Rhetoric for the End of the Earth

Last night I had the chance to go out with my friend Cynthia from college. She's in town for a geology conference and is up to some incredible work. She and I had an in-depth conversation about the failures of scientists to convey the science of climate change, toxicity in the soil, water, and air, and other life-threatening byproducts of industrialization. We had a spirited, solutions-oriented debate in which she argued for lobbying and policy change and I entertained notions of industrial collapse. She made a point of ridiculing Gore's naive and simplistic movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and at the same time argued for election of Obama. Fearing the two parties commitment to capitalism, industry, and at-best, green technologies, I have enormous skepticism about the possibility of an electoral/political solution in a capitalist economy. Amongst ideas I floated I included decolonizing the United States and giving power to the people who successfully lived on this land for tens of thousands of years. As we struggle to articulate the grave ecological crisis we find ourselves in and struggle for holistic solutions, we have to determine the best ways of articulating the science, the damage, and the possibility. Two examples I find interesting include Derrick Jensen's Endgame and the most recent movie What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire. Both Jensen's book and the film engage difficult questions with more difficult questions, use heavy rhetorical flourishes, and deal directly with myth and action as well as science. If scientists what to convey the gravity of the situation, they are going to have to collaborate with storytellers, artists, filmmakers, and others who speak in a language that precedes numbers and that engages our deepest instincts and emotions. Until a truly interdisciplinary union of artists and scientists occurs, those studying catastrophe will hoard information and prevent the rest of the people from being able to act.