth’s land is irrevocably dry and barren, making survival harsh. Seas have risen and slashed the coastal populations with devastation. Scientists create human-dolphin hybrids that can adapt to a climate-changed world. The creation of hybrids, however, also introduces class differences and other battles among different factions – and, unlike in some climate novels where technology has gone by the wayside, this series has developed science such as bio-tech and chemical warfare.

In the first book, human-dolphin hybrids called Aquarians are living among reef colonies where cities used to be. Ocypode the Atavism, a genetic throwback, holds the key to why the Aquarians begin dying to an “invisible weapon” known as the Medusa Plague. Ocypode works with allies to save the coasts and their inhabitants. In Part II, Blood Tide, Megalops (an Aquarian) seeks revenge for losing his wife and daughter to the plague; he unleashes a Vendetta Virus that turns live humans into Aquarian corpses. Ocypode, hero from the first book, battles again to stop Megalops’s genocidal plague. In the final book, Price of Eden (published in June 2017), the civil war has caused mass casualties and triggers further hostility. The tribes of whales who “sing an ancient prophecy of Storm-Slayer, a legendary child of Mother Ocean and Mother Earth, who is destined to defuse the conflict and save the world” offer hope. In the end, we see rays of peace, but at what cost?

Brian’s world-building is unique, and numerous readers have given kudos to the trilogy.

I was also impressed with Burt’s imaginative ideas about biosculpting, or what we might call species manipulation. Over and over, throughout the story, we see examples of creatures altered in stunning, horrifying, and amazing ways to serve the needs of the plot. —Sandra Girouard

Readers should anticipate a heady combination of action and intrigue based on the events of Book One, in a post-apocalyptic setting that questions heroes, leaders, and a looming war between Mother Earth and Mother Ocean. Based in a world that’s survived climate change, the impact of loneliness, life-or-death decision-making processes, and the effects of ongoing conflict illustrate the very different challenges of handling interactions between two worlds almost inhabiting the same body of Earth, making Blood Tide a top recommendation for readers who like “climate change” dystopian stories with more than a dose of philosophical reflection paired with nonstop crisis mode style action. —Midwest Book Review

The rich descriptions of the world envelope one’s senses with ocean beauty, kelp forests, and fantastical creatures dancing in the light and shadow.

When I asked Brian about this trilogy, he said:

The last novel in my Aquarius Rising trilogy (Price of Eden) ends on an optimistic note, despite the sometimes dark currents that flow through the trilogy in general. I think this is vital, personally. There are so many sources of dismal news, so many depressing scientific developments; I think it’s crucial to look for a light in the darkness, to emphasize that we as a species still have a chance to chart a course to a better future rather than a dystopia.

He is not the only author with belief in human survival, despite the ecological catastrophes we have brought on. He also writes psychological suspense and plays with our heart strings when it comes to recognizing both difference and similarities among individuals – and encourages that during disaster if we work together, rather than apart, we might just have a chance.

And Brian recognizes that he is not alone as an author writing about climate change. In his article “Can Eco-fiction Turn the Tide?” he writes:

Can fiction of this kind succeed where raw, unadorned facts have failed to convince so many Americans? I don’t honestly know. But I do believe in the power of story, of imagination, to move us. So do many, many fiction writers across many genres. Climate change is daunting when it acidifies our oceans, destroys ancient reefs, melts polar ice, and leads to relentless sea level rise that threatens to swallow coastal cities. Let’s hope that the combination of science fact and fiction can succeed where either, alone, seems doomed to fail.

This article is part of our Wild Authors series. It was originally published on Dragonfly.eco.

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Mary Woodbury, a graduate of Purdue University, runs Dragonfly.eco, a site that explores ecology in literature, including works about climate change. She writes fiction under pen name Clara Hume. Her novel Back to the Garden has been discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change (Routledge). Mary lives in the lower mainland of British Columbia and enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.

Sheffield Hallam University in South Yorkshire, England, recently presented a student performance produced by Doppelgangster, a company that has become infamous for their avant-garde theatrical interventions into climate complacency. I went along, intrigued to see how this collaboration was going to work, particularly in relation to the community uprising against Sheffield’s tree cull led by Sheffield Tree Action Groups (STAG), which the show was responding to.

The acronym’s irony, combined with the arboreal loss, was not lost on me; with my own sci/art protagonist, The King of the Sea Trees, murmuring encouragement from West Wales as I trudged through Northern rain. The King of the Sea Trees is a mythical being who takes the form of a stag and speaks through poetry about environmental change, pollution and eco-responsibility. He haunts a submerged forest along the Welsh coastline, tending to the fallen and forgotten trees. His image, that of disembodied antlers, is plastered all around this city, as if watching from the sidelines.

The Performance Lab entrance was hidden away on the side of the building too. The  approach wasn’t quite like a Brith Gof bus ride into a darkening forest, which was how my first experience of a site-specific production began back in the early 1990’s, but it did disrupt assumptions about where access to a theatre should be. In this, it showcased the work in an official building whilst simultaneously breaking up our route to expectation. Inside, the foyer was lined with related propaganda and computer screens playing loops of scene snippets: young people in masks, felling an invisible array of trunks.

The tech standard was big, yet the view of it was otherwise: these were just every day screens, lined up like miniature versions of Pearson and Brooke’s gods in a recent production of The Iliad by National Theatre Wales. A row of computers as if in a college study hall. The audience seemed to bypass them warily, engaging only from a distance despite being within easy reach, interacting more comfortably with the traditionally-styled political statements plastered over unstable benches.

Some attendees were clearly locals, clad with matching logos in defense of the 17,500 trees on Sheffield Council’s death row. Others, such as the representative from National Theatre Wales (and myself), had come from further afield. Undergraduate shows tend not to be out there in the “real” world, let alone in response to a £2.2 billion street project, or invite review, so this experiment held intricate layers of both professional and personal risk. Such risk is essential if the practice of theatre is to develop with the experienced and the emerging side by side. To create a performance with young people, both for them and a diverse city demographic, was a bold move for all concerned.

The value here is perhaps in giving alternative voices some control over their own platform. Encouraging political eloquence may seem frightening to those who wish to maintain the status quo, but for those who take the long view, educating all sides can lead to a more robust democracy. This is becoming an ever more pertinent demand as climate change debate rises in line with the seas.

All at the Lab seemed unified in our uncertainty about how to approach this show, with parents eyeing the direct challenge to sensibilities that the few visible flyers for Treefxxxers blatantly advertised.

Once the stage was set, Dr. Tom Payne, lecturer of Performance Studies at the university and co-director of Doppelgangster, took control, suggesting that we read up on the show via social media, which was the preferred medium for the students involved. This was instead of using up paper for  printed programs. It’s solid advice – and I urge you to follow the link and do the same.

Thus contextualized, he ushered us inside…

…where we filed quietly around the edge of a floor level stage, beneath huge photographs of the cast under which they each sat; art refocusing reality.

We edged along to a raised seating area, supervised at the decks by Doppelgangster’s other co-director, Tobias Manderson-Galvin . There was a friendly air of anticipation, not the usual theatre-going “must play this cool” attitude anywhere in sight. Yet it was a fragile space, the acting out of a Proof of Concept regarding what happens if… What happens if an established company puts young performers in the driving seat? What happens if students are encouraged to politicize themselves? What happens if site-specific theatre is inside an actual theatre, designed and acted by people who are only transient residents? What happens if the narrative is still being formed right up to Beginners Please…

The precarious nature of this collaboration was perhaps not on everyone’s minds, but the vulnerability of being on a stage with no wings was surely more than enough. Particularly when the front row was also the apron. All were exposed. Responsibility weighed heavy in the dry iced air.

The students on stage tried not to fidget. So did we.

Once the show began, any concern I may have had that this might require a large dose of tolerance, was soon expelled. My experience of academically-centered theatre is a mixed bag. This though, was certainly different.

We were immediately engaged by two hosts: a badger on the brink of death and the ghost of a wolf. Faded and fading inhabitants of woodland, figures of both public fear and public support. The exchange between these two was a strong opening – albeit somewhat bewilderingly abstract.

“Bewilderingly abstract” could describe much of what followed. However, a willingness to do away with ideas of chronology and scene cohesion allowed for the authentic randomness to speak for itself. It reflected notions of fragmentary unification, taking us back again to the work of performer Mike Pearson as we were partially submersed into a flurry of meta-stories; all held together with a score by Jules Pascoe that kept momentum fresh and unflinchingly loud.

The set was similarly direct, costumes were second skins to their wearers which gave the ambiance of a documentary, albeit a color-coordinated one. All movement was punchily choreographed by Sarah Lamb; not too smooth though, each person’s style shone through despite a general synchronization. Initially I found this annoying; but it rapidly won me around, resulting in my appreciating the original quirks and mis-timings as points of heightened interest rather than deviance from some polished visage.

The overall style was somewhat burlesque, a contemporary vaudeville embodying a political claim. For my taste, there was perhaps a little over indulgence regarding the subjects of Sex and Death, with an obvious satisfaction being gained from mocking up intercourse, and salacious verbal profanity. Whilst in some respects this detracted from my engagement, it still managed to relay an honesty that was effective. I’m still not entirely sure how they did that. Maybe it was that this was genuinely who and how their generation were in that moment; youth caught between procreation and destruction. The provocations were not superficial but a statement about human fragility paired with the mortality of nature at the hands of Big Brother. A fight led mainly by the city’s older inhabitants, to whom they were speaking out in solidarity. It was an accurate (re)presentation of collective frustration – offset with some beautifully poignant moments and splashes of inciteful humor (especially the song, where a dogged determination to fail made the whole thing a total success).

It’s rare to get an audience this supportive, so when a person was called out to participate directly by marrying an apple tree-that-wasn’t-actually-a-tree (and was already dead), this was met with cheers. Treehugga, the gentleman in question, did rather steal the limelight from that moment on. A big burly chap with quick wit, he was able to quip and banter as a bridge between watchers and players. This could easily have intimidated the actors, but instead, they bounced off his presence like true professionals. It was also extraordinarily funny – even it didn’t make much actual sense.

Perhaps sense-making is overrated. Perhaps we need more opportunities to let the abstract silent screams from our psyches take character and reach out – antlered and dancing. Throughout, the soundtrack held this space, even when the speakers and microphones briefly went mute… because the performers just paused, transforming it into a deliberate hiatus. It’s moments like that which make one realize that audience, actors and crew are breathing together to create a shared world; and that for me, is the true magic of theatre.

Meanwhile, the STAG campaign continues to try and protect Sheffield’s trees; habitats are being fought for flora, fauna and the folk who live amongst them. Unlawful arrests, investigations and inspections, a disease resistant Elm. The fight for unpolluted air is more than an aesthetic desire to see leafy terraces; it’s a collective call to breathe. Who knows if the students from Treefxxxers will continue to add their voices to this battle cry but by taking to the stage, they’ve had an opportunity to begin.

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Erin Kavanagh is a poet and Creative Archaeologist who specializes in Sci/Art collaboration, deep-mapping and site-specific communication. With a background in philosophy, theatre and geoscience, her work is inherently interdisciplinary, with a particular focus on lost and submerged narratives. She is also currently a PhD Candidate at Sheffield Hallam University in English and Performance, funded by NECAH.

As a cartoonist working on climate change communication for three years now, I’d like to share a story about what I’ve learned making a book about climate change into something people actually want to read.

On November 30, 2018, I launched a book on climate change called Eerste Hulp Bij Klimaatverandering in Dutch, or First Aid for Climate Change. The first printing consisted of more than two thousand copies and they sold within two months. I’m a nobody and I have no publisher. I made this book together with five other nobodies. Nonetheless, we sold over a thousand copies before the book was even finished. I’m still baffled by this. Proud of course. But mostly, I’d like to share some insights on how I’m trying to make climate change sexy.

Climate change communication is a science too

Back in 2015, nine months before the United Nations 21^st Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP21), I got involved with climate change activists in the Netherlands, where I reside. After feeling lonely and disempowered for most of my life, it was great to finally find a crowd of people who cared as much as I did about the biggest challenge of our time. But it also struck me that we weren’t reaching a big enough audience with our actions. Since I already had an interest in psychology, I enrolled in a course about Psychology for Sustainability, offered by an initiative called Impact Academy in Utrecht. I vividly remember sitting in the room together with sustainability professionals and being told that all of us present were a complete underrepresentation of the larger population. We all suffered from a condition, scientifically known as “morally deviant behavior.” If there was one insight that helped me most, it was this one: Not everybody thinks like… me.

Studying the psychology behind climate apathy, I learned that most people simply avoid depressing news. But, people sensitive enough to engage with climate change and feel the pain, anguish, and terror that comes with knowing our window of opportunity to save the planet is closing fast while politicians argue over semantics, don’t avoid it. So there’s a gap there that’s hard to bridge. It turns out that there are effective ways of communicating climate change and downright useless ways of doing it. Because when you try to communicate, the most important lesson is to know your audience.

Learn from entrepreneurs

Caring about the person you’re directing the message to isn’t something activists are generally very interested in, and neither are artists. But there’s a group of people that does nothing else: entrepreneurs. Having been an entrepreneur myself, I was acquainted with some marketing literature and tricks of the trade. That’s why I started with defining a target audience. This quickly became: People who care but are too overwhelmed to become active. Who feel guilt and shame for not doing enough. The goal of the book: to deliver something that would make people happy. No guilt. No depression. Sounds impossible, so it gets the attention right away. A neat marketing trick.

I call the book a tongue-in-cheek self-help guide for people suffering from Pre-Traumatic Climate Panic. It’s a book for people who love the planet… and a good steak. People who care about coral reefs so much… they want to fly there. There’s no judgement, just acknowledgement that it’s a hard position to be in. The book addresses this cognitive dissonance with cartoons to make the subject matter easy to digest and fun to look at. Also, by making fun of literally everyone – activists and deniers alike – people won’t feel excluded.

However, the book is most definitely about system change and taking responsibility. It never shies away from the urgency of the issue. But it focuses on happiness, values, and purpose to help the reader carve out a new life that will not only be more sustainable… but also much more fun. It’s about compassionate, non-judgmental activism.

First the audience, then the product

Getting a book, any book, to sell like ours did, without a publisher, is no small feat. It doesn’t just happen overnight. It’s been three years of campaigning: social media posts, meeting other people, talking about the project at gatherings, building a newsletter fanbase, testing the concept, engaging with potential audiences. During this time, I stretched beyond my comfort zone and took up stand-up comedy, to further develop my presentation skills. Storytelling is everything.

This work made crowdfunding to cover sustainable printing costs in the summer of 2018 a smooth ride. We got 130 percent funded and the more people supported the project, the more people got interested. Harnessing herd mentality: another marketing trick. We received generous support from leading Dutch sustainable entrepreneurs, and major Dutch NGOs placed large pre-orders. As for the book itself? I drew 80 percent of it between July and November 2018. In my humble opinion, the biggest lesson for anyone doing climate change art is: don’t focus on climate facts or on your product. Focus on people and relationships.

Rise to attention

The day after the book launched, we were featured in one of the largest national newspapers in the Netherlands. We captured a lot of people’s attention. With climate change now firmly on the agenda, thanks to Greta Thunberg and Youth for Climate, media attention continues. Our book has been given to members of the City Council in Amsterdam, libraries are purchasing it, even the National Meteorological Agency of the Netherlands has ordered copies. Now that our second edition is out, we are planning for an English translation.

Our success is not only due to the quality of the book, of course. Great timing is essential and can hardly be planned. But it does make clear that in an era where the debate on climate change is often heated and filled with hatred and fear, the power of art can still make a difference.

I hope sharing this journey can help you bring your own project to life!

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Anabella Meijer works as a visual storyteller, cartoonist, and graphic recorder, which basically means she gets paid to doodle during meetings. Turning complexity into attractive visuals is her core business. Besides that, she’s been specializing in psychology and communication on climate change since early 2015. Because she hasn’t always felt empowered about system change, she has a keen intuition on how to get there. For this book project, she joined forces with co-authors Rolf Schuttenhelm (science journalist), Hille Takken (human interest journalist) and Neža Krek (career choice mentor). Tim Witte (campaign video), Ruben Stellingwerf (overall concept and design), Ditta op den Dries (editing) and Aral Voskamp (sales and logistics) further supported the project.