tni vol. 12: weather

7/29/2019 TNI Vol. 12: Weather

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WO FAMOUS QUOAIONS begin:Everybody alks abou he weaher. eirpunch lines boh criicize chater, bu o op-posie ends. Bu nobody ever does anyhingabou i, jokes Charles Dudley Warner; Ul-rike Meinho nishes, we don. Atribuionis shaky, bu he wo names ha ge atached,an American newspaperman and co-auhoro Te Gilded Age wih Mark wain, and aGerman journalis and RF erroris, repre-sen wo divergen responses o he capialisclimae o heir ime. Warner made a moral

criique o he rapacious capains o he Sec-ond Indusrial evoluion and sopped here.Meinho le criique behind or violen in-ervenion. Bu wha o heir shared horizon?

Why bring up alking abou he weaher inorder no o?

We may all do i, bu we almos always wishwe were alking abou somehing else. Con-versaion abou he weaher is supposed oreec an alienaed lack o common subjecmater: he awkward dialogue beween cus-omer and clerk, he las resor o he lonelypary gues. I is or srangers o discuss, andalways as a segue ino somehing more seri-ous, more personal. e weaher is so con-enless as o evade all signican discourse,

bu hen is also so universal as o underpini. Simulaneously oo large and oo small,he weaher laughs as silenly a our smallalk as when we shou o he heavens.

ese days he weaher is serious business.

No only because developers are aking overhurricane-devasaed neighborhoods, nordue o he adverising millions each weahereven promises news neworks, nor he bil-lions in ederal relie or ciies, bu because ipoins o ha mos serious o evenualiies:he coming climae apocalypse.

e rs hing any climaologis will ellyou is ha weaher is no he singular o cli-mae, and is an annual radiion o laugha some global warming denier auning AlGore while poining a snow collecing onhis DC windowsill.

Bu he laughs have become increasinglybiter. Las year was he hotes on record,and no one 27 or younger has ever livedhrough a colder han average monh. Peo-

ple ou wes sympahized a litle grudginglywih he Easern Seaboards Sandy hyse-ria aer heir nearly yearlong droughhe

wors drough since 1988, iselhe wors since he DusBowl yearswaslargely ignored inhe media. While

we can conrolhe weaherhough we a-ec iisclear hahe way wealk abou imaters.


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In his issue oTe New Inquiry, we look ahow speaking abou complex meeorologi-cal sysems masks or uncovers equally com-

plex social sysems o conrol. We inerviewecocriic Ursula Heise, who highlighs howwo ancien rheorical modes, he pasoraland he apocalypic, sill deermine how weinerpre scienic daa abou he weaher,

wha hey leave ou, and wha new modesare developing o alk abou our new placein domesicaed naure. Sephanie Bern-hards Climae Changed orecass similar

modal shis in lieraure. Invesigaing herole climae has played in recen novels, sheplaces November 2012 in league wih Vir-ginia Wool s on or abou December, 1910,as a marker or a periodic change in he li-erary orienaion oward he world, where i

will no longer be possible o ignore climaechange in day-o-day lie.

Gerry Canavan races he green sreakin apocalypic science cion in his ApresNous, Le Deluge, rom H. G. Wellss War ohe Worlds o Pixars Wall-E. He sees in heevoluion o millennial sci- a complicaion

o he paheic allacy by agrowing awareness o he

Anhropocene. AndA. M. Gitliz and

Cosmo Bjorken-heim in Humid,

All oo Hu-mid ques-ion iweaher canbe he sub-jec o his-

ory, and, i no, why he sae, capial andeco-aciviss nd i desirable o ac like i is.

In World o Weahercra, Jenna Brager

and Bailey Kier say up all nigh o discoverhe ruh abou chemrails and HAAP: haweaher conrol is an all-oo-real miliary ob-session. A more benign obsession appears in

Amanda Shapiros No For Prophe, racinghe disillusionmen o e Weaher Chan-nels hardcore ans wih he cable companysshark-jumping weaher-ainmen. Weaherorecasers play a cenral, reassuring role in

he lives o man, as modern-day prophesand sudens o an imperec science, bunow navigae hese rom a hird posiion:

business-person, weaking rain predicionsor raings.

Glenn Becks new sci- novel, Agenda 21,uses one o his avorie sraegic ploys: seal-ing he mehods o le-wing populism or

righ-wing demagoguery. eviewer Je Spar-row pulls apar he conradicions inhereno his praciceand his novel. ober Ka-plans atemp o aone or his Iraq war-mon-gering via geo-poliical deerminism ges ak-en o ask by proessional geographer JasonDitmer, or whom Kaplans undamenalmisundersanding o geography ishe leaso his ailures.

Now even alking abou he weaherhas become very poliical, cauions UrsulaHeise. We agree. As crises moun and he skyabove us begins o change, he weaher can

be a promp or serious hinking abou helimis o our agencyand, perhaps, a errainor conesaion. Bu rs, we need o sor ou

wha i is were alking abou. n


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How to Talk About the Weather

USULA HEISE inerviewed by MAX FOX

An interview with the eco-critic Ursula Heise

USULA HEISE IS a proessor o English aUCLA, bu she ounded he Environmenal

Humaniies Projec while a Sanord Uni-versiy, and has served as he Presiden ohe Associaion or he Sudy o Lieraureand he Environmen. She is in he process o

wriing a book called Where he Wild TingsUsed o Be: Narraive, Daabase and Biodiver-

siy Loss. NI edior Max Fox spoke o herover he phone or an inerview, which youcan nd an edied ranscrip o below.

USULA HEISE: So you waned o alkabou he weaher, or is ha jus a synecdo-che or ecological crisis a large?

NI: Tats interesting. I had thought o

talking about the weather as a synecdoche

or empty social interaction.

Well, has changed vasly o course overhe las 10 years. Now even alking abou he

weaher has become very poliical.

Your background is in literary studies and

narratology in particular. How did you come

to environmental science and environmental

critique? Was that part o the change o the

past 10 years?

Well, youre righ, hough my shi was alitle earlier. My background is in compara-ive-lieraure sudies. Over he course o he90s, I became increasingly ineresed in envi-ronmenal issues, bu ha wasn somehing


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ha was being looked a in lierary sudies ahe ime. All he oher big social movemenso he 1960ssay, civil righs, decoloniza-ion, he sruggle or womens righshose

had all ransormed lierary sudies rom he1970s onward. Environmenal acivism hadno, and I hink here are paricular inellec-ual and disciplinary reasons why, bu by he90s he scene had changed.

I hink he reason has o do wih he sudyo narraive and he sudy o meaphor. oseare wo hings ha are really imporan orundersanding wha environmenaliss alkabou, how hey alk abou i, and how peo-ple who advocae agains cerain environ-menal measures or agains he environmen-al movemen more broadly, how hey rameheir argumen. Is imporan o undersandhe narraive and he lierary genres ha o-en underwrie our ideas abou naure.

When I each sudens how o look a con-

emporary environmenal lieraure, I de-niely wan hem o know somehing aboua genre like he pasoral. e pasoral is a2000-year-old genre ha celebraes he sim-ple, innocen lie o he counryside. Is hada very long hisory since hen and especiallysince he omanic age, is become a pow-erul narraive agains indusrializaion andmodernizaion, as boh a reuge and a ool

by which we ariculae resisance o cerainorms o modernizaion. A lo o environ-menalis discourse up o he presen day is

writen in or a leas underwriten by he pas-oral.

Anoher imporan narraive genre, es-pecially in he conex o climae change, is

he apocalypic. I is a narraive abou heend o he world which had religious origins

bu go secularized paricularly bu no onlyin he U.S. and has oen been used less as a

ool o orecas precisely wha evens are go-ing o ranspire han as a call o social reorm.e direr he scenario is, he more urgen ishe call o reorm. So I hink is impossibleo undersand a good deal o environmenal

wriing and hinkingparicularly since he1960swihou knowing somehing abouhese genres and he orce hese exer on he

way ha we hink abou whaever scienicdaa we ge abou naure.

In recen years I hink he apocalypic nar-raive has been on he rise again, especiallyaer he ailure o he Copenhagen climaesummi and he growing rusraion in heenvironmenal communiy wih crucial leg-islaive and reay acions no being aken.Bu we always need o keep in mind ha in

par i is he narraive ha drives he way inwhich he daa are being aken across andhas an imporan par o wha we look ano so much o say ha he narraives gei wrong, bu o say in wha ways do he nar-raives shape he daa. How do hey connechem up so ha a cerain undersanding ispresened and wha oher narraives mighalso be possible.

Given that climate is changing in unprec-

edented ways and the way we talk about it is

still through these ancient rhetorical modes,

do you think were going to see the emergence

o new narrative strategies to talk about the

new climate reality?

HOW O ALK ABOU HE WEAHE


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I hink is going o be a mix. I hink heolder orms, he older narraive emplaes

won disappear and heyll play heir role.Bu I hink were also seeing he emergence

o oher narraives. I do hink here is some-hing underway ha I would call nohingless han a seismic shi in environmenalishough.

One o hem would be he idea o he an-hropocene, which is a erm ha was coinedabou a decade ago by he chemical clima-ologis Paul Crewdson and he ecologisEugene Sirner. Wha hey mean by ha washa were acually in a new geological pe-riod in which humans are a geological orce.eyve become geological agens. Whahey mean by his is weve always been bio-logical agens. Humans have messed around

wih heir environmens, wih he plans andanimals surrounding hem or millennia. Bu

weve no had he collecive power o acual-

ly ransorm he basic meeorological sruc-ures, climacic srucures o our plane. eidea is ha mos o he naure ha humansare going o live in and wih rom here on ou

will be naure alered or beter or or worseby humans. is is generaing a whole newway o hinking abou naure.

In environmenalism is mean a coupleo shis. In American environmenalism,heres radiionally been a grea sor o cul-ural and emoional invesmen in he pres-ervaion o wilderness. You know, he greasor o wild areas ha are as prisine as possi-

ble and are unouched by humans. I creaedhe Naional Parks, i creaed eors or heconservaion o biodiversiy. From a hisori-

cal viewpoin, is a quesionable narraivebecause wha looked o European eyes likewilderness was in ac no or only very par-ially so. In some cases Europeans dislocaed

Naive Americans o hen be able o say hisis naure unouched. a sor o dislocaiono indigenous people is sor o he inamouslegacy o environmenalism in he 19h cen-ury, and his was sill going on beween he1960s and 80s in Arica. Environmenalismnow has very decisively moved away romha, bu i was par o veneraion or naureunouched by humans. Organizaions sucho he Naure Conservancy based a lo oheir philosophy on ha idea.

Now heres a move away rom ha wherepeople are saying heres very litle wilder-ness le has accessible o anybody. ereis, in ac, no wilderness le i you ake inoaccoun climae change has now alered evenhe las litle spo o jungle or an icy par o

he Arcic or he dephs o he ocean whereno human has ever ye se oo. Is all been al-ered hrough anhropogenic climae change.In a quie lieral way here is no par o heplane ha hasn been ouched by humans.So we need a dieren way o hinking anda dieren sory o ell abou ha. And heanhropoceneenvisioning naure as per-

vasively reshaped by humans, and hinkingabou wha we migh do wih naure in heuure on ha basishas been one produc-ive poin o deparure.

eres oher ideas ha have cropped up.Peer Kareiva, he chie scienis or he Na-ure Conservancy, has or a leas ve or six

years now published aricles on domes-

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icaed naure, he idea ha we are reallydealing wih naure mos o he ime hahas been one way or anoher domesicaed

by humans. So we need o hink abou no

how do we go back o somehing has nodomesicaed bu wha kinds o domesica-ion do we wan and which kinds do we no

wan. Emma Marris, he science journalis,published a book las year has been muchdiscussed, whose subile is Saving Naurein a Pos-Wild World. So, you know, how do

you hink abou he pos-wild when here isno more wilderness.

is is ocusing very much on Ameri-can environmenalism. In many pars o he

world, he idea ha conserving naure hado do wih wilderness has always been a bioreign. In a lo o he developing world, hemos imporan environmenalis sruggleshave always been abou cerain culural com-muniies rying o deend heir means o sub-

sisence: heir waer bodies agains he build-ing o dams or heir oress agains conver-sion o agribusiness. as never been aboupreserving a naure ha was unouched byhumans bu precisely preserving older hu-man ways o lie.

Bu were now seeing a real seismic shioward seeing naure as domesicaed. Wereno longer hinking so much abou nauregoing o hell in a hand-

baskeas we culuralscholars say, declenion-is narraives, narraiveso declinebu ryingo hink more abou nar-raives o design. We are

now charged wih he ask o designing whakind o naure well have in he uure, sohas wha we need o hink abou. Who hewe is who calls he shos on ha is o course

a crucial quesion and wha mechanisms wehave or making collecive decisions is I hinkone o he key issues conroning environ-menalism now.

So theres a story you could tell where you

periodize human interaction with weather

as going fom a priestly or shamanistic e-

ort to exert control over it with sympathetic

causal action to a modernist detachment

predicated on being causally separate fom

the weather, where all we can do is predict it

and exert control that way. But this seems to

be a third twist, that through our detached

practices o prediction, we are the ones re-

sponsible once again, and now its really out

o control.

ere is a ascinaing hisory ha atacheso our hinking abou disaser generally, andhe Ausralian lierary scholar Kae igby

works on precisely his issue. Shes a schol-ar o omanicism. e argumen ha shemakes is ha in Europe, up unil he 18hcenury naural disasers, including weah-er disasersa hundersorm, hings like

haused o be lookeda as punishmen romGod. And he olderpriesly approach ha

you alluded o is a ver-sion o ha, where youhave o pray o he gods


How do youthink about

the post-wild?


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o ensure weaher ha will ensure your sur-vival.

ere was a paricular urning poin wihhe disasrous earhquake in Lisbon in 1755,

which killed so many obviously innocenpeople. e idea ha naural disasers werepunishmens rom God came ino quesionamong hinkers, wriers, philosophers, allhe way rom Volaire o Heinrich von Kleis.

And gradually ha idea go replaced by hemore modern idea o naural disaser, hano here is no moral signicance here andcerainly no divine signicance. ese areairly normal evens ha have o do wih heairly random uncioning o naure. In many

ways has been a very good developmen.I allows you, among oher hings, o akecare o he vicims raher han blaming hem

or wha happened. Bu as igby poinedou, in he conex o hings like HurricaneSandy, heres acually an odd downside haemerges rom hinking ha way abou disas-

ers: In he curren conex o wha we knowabou anhropogenic climae change, i acu-ally ends o hide ha we are causing a leassome o hese disasers.

Looking at cultural history, you see the

Lisbon earthquake prompting a reevalu-

ation o things like divine providence. But

you also get both larger and smaller sto-

ries about how El Nio-like events caused

droughts and amines in crucial years with-

out which colonialism wouldnt have been

able to take hold the way it did, or 1816, the

Year without a Summer, when Mary Shelly

and Lord Byron and all o them holed up be-

cause o abnormal weather and thats how

we gotFrankenstein. How much do you dis-

tinguish culture and history fom weatheritsel?

For anybody whos ineresed in howpeople live wih naure, he ineres is no odraw a sharp line bu o see how people workcerain naural evens ino heir poliical andculural projec. And youre absoluely righabou Mary Shellys Frankensein. e pre-ace ha describes his oally cold and darkand gloomy summer ha hey spen in Swi-zerland was or a long ime undersood o bemeaphorical, ha i was mean o conjureup an amosphere o he gohic and he hor-ror ha hen len isel o wriing he kind osory ha Shelly ells in he muliple embed-

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ded narraives in he novel, and i ook aneco-criic Jonahan Baes, o poin ou ha inac ha was he year aer Moun amboraeruped in Indonesia and i was in ac very

dark because here was a layer o ash in heamosphere and harvess roze all over Eu-rope, here were ood rios.

o wha exen his condiioned he cul-ural produc isel I hink is open o ques-ion. One wouldn wan o go oo ar in hadirecion bu is cerainly ineresing o real-ize ha ecological condiions have an impacon culural producion. And has wha Ihink environmenalism has changed over-all: we can really disinguish human hisoryrom naural hisory anymore. In older ormso inellecual hisory here was a airly sharpdisincion drawn. Bu now has denielychanged, and we now recognize ha hese

boundaries are porous. Our hisory is noindependen o maerial condiions, many

o which are no jus ou here, bu were cre-aed by previous generaions o humans whochanged he naural world or very paricularpoliical, culural, hisorical reasons o heirown. And I hink heres new kinds o mae-rialism ha ollow rom ha, recognizing heenormous causaive and even agenial orceo he environmen.

In Mike Daviss Ecology of Fear he talks

about the recurring imaginary destruction

o Los Angeles as being displaced race or

class anxietythat when you are talking

about the weather, really what youre talk-

ing about is the social. How much would you

agree with that analysis?

I hink is very imporan o look closelya how wha we call naure is socially shapedand culurally ramed. As an environmenal-

is Id be a litle more relucan o reduce io ha and say, eres absoluely no naureouside o our social ransacions and ousideo our culural raming. I hink has a muchrickier sep because ha denies heres anonculural world ou here wih whose ma-erial realiy we have o inerac, even or espe-cially where we or previous generaions haveshaped ha realiy. I hink ha mos environ-menaliss would be relucan o accep hasrong version o culural consrucivism.

a was one o he reasons i was diculor environmenalism o ake hold in culuralsudies up unil he 1990s. Because ha wascerainly he prevalen way o hinking abounaure ha we inheried mosly rom a cerainkind o possrucuralis radiion. As a grad-

uae suden I was rained o look a claimsabou biology and naure as really camou-aged claims abou race, class, and power.a you always claim somehing is naural

when you wan o nauralize your own claimo power, your own social posiion and yourown social group. I hink par o he environ-menal urn was a move oward rearmingha here is a real maerial world ou here.Naure is always ou here and surprises andoverakes and changes our social and culuralsrucures.

Bu Mike Davis is cerainly righ and Iadmire a lo o his work in erms o how heshows how naure and naural disasers gemobilized wihin paricular social srucures.



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He alks abou he res ha break ou regu-larly in pars o L.A. Because McMansionsare being buil exacly in he canyons whereSana Ana winds will an any ame ha goes

up, public money has o be invesed o rescuehose houses. I hink hes very good aboupoining ou he class and race srucuresha oen exacerbae already exising ma-erial condiions and disribue he eecso ecological condiions and disasers veryunevenly. as very perinen o climaechange as well. Clearly here are cerain com-muniies ha will be much worse placed po-

liically, nancially and socially o aver hewors consequences han ohers.

Regardless o the political or material con-

straints that we have, what is your assess-

ment o the narrative tools that we have to

deal with the weather? Are we able to think

o appropriate responses, or are we in act

locked into this older o thinking about theenvironment that brought us to this place to

begin with?

I don hink were by any means lockedino i. And culure, jus as naure, is very dy-namic, and he environmenal communiyis vas and muliarious and very, very ener-geic abou coming up wih new models o

organizaion and new models o elling so-ries abou naure. Bu here is oen a cerainineria o exising culural paterns. We needo be aware o wha our old paterns are andour old soriesperhaps mos imporanamong hem ha naure is deerioraing, haold sory o declinewha hold hey have on

our hinking and on he possibiliies o ac-ion. Bu here isn a shorage o energy orhinking abou his. I don hink we have henarraive emplaes ready-made, bu here are

a lo o people who are rying o hink abounew kinds o narraive.One quesion i seems o me urgen o ask

is why are environmenaliss so ocused onclimae change righ now almos o he exclu-sion o everyhing else? We have oher ma-

jor crises righ underway ha are also global.ere is a global crisis o oxicaion, and

we have an enormously challenging crisis o

biodiversiy loss, which Ive spen a lo o myresearch and wriing on. Were losing animaland plan species a a rae ha beore has onlyhappened a excepional momens in he his-ory o lie on earh. In 3.5 billion years, weveonly had ve mass exincions beore, andnow i looks like were in anoher one, hisime one creaed by humans. You don really

hear as much abou ha in he media as youdo abou climae change, and so a quesion aculural scholar has is why do we ocus on acerain risk scenario and alk abou i almoso he exclusion o oher risk scenarios. Is i

because climae change gives us he possibil-iy o speaking abou apocalypic scenariosand speaking abou he decline o naure in a

way ha oher crises do no?

I you look a oher phenomena like de-oresaion and species loss, yes, here is alarge scenario, bu hen when you look ahe deails here are many dieren sories,

where species are being los bu hen oherspecies are hriving, hough no in heir na-ive habias. Or you have he sory o mas-

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sive reoresaion in he Amazon has barelyever repored because we like o hink o he

Amazon as his area where horrible environ-menal havoc is being wreaked. We orge oalk abou or perhaps deliberaely don alkabou he many success sores ha environ-menalism has had over he pas 50 years. SoI hink we need o be careul abou wha wechoose as he primary crisis. Im someimes a

bi worried ha wih climae change we havechosen he crisis ha is leas accessible o he

general public. In erms o global policies iseems mos dicul o do anyhing abou, ashe Doha conerence has shown.

Now, Im no saying ha his is all hereis o i. Clearly here are massive ineressaligned in he ossil uel indusry ha have

worked quie eecively o disor he inor-

maion ha ges ou o he public and o ore-sall acion. Bu I don hink has he onlyproblem, especially a he global level. So

we also have o give ourselves ime on really

large-scale crises like his or a very diverseand divergen global communiy o work isway hrough hese oen slow and rusra-ing processes and come up wih soluionsha may no be wha he mos radical envi-ronmenalis would wish or bu ha comes

wih negoiaing he ineress o a lo o di-eren people. And or hese reasons, Im alitle bi worried ha were jus ocusing on

climae change. ere are a lo o oher cri-ses going on. And some o hese are muchmore concree; heyre much more locallyocused, and you can do hings abou hemmuch more easily han you can abou global,sysemic issues such as climae change.

So has sor o one issue has on mymind when I alk abou climae change. e

oher one is he close connecion beweenweaher and climae. We experience climaechange hrough weaher evens, bu he di-culy is ha we can never be oally sure

wheher hese weaher evens, which havemuliple and oen indirec causes, how wecan relae hem back o he underlying sys-emic change.

When you look a he long-erm rends

and saisics, is clear where he rends aregoing, bu i you look a individual evensha are raumaic, is acually no ha easyo hen jump back o he more sysemic cri-sis. as a really dicul issue we deal wihin environmenal communicaion on a daily

basis. n



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World o WeathercrafbyJENNA BRGEand BAILEY KIE

Even if we could control the weather, would we trust ourselves?

Mos o he American public ake or gran-ed wha is happening in he air above hem.Mos o us don know ha once, as HenryDavid oreau wroe, migraing ocks o

birds would darken he sky or days. Lookingup is a complicaed percepive and inuiiveskill ha many humans have los. We donhave much reason o look up anymoreopredic wha he weaher migh bring us or oell he ime o day or o use he sun or moonor direcions o ravel. We don need o lookup wih he seasons accumulaed knowledgeand noice he changing ligh and he neces-siy o hink back and orward in ime orha year and predic he rs ros, when osow crops or he onse o seasonal hunder-

sorms ha will waer he crops. e sars areobscured by polluion, we check he weaheron our smar phones. I we do look up, i iso see skyscrapers, reworks, when we hear agher je, o see adverisemens or marriageproposals sprayed by an airplane.

While we have los ouch wih agrarianweaher sensiiviy, a new sense o weaher-disaser sensiiviy has replaced i. Climaechange, naural disasers, and (sub)urbanapocalypse have become amiliar specers.

Wheher hrough cauiously grim govern-men speeches, wild media speculaion, orhe realiy showDoomsday Preppers, we areold, more or less, wha o buy or a amily oour o survive or however many days. We


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know who o call, wha websies o check onour smarphones (or as long as heyll hold acharge). We know who we are mean o rusand who we are mean o ear.

In he days leading up o Hurricane Sandyslandall in he U.S., many o us were glued oour elevisions and compuers, waiing orhe mos accurae and up-o-dae predicionsand survival ips (while remaining, or hemos par, unaware ha Sandy was oodinghe homes and USAID ens o housands oHaiians, inducing mudslides, killing dozenso people and sparking renewed ears o chol-era epidemic and ood shorages). In a me-dia-induced panic, many on he Eas Coasspen hose days in a consumeris renzy opreppingghing rac o ge o heneares grocery sore o clear he shelves ooile paper, botled waer, dry and cannedood, candles, and bateries. Wealhier ami-lies holed up in hoels in Balimore in case

o power ouages, presumably wih he ideaha hoels would have generaors.

Sandy demonsraed wha ecologiss andaciviss like Mike idwell (auhor o he2007 bookTe Ravaging ide) have warnedus abou: ha a combinaion o he righsorm and high ide would devasae U.S.coasal ciies. I also revealed he muliple ac-es o ear evoked by climae change, no onlyin erms o caasrophic weaher bu also hekinds o ecological, social, and poliical crisesi will produce.

As he aermah o Hurricane Sandy con-inues o unold, uneven eecs are apparen.In he U.S., many in he hurricanes predicedpah have now shoved heir candles and ba-

eries in a junk drawer or he nex Franken-sorm or Snowpocalypse. e denizens o

batered beachside resors will, or he mospar, ake heir ood insurance money and re-

build. Meanwhile, housands o low-incomepeople and public-housing residens remainin precarious siuaions, homeless or wihou

basic necessiies like hea and clean waer.Globally, as weaher becomes more ex-

reme, he poor and he poliically vulnerablewill coninue o pay he highes price o cli-mae change. Discrepancies in media cover-age o pos-Karina New Orleans reveal someo he aul lines: Whie survivors were oenporrayed as nding supplies and blacksurvivors as looers, criminalized and ar-geed by he police and he Naional Guard.

A he same ime, ransnaional corporaionswill pro rom supersorms, drough, searise, and oher eecs o climae change. As

Vandana Shivas bookWaer Wars deails, he

privaizaion o waer resources is a grow-ing concern, paricularly in he global Souh,

where he commodicaion o waer is beingpushed by he World Bank and IMF caus-ing rising prices, decreased access and issues

wih qualiy deerioraion.However, he rheoric o naural disaser

and acs o naure conveys he sense hahese hings are always beyond our power,ha he weaher is compleely exernal o e-ec or inervenion. In he growing sruggleor ecological and social equiy, we mus payatenion o he ways in which he U.S. mili-ary, aliaed corporaions, and governingsrucures, along wih oher collaboraiveand/or compeing counries, have been ex-

JENNA BRGE AND BAILEY KIE


20/6520

perimening, researching, and modiying heweaher or a leas he pas 60 years.

Despie dire warnings, a new Global Car-bon Projec sudy shows ha global green-

house gas emissions hi an all-ime high lasyear, wih no indicaion o a uure decrease.Given ha he weaher is being modied byhe daily acions o he worlds 7 billion hu-man inhabianshough signicanly moreso by he global Norh and is corporaionshe idea o xing wha we have wrough byadding more science o he mix is appealing:Is all righ ha we broke he sky, as long as

we can conrol i!As we coninue o make he prospec o

abrup climae change increasingly inevi-able, will weaher conrol become an atrac-ive opion? Will i be a possibiliy?

ere are publicly accessible and accepedconversaions happening in he scienic andpolicymaking communiies abou possible

uses o weaher modicaion o ose globalwarming. e use o cloud seeding o aid ag-riculure and reservoirs is a common, houghscienically dubious, pracice. Weaher con-rol is a common plo device in science c-ion, showing up in lms like Te Avengers,shows like Docor Who and Sar rek, heMichael Crichon novel Sae o Fear, Judge

Dredd comics and so orh. e idea o com-plee conrol over he weaherhe abiliyo press a buton or asunny day or send a lo-calized blizzard over anenemy armyremainshe su o science c-ion, bu science cion

has oen uncioned as a way o imagine andinspire uure possibiliies. Even so, mospeople who speak publicly abou weaher-modicaion programs are dismissed as con-

spiracy heoriss.ousands o aircra ll U.S. skies each

day. Above any U.S. ciy, he suburbs, and inrural areas aircra can be seen ying in gridsand emiting wha he governmen namesas conrails and conspiracy heoris deemchemrails. e popularized concepiono chemrails implies ha a leas someaircra emissions conain chemical agensowards weaher conrol aims, among oherideas. Perhaps he prevalence o chemrailsin conspiracy heories is precisely because ohe abiliy o locae hem empirically, o lo-cae hem as a visible sign o he possibiliy omore insidious, less visible ecological iner-

venions. I is unknown i hese housands oaircra are emiting he exhaus o je uel or

hey are spraying somehing ino he amo-sphere. Bu he perpeual clouds ha heseaircra creae mos likely conribue o heongoing devasaion o Earhs sysemic ecol-ogieshumans need viamin D and plans,plans need ligh o opimally phoosynhe-size, squirrels need he nus and nes leavesha rees make.

When i became apparen ha Sandywould hi he Eas Coas, conspiracy heo-

riss hypohesized hahe Obama adminisra-ion made his happendeliberaely o showcasean eecive response byhe Naional Guard and

WOLD OF WEAHECRF

Will weathercontrol become anattractive option?


21/6521

FEMA beore he elecion, conrasing a-vorably wih he Bush adminisraions han-dling o he Hurricane Karina aermah in2005. While i may seem crazy ha con-

spiracy heoriss speculae ha a U.S. presi-den would have he power and echnologycreae and seer hurricanes or poliical gain,i seems more useul o no simply dismisshis because i sounds crazy, bu begin oask he hard quesions. Why are so many ous are willing o call i crazy wihou anyquesioning as o why such crazy claims are

being made? e abiliy, i i exiss or couldexis, or he governmen and miliary omanuacure and conrol weaher is indeed arighening houghespecially i youre ohe mindse ha governmens and heir mili-aries (or miliaries and heir governmens)have and never will be benevolen.

For decades, large secors o he U.S. publicrused he governmen and banking indus-

ry because imes were good enough or hevoices and bodies ha coun in our socieyhose who poined o he nancial condiionsha prediced he economic crises o 2008

were oen deemed conspiracy heoriss orexremiss. Bu aer all he los homes, jobs,reiremen accouns, healh, and consump-ion uures or millions o middle class andrespecable working class Americans, look-ing up he economic chain became no onlynecessary, bu a normal public discourse al-mos everyone was amiliar wih. Wha do

we have o lose by quesioning and invesi-gaing claims o crazy conspiracy heoriss,ha weaher can or will be manuacured andpossibly conrolled by miliary and govern-

ing orces? Wha do we have o lose by noquesioning he realiies and poenialiieso weaher conrol in he hands o classiedmiliary research and applicaions, and he

corporae privaized parnerships ha pro-duce hese capabiliies?

How do we begin alking abou he his-orical and conemporary realiies o weah-er conrol and modicaion in a way hadoesn rely on ear and ignorance? Howdo we hink abou weaher modicaion in

way ha garners capabiliies or large-scaleransnaional public discussions abou heuure o he plane and is weaher and wa-er sysems? Wha will i ake or us o sarlooking up, up ino he sky and up ino heranks researching, modiying, paening, andprivaizing waer and weaher? Will we needour homes ooded or orn apar by sorms?

Will we need o become hirsier or he dis-appearing waer ables han or our oversized

homes and high deniion elevision ses?Conspiracy heoriss claim ha i is pos-

sible o creae and seer (inenionally direc)super sorms, as well as induce earhquakes

by he use o ionospheric heaers. Wheheror no i is in he business o producing su-per sorms, such an ionospheric heaer ex-iss, locaed in Gakona, Alaska, and owned

by he Deparmen o Deense. e HighFrequency Acive Auroral esearch Program(HAAP) publicly claims isel as an iono-spheric research cener, beaming millions o

wats o elecriciy ino he earhs ionosphereo research high requency long-disance ra-dio waves used in everyday applicaions suchas GPS and rans-oceanic communicaions



22/6522

sysems. e ionosphere is a layer o heEarhs amosphere which proecs he planerom solar radiaion.

eories abou HAAP, ranging romspeculaions abou mind conrol, earh-quakes, and amospheric weaher, are ram-pan on he Inerne. Conspiracy heoriss

believe ha HAAP may be used in he pro-ducion o hurricanes because o he relaion-ship beween ionizaion and elecricaion ohe amosphere and sorm producion. Some

claim ha by beaming millions o wats oelecriciy ino he ionosphere, Deparmeno Deense scieniss are atemping o mimicsolar aresand ha solar ares have he ca-

pabiliy o cause exreme weaher evens. Acommon heory argues ha chemrails are acomponen o HAAP research, and conainmeal paricles ha enhance elecriciy in heamosphere.

HAAP-induced sorms have been imag-ined as weapons o war and direced disaserha can be used or social conrol and eco-nomic gain (or example hrough he projeco rebuilding). While he idea may seem un-

believable, i may be more useul o ocus onpoenial uses and applicaions o such ech-nology, raher han is unimaginabiliy. Noone could have imagined he aomic bombor he invenion o plasics unil hey wereindeed imagined and produced. We alreadyknow ha cloud seeding was used in he

Vienam War o induce ooding, ha placesin Iraq were bombed by he U.S and is alliesand hen laer rebuil by aliaed corpora-ions, and ha major naural disasers have

been produced by genricaion and orcedmigraion. As he amosphere and is waersysems become increasingly privaizedwo domains which humans have never in-habied, bu which all lie absoluely dependsuponwe will have o grapple wih how ocreae public discourse which will srive odemocraize geoengineering o miigae heeecs o climae change.

I is sarling how much researchers andgovernmens have ried o do o gain conrolover he weaher, in documened, public ac.

WOLD OF WEAHECRF


23/6523

Cloud seeding, he pracice o injecing ma-erials such as dry ice or sodium chloride inoa cloud o induce precipiaion, has been ak-en up as a way o increase and conrol rain-

all, and o abae og and hail. As James Flem-ing describes in Te Climae Engineers, duringhe early years o he Cold War i was hopedha cloud seeding could be used surrepi-iously o release he violence o he amo-sphere agains an enemy, ame he winds inhe service o an all-weaher air orce, or, ona larger scale, perhaps disrup (or improve)he agriculural economy o naions and aler

he global climae or sraegic purposes. In-deed, cloud seeding was used beween 1967and 1972 in a program known as OperaionPOPEYE. A an annual cos o $3.6 million,he Deparmen o Deense worked o in-duce rain over he Ho Chi Minh rail, wihhe goal o reducing Vie Cong mobiliy.

In 1976, aer he leaking o he Penagon

Papers and he revelaion o Operaion POP-EYE, he U.N. General Assembly passed heConvenion on he Prohibiion o Miliaryor Any Oher Hosile Use o EnvironmenalModicaion echniques o prohibi anyechnique or changinghrough he delib-erae manipulaion o naural processeshedynamics, composiion or srucure o heEarh, including is bioa, lihosphere, hydro-

sphere and amosphere, or o ouer space.Despie his, a sudy compiled or he U.S.

Air Force in he mid-1990s, iled Weaheras a Force Muliplier: Owning he Weaherin 2025, suggess ha he U.S. miliary hasa poenially ongoing ineres in conrollinghe weaher. is weaher conrol repor is

a 44-page chaper o he nearly 3,300-pageAir Force 2025, a research projec asked byhe Air Force chie o sa o ideniy heconceps, capabiliies, and echnologies he

Unied Saes will require o remain he dom-inan air and space orce in he 21s cenury.I saes ha he UN resoluion has nohaled he pursui o weaher-modicaionresearch bu insead produced a primaryocus on suppressive versus inensicaionaciviies. Owning he Weaher proposednumerous applicaions or weaher modica-ion o subdue and manipulae enemy orces

as well as o enhance oensive acics in com-ba. e repor describes weaher modica-ion as a high-risk, high-reward endeavor,oering a dilemma no unlike he splitingo he aom.

I he miliarys ar-eched dreams camerue, weaher conrol would have dangerouslyani-democraic implicaions ar beyond he

batleeld. I rain and drough can be con-rolled and regulaed, commodiy markespeculaion on prices o whea, corn, co-on, soy and many oher crops can be urhermanipulaed. is could have urher eecson he price speculaion o bee, pork, oils,and oher producs. I he weaher can bemodied, so oo can waer supplies, and wihhem, he basis or all lie on earh.

Look up, look around and look oen.James Fleming asks, I, as hisory shows,anasies o weaher and climae conrol havechiey served commercial and miliary iner-ess, why should we expec he uure o bedieren? A imes, i seems dicul o ex-pec a uure a all. n



24/6524


25/6525

Aprs Nous, le Dlugeby GEY CANAVAN

From our stories, youd think we were ending the world

ANYONE WHO HAS sudied creaive wri-ing has probably come across he paheic al-lacy, he prohibiion agains reecing yourcharacers emoional sae in his or her sur-roundings. (Our hero, devasaed by he break-up, walks home alone in he dark, as lighning

cracks, and i begins o rain) e paheicallacy is sricly orbidden. Is cheap, even ii was good enough or Shakespeare; in heseenlighened imes we know how absoluelyindieren he world is o our eelings andour pety sruggles. Indeed, he uninchingrecogniion o his indierence is arguablyhe dening characerisic o he modernage: We have physical mechanisms and au-omaic naural processes where earlier ages

had riual sacrice, angry gods, and sympa-heic magic. All violen eelings have hesame eec, wries John uskin, who coinedhe erm paheic allacy in his 1856 Modern

Painers; ey produce in us a alseness inall our impressions o exernal hings. eruh, o course, is ha he exernal worlddoesn care i were happy or sad. I doesncare abou us a all.

So when he mad king is deviled by hesorm in Ac III oKing Lear, we call i ploconrivance. And when he Norheas iscrushed by he second hundred-year-oodin wo years, we call i a remarkable coinci-dence. And when scieniss ell us ha hissor o hing is going o keep happening more


26/6526

and more, as a direc resul o ongoing humanaciviy, we call i science cion. Le hegrea gods / a keep his dreadul pudderoer our heads / Find ou heir enemies now.remble, hou wrech / a has wihin heeundivulgd crimes / Unwhipped o jusice.as ne or an old play, or some summerpopcorn moviebu o course we know he

world can really ake our sins and give hem

orm.In he 19h cenury, when uskin was

warning agains such alse impressions o ex-ernal hings, science cion auhors primar-ily reaced o he radical indierence o henaural world hrough an overarching moodo exisenial dread. In par his is atribuableo he dierence beween Enlighenmenand pos-Enlighenmen science: Where En-lighenmen gures ended o explore he

well-ordered regulariy o naure, he pos-Enlighenmen insead discovers nauresragiliy, is ux. e caasrophism and massexincions a he hear o Darwinian evo-luionary heory, in paricular, produce heunhappy possibiliy ha his ae will some-

day be visied upon human lie as wellandhe discovery o enropy, he propensiy oall hermodynamic sysems on all scales orun down over ime, acually makes his nal

apocalypse a scienic cerainy. egardlesso anyhing we say, do, hink, or eel, some-day he universe will grow cold, he sars willgo ou, and everyhing ha has ever or willever live will be long dead.

Lumping science cion, horror, and an-asy lieraures ino a single hybrid genre hecallsanasika, John Clue wries o how dis-coveries ranging rom evoluion and enropy(in he 19h cenury) o relaiviy, ecology,and quanum mechanics (in he 20h) haverecas he human race no as he privilegedchildren o God bu raher a species clingingo a ball ha may one day spin us o. is is

wha Clue calls he world sorm: he un-ceasing, veriginous pulse o a planeary his-ory propelling us aser and aser owards

ineviable nal ruin. For Clue, horror is hemos vial orm o anasika, because heeeling a anasikas core is always preciselyhe horror o recogniion: I is he ask omodern horror o rend he veil o illusion,o awaken us. Horror (or error) is sigh. .Horror (or error) is wha happens when

you nd ou he uure is rue.Which brings us back o he weaher. Peo-

ple orge ha H.G. Wellss War o he Worlds,published in 1898, is already a climae changesory; he Marians invade Earh becauseheir plane has already begun o grow cool

while ours is sill lush and warm. Bu he en-ropic disaser hey ace will be our ae, oo;he climae crisis ha hreaens heir civili-

GEY CANAVAN


27/6527

zaion is only an anicipaory version o hesecular cooling ha mus someday overakeour plane as well. is chilly vision o heend o he worldechoing he cold wiligh

o he earh in he arhes-ung uure oWellss own ime Machineis repeaed indozens o sories in he pulp era o sciencecion. ese are bleak atemps o resignourselves o he indierence o he universe:an almos neuroic reciaion o hyperbolicspaial and emporal scales ha dwar hehuman lieime and reduce us o a minisculeoonoe on a oonoe on a oonoe. In John

W. Campbells brually enropic Nigh,rom a 1935 issue oAsounding Sories, he

word millions is repeaed over and overagain on a single page, in a kind o obsessive-compulsive rehearsal o cosmic scale: hemillion million million ha had been bornand lived and died in he counless ages be-ore I was born; a housand billion years

beore; he magnicen, proudly sprawlinguniverse I had known, ha ung isel acrossa million million ligh years, ha ung radianenergy hrough space by he millions o mil-lions o ons wasgone. In Na SchachnersAs he Sun Dies, published in he samemagazine ha same year, he bleary-eyedlas survivors o he human race nd hem-selves buried oreverunder millions o onso ice, atached irresis-ibly o a whirling, rozenorb, doomed o circleeernally around a smalldim sar hrough deph-less space. One can nd

he same hopeless, rozen uure porrayedin Henry Kirkhams e End o ime, G.Peyon Werenbakers e Coming o heIce, Amelia Long eynoldss Omega, and

many more besidesand his is jus he iceages, beore we even come o he planearycollisions, supernovae, superviruses, and ex-radimensional cosmic accidens ha wipeou humaniy in dozens more.

In his respec he mad, hopeless predica-men inauguraed by he developmen o heaom bomb comes as somehing o a per-

verse relie; i nohing else, i reurns o hehuman race agency over is own desrucion.In he amous nal scene o 1968s Plane ohe Apes we nd Charleon Hesons asro-nau-hero, housands o years in he uure,discovering a hal-sunk Saue o Libery inhe deser: We nally really did i. You mani-acs! You blew i up! Waching he lm odayone hinks no o nuclear war bu o climae

change. And wha has happened, in ac, is ex-acly climae change: he implied nuclear waroApes has ransormed he biome, urningNew York Ciy ino a deser. As John Becknoes o he scene: Par o he disoriena-ing eec [is] having he quinessenial icono New York Ciy planed in wha is clearly aPacic environmen. e Wes uncions

in he lm as a visiono he pos-caasropheEas: aer he apoca-lypse, New York willlook like Arizona andCaliorniahe Eas

will look like he Wesalready looks: blased,

APES NOUS, LE DELUGE

These are bleakattempts to resign

ourselves


28/6528

inhospiable, and inhabied by he groesqueaer-eecs o a horrible bu unahomable

hisory. In he sequel, unbelievably, hingsge even worse; an even more embiteredHeson, morally wounded and having loseveryhing, discovers an inac nuclear su-perweapon capable o desroying he enireplaneand he decides o acivae i. eplane explodes; everyhing dies; he ran-chise goes on or hree more lms.

Our superweapons hreaened o unpre-dicably deonae a any momen in he u-ure, desroying all we have, and ransorm-ing he plane ino a radioacive, deseriedcinder. us he urgen need, expressed by somuch leis science cion o he Cold Warperiod, o oppose more bombs, more wars.Bu, as imohy Moron has noed, he em-

poraliy o climae change, he quinessenialplaneary apocalypse o our momen, is rah-

er dieren: Global warming is like a veryslow nuclear explosion ha nobody even no-ices is happening. as he horriyinghing abou i: is like my childhood nigh-mares came rue, even beore I was born. Inhe unhappy geological epoch o he Anhro-pocenehe name scieniss have proposedor he momen human aciviies begin o berecognizable in he Earhs geological record,he momen visiing aliens or he uuresCockroach sapiens will be able o see scrawledin heir sudies o ice cores and ree rings hahumaniy wuz herehe climae has alwaysalready been changed. e curren, mas-sive disrupions in global climae have beencaused by he cumulaive carbon release o

GEY CANAVAN


29/6529

generaions o people who were long deadbeore he problem was even idenied, aswell as by ongoing release rom he immenseneworks o energy, producion, and dis-

ribuion ha were buil and developed inhe open landscape o ree and unresricedcarbon releasehe neworks on whichconemporary civilizaion now undeniablydepends, bu which nobody ye has any ideahow o replicae in he absence o carbon-

burning ossil uels. Benjamin Kunkel saidi bes: e nighmare, in good nighmareashion, has somehing absurd and nearly in-escapable abou i: eiher we will begin run-ning ou o oil, or we won. a is: eiher

we have Peak Oil, and he enire world su-ers a umuluous, unconrolled ransiion opos-cheap-oil economics, or else heres sillpleny o ossil uels le or us o permanen-ly desroy he global climae hrough conin-ued excess carbon emissions.

Few culural documens depic his mo-men o conronaion wih ecological disas-er more vividly han he opening sequenceo he 1973 overpopulaion disaser lmSoylen Green, which depics a miniaure his-ory o America. We begin wih a quie clas-sical piano score over a sepia-ined monagedepicing 19h cenury setlemen o he

American Wes, in which he wide-open na-ural spaces o he ronier seem o dwar heirhuman inhabians. Busoon somehing beginso change. Suddenlyhere are oo many peo-ple in he rame, hen aroo many people; cars

and hen airplanes begin o appear; ciiesgrow huge. New insrumens ener he musi-cal rack: rumpes, rombones, saxophones;he cacophony begins o speed. Now hu-

mans are dwared no by naure bu by heceaseless replicaion o heir own consumergoodsreplicaing he logic o he assemblyline, he screen becomes lled wih coun-less idenical cars. We see jammed highways,overowing landlls, smog-emiting powerplans, ashes o war, rios, polluion, andgraves. e sequence goes on and on, using

verical pans o give he sense o errible ac-cumulaion, o a pile climbing higher andhigher. Finally we reach he endhe musicslows back o is original piano score, com-

bined wih an ou-o-harmony synhesizer,over a ew sepia-ined images o ha samenaural world in ruin, lled wih rash. eend o he sequence locaes his sie o ruinin he uure; New York, 2022, populaion

40,000,000. Bu o course hese nighmar-ish images are all phoographs rom he lms

presen: he disaser had already happened,even decades ago, i was already oo lae.

As he narraive begins, we see he worldhis crisis has creaed. A loudspeaker an-nouncing which racion o he ciys resi-dens will be allowed o use he srees orhe nex hour, while on he iny V in heaparmen o (again!) Charlon Heson hey

announce ha ree con-sumer choice has beenreplaced wih SoylenGreen, which is a oodin such shor supply hai can only be disrib-


Even decadesago, it was

already too late. . .


30/6530

ued on uesdayscapialisms ree-markeeconomy ulimaely generaing is dialecicalopposie, cenral planning. One characer ex-plains why Soylen Green is necessary:

You know, when I was a kid, ood wasood! Unil our scieniss pollued hesoil... decimaed plan and animal lie.

Why, you could buy mea anywhere.Eggs, hey had. eal buter. Freshletuce in he sores! How can anyhingsurvive in a climae like his? A hea

wave all year long! e greenhouse

eec! Everyhing is burning up!

e ad claims Soylen Green (looking likea brigh green ou cube) is a revoluionaryoodsu harvesed rom plankon rom heoceans o he world, buas anyone whohas ever heard o his lm knowshe ruehorror is ha Soylen Green is really made opeople. American consumerism is orced inhe end o ea even isel.

In conemporary ecological science cionwe nd a sense ha here is nohing le odo bu somehow accommodae ourselvesas bes we can o ongoing and eecivelypermanen caasrophe. In Nausica o heValley o he Wind, a widely loved ecologi-cal anime rom Japanese lmmaker HayaoMiyazaki, he eras o boh green oress andglobal capialism are in he disan pas, losin he miss o housands o years. e legacyo a nal war called he Seven Days o Fireis a snarl o oxic jungles and muan insecs,in he gaps o which scatered human beingssill sruggle o survive. Paolo Bacigalupissories o he uure see heir quasi-humanand non-human proagoniss exploring pol-

lued landscapes in search o new ypes obeauy (i any are possible) in a world whereunchecked capialism has compleely desa-

bilized naure. InDaybreakers, a lierally vam-

piric capialism has run almos compleelyou o blood; inAvaarEarhs las and onlyhope is magic rocks. And in John Brunnersuterly apocalypic Te Sheep Look Upar-guably he bes o hese exs, i only becausei so uninchingly shows us he worsevenhis bare consolaion is denied us as a paradeo ever-worsening environmenal horrorspoisons every aspec o our lives, and yenohing ever changes.

e logical endpoin o such narraivesgeneraes again ha nal posiion on hespecrum o apocalypic possibiliy: heQuie Earh, a plane ha is devoid o humanlie enirely. e negaive charge o he Qui-e Earh is he elegiac anasy o an enirelydead planenow, a murdered planein

which he human species has le behindnohing bu deah beore nally killing evenisel. We wach such shows or enerain-men: Lie Aer People, Te World WihouUs, Aermah, Te Fuure Is Wild. Boh erryGilliams welve Monkeys and Margare A-

woods Oryx and Crake see humaniy delib-eraely murdered by mad scieniss in hename o saving he res o he plane beorei is oo lae; in WALL-Ea movie markeedo children!he world capialism makes isa oal loss, bes le or he cockroaches andhe robos; ese blighed visions o ruined,empy worlds recalland ransormPercyBysshe Shelleys 1818 poem Ozymandiasas an anicipaory memory o Earhs barren,

GEY CANAVAN


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ruined uure. In he deser o a disan landsands he oppled monumen o he arroganking o a los civilizaion ha believed bohhe and i o be immoral. Bu only he headand legs remain, hal-sunk in he deser, like

Apess Libery; all else has urned o dus. elone and level sands ha round he decay

o ha colossal wreck, once he hriving ci-ies and once-verdan landscapes o Ozyman-diass empire, have been erased by oalizingdesericaion ha, in he presen momen,now ineviably suggess o us he bleak end-poin o global climae change. Bu o course,climae change is he oal package, giving usno jus desers bu all our anasic imagined

weaher apocalypses simulaneously: oods

or he coass, desers or he breadbaskes,wildres or he oress, ice or a pos-Gul-Sream Europe. Look upon our works, ye Pa-heic Fallacy, and despair. ell me again heexernal world doesn noice us.

When we conemplae ruins, Chriso-pher Woodward has said, we conemplae

our own uure. e apocalypse is herebyransormed ino a memory, an even whichis ye o come bu which has also somehow,paradoxically, already happened. Behind

he endless, neuroic rehearsal o he debaeover wheher or no climae change is reallurks he much more depressed sense hai doesn even mater eiher wayeven inhe increasingly unlikely even heres ime,

we sill won ac o save ourselves. reemonhs aer Hurricane Sandy, eigh yearsaer Hurricane Karina, 25 years aer JamesHansen esied beore Congress, 40 years

aer he developmen o a scienic consen-sus around global warming in he 1970s, 70

years aer climae models in he 1950s rsbegan o poin o he problem, 107 years a-er Svane Arrhenius rs modeled he green-house eec in 1896, we sill si and wai osee wha happens. Is as i weve been prac-icing he end o everyhing or so long were

relieved, or even exhilaraed, o see i nallybecome real. e marke has spoken, and hemedia, and he voers: well coninue o donohing, eagerly surrender o our collecivedeah drive, reely auhor our own collapse.Perhaps Lear would have hough i all a bioo on-he-nosebu now our suicidal urg-es and our selshness and our sickening dis-regard or he uure come back o us as hur-

ricanes and hea-waves. Le a housand sci-ence cional panoramas bloom: he Saueo Libery rozen over, oppled in he sand,neck-deep in waer. Hollywood on re. exascracked wih drough. Hundred-year sormsevery oher year.Aprs nous, la glace, le eu, ledser, le dluge. n



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33/6533

Climate Changedby SEPHANIE BENHAD

A warmed globe needs new writers to guide us through it

I WOULDN SUPISE me a bi i, a de-cade or wo rom now, some prominen nov-elis or culural asemaker were o amend

Virginia Wool s iconic 1923 claim Onor abou December, 1910, human characerchanged o somehing like On or abouNovember, 2012, he climae changed. Cer-ainly near-uure noveliss will eaure herelaionship beween humans and he envi-ronmen more cenrally han do mos cur-ren wriers. e seas are rising and he sea-sons are unraveling: I is ineviable ha ourcional landscapes will evolve in andem

wih our physical landscapes. Indeed, as ourclimae becomes ever less cerain and morehosile, we migh expec our cion o sar

resembling he highly ironic, world-wearyworks ha emerged rom Wool s war-srick-en generaion.

Wool s rankly arbirary choice o lae1910 as he urning poin in social hisoryis mos sriking or is lack o connecion o

World War I, which eruped in July 1914.Her earlier dae is linked mos commonlyo 1910s London ar exhibi Mane andhe Pos-Impressioniss, which inroducedGauguin, Van Gogh, and Picasso o hesodgy Briish and, presumably, knocked heaesheics o Modernism ino hem. Expo-sure o new ar, apparenly, proved poenenough o aler characer. My own predic-ion ha November 2012 will be considered


34/6534

a culural milesone momen is more direc:Hurricane Sandy hi.

Well, echnically he sorm ouched downin Ocober. Bu i was November beore we

began o comprehend he ull exen o ood-ing damage; November beore all he deahs

were couned; November beore power sar-ed o icker back on in coasal communiies;November beore he New York Ciy subwaysysem shu down or only he secondime in is cenury-long hisory began orun again. I was November when New YorkMayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed Obamaor presiden on he grounds ha he incum-

ben was more likely o ake acion in com-baing climae change, and November whenBloomberg sared alking seriously abou

building a levee or he ciy. In November(and December), he Inerne grew crowded

wih aricles abou he newly plausible de-mise o New York, and he graphics rom Al

Gores 2006 lm An Inconvenien ruhdepicing a submerged Manhatan sared oseem less anasical.

In Wools era, as in ours, change was sir-ring long beore he perceived momen oransormaion. Modernis ar and lieraure,or example, sared o hrive on he Euro-pean coninen rom he lae 19h cenuryon. In he 21s cenury, we have had plenyo warnings ha climae change is occurring,and quickly. Monhs beore Sandy began oorm in he Caribbean, we knew ha 2012

would go down as he hotes year recordedin American hisory. In March, housandso daily-high emperaures were broken in areak hea wave; over he summer, housands

more all-ime high emperaures were bro-ken in ciies across he counry. e plainsparched in a massive drough, killing hecounrys corn; he Wes burned in record-

seting res, desroying some o is oldesrees. Bu even hough i only aeced heNorheas, no caasrophic weaher evenhis year really urned our collecive head un-il Sandy.

Some boilerplae qualiying is probablynecessary a his juncure: Yes, even hosescieniss who agree humans are causing heclimae o change (namely, all o hem) havegenerally rerained rom atribuing specic

weaher evens o climae change. is cau-ious reserve is in he process o melingaway, as climae scieniss begin o analyzehe likelihood o recen exreme weaherevens wih or wihou he inuence o hu-man-induced climae change (hin: hey aremany imes more likely o occur wih his

inuence). Sill, i is imporan o inerprecurren weaher soberly and predic uure

weaher calmly, despie all indicaions hawe should panic and run or inland Canada.

u

Conemporary, pre-November 2012 cionwriers cerainly approach climae change inheir work wih ar more cauion, reserve, andsilence han do he scieniss who are sudy-ing is uure eecs. is is less rue o specu-laive noveliss: Wriers o science cion andanasy such as Margare Awood, Mathew

CLIMAE CHANGED


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SEPHANIE BENHAD

Sharpe, and James Howard Kunsler havebeen direcing heir energies oward an imag-ined climae apocalypse or some ime. Bunon-speculaive wriers, who haven ye had

access o acual apocalypse, end o menionweaher issues obliquely, as a angen romheir primary issues, or as one ingredien inhe subsrae ha eeds a characers generalsense o anxiey and unease.

Consider, or example, he inernal mu-erings o Julius, narraor o eju Coles ac-claimed rs novel, Open Ciy

I had my recurren worry abouhow warm i had been all seasonlong. Alhough I did no enjoy hecold seasons a heir mos inense,I had come o agree ha here

was a righness abou hem, hahere was a naural order in suchhings. e absence o his order,he absence o cold when i ough

o be cold, was somehing I nowsensed as a sudden discomor.

Weaher-relaed houghs recur a ew imesin Coles novel: Julius menions his ears onceseveral pages beore his passage and againseveral chapers laer. Bu weaher is jusone o many worries ha causes him dis-comor, alongside hisory, amily, riends,psychiaric paiens, New Yorks (non-cli-mae-cenric) u-ure, bedbugs, and,o course, moral-iy. As in Americanand global poliics,climae change in

Open Ciy is alloted ar ewer words andhereore signicance han issues whosepsychic payo is more immediae and whoseurgency is more obvious. Julius, i seems, can

resolve his sudden discomor simply bygoing indoors.

He is also horried by people like me, whorelenlessly atribue odd weaher o climaechange even aer admiting scienic igno-rance. Aer elaboraing on his personal con-cerns, Julius explains ha while he isn heskepic hed once been, he reuses o accepany jumping o conclusions eiher: Global

warming was a ac, bu ha did no mean iwas he explanaion or why a given day waswarm. I was careless hinking o draw helink oo easily, an invasion o ashionablepoliics ino wha should be he ironclad pre-cincs o science.

Julius is narraing rom 2006, when we hadsomewha less evidence o eiher he sci-

enic or he anecdoal variey ha symp-oms o climae change were maniesing allaround us. In he 2011 novel, climae changeis sill a debae, sill an enigma, sill a polii-cal ashion ha migh be worn o achieve acerain eec bu can be discarded jus as eas-ily. I is sill a secondary or eriary concernha needn be atended o unil urher no-ice. Julius ears ha by noicing November

warmh (or he nigh narraed is in Novem-ber) he is himsel becomingwha he calls a climae over-inerpreer, a careless hink-er ignoran o science.

I migh have been easyenough, in 2006, o over-

Writers tend tomention weatherissues obliquely


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inerpre weaher evens in he emperaeconinenal Unied Saes, bu in some parso he world he maniesaions o climaechange had already slipped rom overiner-

preed o overdeermined. Such is he casein Alexis M. Smihs slender debu novel Gla-ciers, in which proagonis Isabels yearningor a connecion o he pas via vinage ob-

jecs nds a parallel in he slow deah o heeponymous glaciers she loved as a child. enovel isel is se in Porland, Oregon, buakes requen remembered rips back o he

Alaska o Isabels childhood. Early on in henarraive, or example, Isabel imagines a lae-20h-cenury erry crossing rom Washing-on Sae o Alaska. Wha she eels should bea unereal sigh is or mos passengers merelya specacle: e erry slowed where a mas-sive glacier me he ocean; a long, low crack-ing announced he rupure o ice rom gla-cier; hen came he slow lunge o he ice ino

he sea. ere were shous o appreciaionand ear, bu nohing like grie, no even or-dinary sadness.

e sudden discomor o Coles Juliusis here iniced on he glacier, providing on-lookers a concree piece o evidence on heeecs o climae change. aher han simplyeeling warmer air (eeling ha leas re-cordable, leas reproducible o he senses),he people one he boa can hearhe long,low cracking o climae change, can see isslow lunge, can corroborae each ohersaccouns o he even. ey have he mae-rial o ell a sory abou he presen-day real-iy o he phenomenon. Bu he erry-goersunderinerpre he even hey winess: hey

experience he calving wihou relaing i olong-erm human-induced climae change.e narraor is orced o sep in o remind usha we are experiencing a deah.

Bu Isabels melancholic nosalgia is ashinly spread as Juliuss highbrow nervous-ness: She is as likely o apply i o a vinageapron or an old poscard as o a dying glacier.e day o her lie ha shapes he novel isull o ea and her library work and vinagedresses and a all/dark/silen love ineres;he pligh o he glaciers necessarily pales incomparison o he micro-dramas o quoid-

CLIMAE CHANGED


37/6537

ian exisence.Indeed, Isabel makes a conscious eor

o avoid hinking abou climae change. Welearn ha her aher, a rusraed musician,

worked in Alaskas oilelds and was injuredhere. By employing her characer in hisecologically-charged rade, Smih seems o

be saying ha we humans are all implicaed,all a par o his environmenal mess. Isabelsresponse o he enormiy o he problem isconscious blindness: Isabel canno readmagazine aricles or books abou he Norh.She canno wach he naure programs abouhe migraions o birds and mammals dwin-dling, he sea ice hinning, and he erosiono he islands. How can his young woman,

whose livelihood has her mending abusedlibrary books all day, urn her back on anabused ecosysem? e obvious answer isha she is oo sensiive o cope wih realiyand hereore chooses o ignore i. e de-

cline o he Arcic exiss on he same plane oemoional imporance as he sad ae o hergrea-grandmohers house. e poin, in hisconex, is no ha Isabel ails as a characer

because she neglecs o sign up or he nexKeysone pipeline proes. e ailures areo he world around her: She sill inhabis amomen in which i is possible o ignore cli-mae change in day-o-day lie. On or abouNovember, 2012, ha world vanished.

u

Wool s choice o place her urning-poinmomen hree and a hal years beore World

War I, surely he even ha shocked he Eu-ropean psyche ino moderniy more sud-denly and eecively han any oher, perhapsindicaes a belie ha human characer would

have changed dramaically even i here hadbeen no war.

And perhaps our uure novelis will beasked why he or she les jus go wih he seleced November 2012 as he ippingpoin in climae hisory, when HurricaneSandy killed only a measly couple hundredpeople, and no, say, he European hea waveo 2003 (approx. 70,000 dead), or Karinain 2005 (approx. 1800 dead), or perhaps oh, I don know he Norh Americanhea wave o 2016 (approx. 200,000 dead;Phoenix abandoned) or Hurricane Henryin 2019 (approx. 3500 dead, Virginia Beachabandoned). Our novelis will have o admiha he is rom he Eas Coas o he UniedSaes, perhaps even lived in New York or a

ime. His choice, like Wools, is personal.Perhaps hell say he wans o correc he

visions ha pre-2012 noveliss presened oNew York Ciys uure. In Super Sad rue

Love Sory, or example, Gary Sheyngarpains a bleak picure o a ciy whose culurehas dissipaed and power aded, bu whoseprimary hreas are Chinese money and heU.S. governmen, no is own waerways.Sure, he eckless narraor, Lenny, has o deal

wih siing June hea, bu his auumn is ap-propriaely blusery and he Saen IslandFerry is uncioning wihou weaher iner-rupions.

Or maybe our novelis will reer o he near-uure nale o Jennier Egans Pulizer-prize

SEPHANIE BENHAD


38/6538

winning novelA Visi om he Goon Squad,which akes a more direc sab a New Yorkand climae change. In Egans uure universe,myserious warming-relaed adjusmens

o Earhs orbi had shorened winer days;a February day was unseasonably warm:eighy-nine degrees and dry; and he rees,

which had bloomed in January, were now inenaive lea. All good so ar; all apocalyp-ic enough (or realisic enough, our novelismigh say, erriyingly) o se he one Egan

wans.Bu Egan couldn have known how cli-

mae change would aec Lower Manhatanin 2012, and her porrayal o he neighbor-hood unorunaely desroys he novels illu-sion o realiy or our novelis. She ses herFebruary concer, he climax o he novel, in2020s Lower Manhatan, choosing he loca-ion presumably o evoke 9/11 and herebyap ino Americas culural memory. Indeed,

or her characer Alex he weigh o whahad happened here more han weny yearsago was sill ainly presen, deecable asa sound jus ou o earsho, he vibraiono an old disurbance. Bu wha abou heLower Manhatan disurbances caused

by Hurricane Sandyen years beore Alexs2020s visi, our novelis

wans o know? Mucho his concree junglesill lacked power or

weeks aer he sorm,and much o is reail re-mained closed, and ciyconsrucion workers ar

ounumbered bankers and lawyers in busi-ness suis, and everyhing smelled like diry

waer.And wha abou he even-more-desruc-

ive hurricanes ha ollowed Sandy?Our uure novelis doesn really wrie like

Egan or Sheyngar, nor like Smih or Cole.His echnique has much more in common

wih Hemingways, or Elios, or any numbero younger wriers who emerged rom heGrea War alive and hungry or lierary recog-niion, Wool among hem. Human charac-er migh have changed in 1910, bu Wools

wriing syle didn change unil World War Iended: Her wo prewar novels are prim andradiional; her rs poswar novel, Jacobs

Room, marks he beginning o her decades-long experimen wih lierary orm. is nov-el does somehing quinessenially poswar:I wries all he way around Jacob, he ilecharacer who is doomed o die on a World

War I batleeld, and all he way aroundWorld War I, wihou ever acually wriinghem. Wools winding senences have litleobviously in common wih Hemingways a-mously clipped specimens, bu Hemingway

would soon employ a similar echnique inwriing abou war: sup-plying only he sparesdeails and allowing hereader o ll in he res.

Wool and Heming-way could omi key de-ails because a criicalmass o heir readershad all suered hroughhe same hardships: he

CLIMAE CHANGED

Literature willbear the burdenof witnessing our

cultural response toclimate change


39/6539

ear and loss inheren in any war, he horrorand despair inheren in winessing he warha mechanized mass slaugher. A seem-ingly harmless word or phrase in heir cion

Wools Jacob shares he surname Flan-ders wih he inamously bloody batles, orexample could evoke a orren o under-sanding rom conemporaneous readers.Moderniy and is poenial or innie de-srucion (a poenial o be esed severely in20h cenury warare) had aken hold. ere

was no revering o prewar ignorance.e uure novelis has access o a simi-

lar collecive suering, one whose ounda-ion isn all ha dieren rom he one haormed in he las cenury. As weaher disas-ers increase in requency and severiy, anever higher percenage o he global humanpopulaion will experience lie-hreaening

weaher condiions, will lose homes and live-lihoods, will lose amily and riends o cli-

mae. Gradually, we as a species will lose aihin he Earhs abiliy o suppor our civiliza-ions and lives. e world will sar o lookas hideous and hopeless as i did o Elio in1922 when he wroe e Wase Land, andmany pars o he world will ruly be haparched or drenched.

When words like hurricane and oodand re and drough have urned ho

enough o burn anyone who hears hem ho as he word war was in 1922

well need noveliss o navigae around andhrough hem wih an ironic deachmenreminiscen o Modernis cion. Well neednoveliss o show us, in oher words, how werespond o a world rapidly becoming even

less cerain and sable han i already hadbeen.

is all sounds raher grim. Id preer oend on a noe o hope, bu here is no de-

nying ha he changing climae is going omake all o our lives harder and less predic-able over he coming decades. Jus as here

was no un-invening he machine gun, hereis no un-polluing he amosphere a leasno in such a way ha he people o his gen-eraion and he nex couple dozen won beaeced.

Lieraure will bear he burden o winess-

ing and processing our culural response ohe ravages o climae change, and hese rav-ages will soon be ubiquious enough hanoveliss will make hem a cenral concern.

Works ha oreron climae change are jusnow emerging in he American mainsream.is summers gorgeous lm Beass o heSouhern Wild is one example; Barbara King-

solvers jus-released novel Fligh Behavior isanoher. Many more examples will ollow. Iwill become impossible or non-speculaivenovels o ignore climae change because dra-maic weaher evens will necessarily aecheir characers lives. I will even become di-cul or novels o ignore climae or a hun-dred pages a a leap, like Coles and Smihs.

As our experience o climae change pro-

ceeds rom scienic observaion and predic-ion o he lived realiy o requen weaherdisasers, climae lieraure o he uure willlook increasingly like war lieraure rom hepas. Is cenral concern will be so obviousand so painully known o readers ha i willhardly need o be named. n

SEPHANIE BENHAD


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41/6541

Humid, All Too Humidby COSMO BJOKENHEIM andA.M. GITLIZ

On the meteorology of morals

When a real sorm cloud hunders abovehim, [e aional Man] wraps himsel inhis cloak, and wih slow seps he walks rom

beneah i.Niezsche,

On ruh and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense

IN PE-ENLIGHENMEN Europe, onlyGod had he power o ransorm he world;hen, we learned, i was Man. In he las 10

years, he global consciousness has shiedonce again: now he Earh isel is he ageno global change. Humaniy, wih is arse-nal o nuclear weapons and ready-o-revol

workers has been sripped o is power andnow sis as a helpless specaor, alongside

God, o he big-budge disaser ick ha ishe conemporary news cycle.

is nighmare was no how his cenurywas o proceedwe were se or a dierenone. Specacular errorism was o be our dai-ly armaion o helplessness. How litle weexpeced ha our plane isel would be a armore bloodhirsy bin Ladeneven moreirraional and unorgiving han ha dark wiz-ard o he caves. I was as i, in he aermaho Hurricane Karina, he cabalisic Bushadminisraion were recas as advenurersin some overly ambiious caroon wih hewis ending ha hey were aer he wrong

villain all alongi was our beloved MoherEarh, angered by decades o unabaed in-


42/6542

dusry, who sough vengeance on us hubris-ic morals in Lovecraian reckoning.

How do we proceed now ha we are a hemercy o his unbeaable oe? Are we o ake

hippie pseudo-scieniss and Greenpeaceaciviss as our new culural prophes? Why,aer all, should we sneer a he orward-hinking sraegies o green energy, carbonoses, and he reducion o individual oo-prins, when we old radicals have no betersoluion or he undeniable impending blowo Gaias hammer? Maybe a beter quesiono ask ourselves is no how much disaser weshould endure, bu how hese disasers have

been olded ino myhs ha jusiy he obedi-ence o humaniy.

Hurricane Sandy was described as ahrea, a challenge, and a lesson. eprimary aecs occasioned by i were anxieyand irriaion, because he specacular newsmedia old us o expec inconvenience, rus-

raion, and discomor rom he high windsand rain. You may no need a weahermano know which way he wind blows, bu youmigh need one o ell you ha i sucks.

A Big Sorm equires Big Governmen,headlined an op-ed piece in he New Yorkimes rom Ocober 29, celebraing FEMAagains omneys campaign rail exhora-ions o privaize disaser relie. Ye here isalready no shorage o deluxe survival kisand premium amilycooking kis whose ad-

verisemens read likeunwiting parodies o1950s nuclear holocausdomesic idylls, wih

smiling dads charbroiling ribs in a pouredconcree oxhole 35 ee below he lawn. eprospec o chaos is a anasic resource bohor he legiimacy o he sae and or privae

enerprise. e label disaser indusry hasalready been applied o humaniarian agen-cies and relie organizaions ha addressamines as naural phenomena raher han aselemens o poliical and economic sraegy.

Aer all, rom he perspecive o enerprise.wha does a amine represen bu a massivedemand o be me wih a massive supply?

e narraive ha pis humaniy as suchagains an immense and obscure anagonisseems all oo amiliar. e weaher has be-come a sand-in or he naion-saes essen-ial enacmen o he riend/enemy disinc-ion. Is army o science bureaucras is harda work jusiying how we ough o combaour oe: appeasemen, or heavier atack.e meeorological-indusrial complex sees

pros in longer summers and a newoundshipping roue hrough he arcic, while heGreen le snis elecoral poenial in wih-drawing roops rom he heaers o ecologi-cal desrucion, only o redeploy hem aseco-peacekeepers. Worse sill, hese seem o

be our only choiceseven he Green move-mens Bakunin, Derrick Jensen, avors work-ing wihin his dynamic (going so ar as oorm an alliance wih he FBI) in order o

preserve he sanciy osalmon runs.

We are in danger,o be sure, bu scienceand new-age heolo-gies will do us no good.

HUMID, ALL OO HUMID

Whose sidewas Hurricane

Sandy on?


43/6543

As Niezsche pus i in Human, All oo Hu-man: Even i exisence o [he Meaphysical

World] were never so well demonsraed, iis cerain ha knowledge o i would be mos

useless o all knowledge: more useless evenhan knowledge o he chemical composiiono waer mus be o he sailor in danger o ashipwreck. (HH 9) I is no, aer all, hedamage ha has been done o amosphericlayers, nor he glaciers and heir bears hashould concern us when he wards o NewOrleans or he ockaways are ooded andhe army is dispached o proec he surviv-ing commodiiesi is he sum o our prac-ices hemselves, our bloody hisory o al-

ways hrusing he poor and working classeso he ore o every batle.

In his case he ron is a batle agains eco-logical resricion, and he renches are low-lying coasal areas. Are we big-heared con-sumers prepared o separae our recyclables,

reduce our carbon ooprin, and ake shorershowers or he war eor? Are we preparedor 150,000,000 o die in Bangladesh when

we le he waer run a momen oo long? Ah,i will be a ragedy, bu a leas he guil haresuls rom i will be equally disribuedamong all us selsh consumers. Who were

we o abricae plasic and burn he Jurassicscadavers? e hird world is a mass grave weall dig wih each so drink we suck dry.

Bu his war propaganda is already wearinghin. How was i, again, ha he equally dev-asaing sunamis and Earhquakes in Japan,ailand, Chile, Pakisan, Haii, ec. were heresul o global warming? Only pseudoscien-iss have answers, which are abou as com-

pelling as religious anaicism. And hosecondemned Bangladeshis, how could hey

be so oolish as o no atemp an escape romheir shallow prison? e giganic wall a he

border wih India provides a ready answer. Isi really he Ozone we need o repair, or hesysem o policymakers and heir armies who

would gladly condemn 150,000,000 o deahraher han risk an ehnic or economic crisisin heir borderlands?

ere is a black cloud hovering over civili-zaion, bu i was no creaed by a secre gov-ernmen saellie, rogue indusrialism, or a

vengeul ores spiri. I is a sense o helpless-ness agains our own impulse o reproduce acommuniy o deah ha has roaed hrough

varying degrees o caasrophe since is in-cepion. e machine begins, he vicimsake heir places, and all avenues o rerea areclosed. e apocalypse is ineviable everywo-bi mysic, environmenalis, or poliical

radical agrees. I is as hough we were rappedin ha wiligh Zone uure where he sun isheaing up and meling he worlda uure,

we discover, dream by a woman in a sunlesspos-apocalypse.

In wha does his dream really consis?Wha does i mean o complain abou heparalyzing hea? o eel indignan owardhe chill ha numbs our ngers? I means,simply, o say no o he world. e aniy

beween his pessimism and all apocalypicnarraives (o he meling polar ice caps, heexas-sized aseroid, or he collapse o globalcapial) is in heir sripping us o poliicalagency. e roskyis who wais or he uni-ed prolearia o seize he governmen ap-

COSMO BJOKENHEIM AND A.M. GITLIZ


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paraus and he Chrisian who wais or hesecond coming are boh doomed o polii-cal impoence. Is here a climacic heavenon earh purged o he original sin o large-scale indusry? e Anhropocene becomesa world o be wished away, and naure is no

he adversary bu raher he orce ha guar-anees his developmen, like God and his-orical necessiy beore i.

While he climae can be a anasic ani-poliical orce ha necessiaes he maximumo worldwide echnocraic governance, he

weaher also reveals oher social conradic-ions. Wha does an ice sorm look like? Inhe penhouse, a cozy bourgeois aernoon

wih ho cider, scened candles, erryclohrobes, and a Neix subscripion. welveoors below, a wanderers rozen hair andscan sheler under scaolding has ready ocollapse. e air in he penhouse eels heavy

wih a lingering Chrisian empahy, season-ing every scone-bie wih a dash o guil. Bu

relaivism comes o he rescue, ree-markereedom-o-choice is cavalry: comor can

be connemen and reezing can be ree-dom, depending on your vanage poin. Weall choose our own liesyleswho am I o

judge someone elses choices? e guil ha

migh accompany an awareness o ones classprivilege is reaed by changing no he ma-erial condiions, bu simply ones atiudeo hem. Any impulse oward communiy ispushed aside by he neoliberal norm o manas an enerpriseone invess in i, one de-

velops i, and i i ails, has a risk one ook.Poliical resignaion in he ace o cosmic

disaser, and he search or universal normsin economic raionaliy: hese win hreasmove o he oreground wih exreme weah-er phenomena. During he blackou caused

by Hurricane Sandy, grocery sores hiking uphe prices o candles and bateries was cyni-cally atribued o he exigencies o ener-prise: eyve go o make a buck, wouldn

HUMID, ALL OO HUMID


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you do he same hing? Meanwhile, eAmerican Securiy Projec responded ohe sorm wih ears ha he eecs o cli-mae change on inrasrucure will no only

be cosly o our naions economy, hey willalso make us less secure as a naion. Herei seems ha mass-indusry and he globalsecuriy regime are pited agains each oh-er, making many wonder i is endency ohrow he climae ino disequilibrium con-ains capialisms negaion. Bu isn i morelikely ha climae change is one o capial-isms inernal limis, he ones i coninuallyprolieraes while including hem in is in-niely expanding axiomaic? Jus as reusableshopping bags and waer botles ough oneexcess o capialism by inroducing anoher,so do renewable energy soluions. While isrue ha China increased is wind elecric-iy generaion a hundredold over he pasen years, i is also currenly building 26 new

nuclear power plans.A possibly auspicious resul o his con-

radicory endency is ha he disasrouseecs o expanding large-scale indusrymigh direcly undermine he echniques osurveillance ha serve capial. During he

blackou caused by Sandys swells, almos allsecuriy echnology below 39h sree wasincapaciaed or several days. Surveillancecameras and alarm sysems were ofine, andhe luxury bouiques, bourgeois penhouses,and gourme groceries were deenseless, saveor he resless searchlighs mouned on heparol cars o New Yorks Swines. Inseado celebraing he emporary disappearanceo all hindrances o he saisacion o heir

maerial desires in a eas o unproduciveconsumpion, he masses ound hemselvesin a double bind. Wih he power ou and hesmarphones dumbed everyhing was per-

mited, so nohing was possible.e imid reacion o Supersorm Sandy

reveals he conservaive atiude ha consi-ues obsessive-compulsive bourgeois sub-

jeciviy; ears o inrusion and he inerrup-ion o rouine paralyzes he populaion, andhe sigh o comaose ascreens gives con-do-dwellers pos-raumaic sress disorder.e only nominally revoluionary responserom he organized le, which now calls i-sel Occupy, is o ll in where he Sae ails.ey clean up, aid survivors, and ulimaelyaim o ge devasaed areas back o he poin

where sores and schools can reopen andpeople can ge back o work. e work is ad-mirable, and i goes wihou saying ha hisis wha any human does or a neighbor. Bu

how impossibly ar is his response rom oneha rebuilds he capaciy o neighborhoodsurvival wihou rebuilding he schools and

workplaces? When will we allow ourselves obe ruly devasaed?

Sandy was he gure o an unreachableobjec o desirea vengeul goddess ou odesroy he securiy apparaus and he mosdispossessed rabble alike. Wha are we omake o his? Wha did she wan, and whoseside was she really on? e rick may be oresis his hermeneuic empaion, and askourselves insead: Wha do we wan? Na-ure is no he subjec o hisory any morehan God or he sel-realizing Spiri, bu henagain, who is? n

COSMO BJOKENHEIM AND A.M. GITLIZ


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Not or ProphetbyAMANDA SHAPIO

Whos mad about The Weather Channels original programming?

AS SANDY CHUNED oward AlanicCiy on Oc. 29, 2012, e Weaher Chan-nel was having a very good day. For a ewhours in he early morning, WC was hemos-wached channel on cable: over 2 mil-lion people uned inmore han CNN orFox Newso une ino he whereabous ohe supersorm/rankensorm/pos-ropicalnoreaser. e nework, which is owned byNBC, ook is good orune in sride. In apress release he nex day, WC chairmanand CEO David Kenny said, People had animmediae need or inormaion abou San-dy. We were jus happy hey came o us or i.

Weaher evens like Sandy migh be heonly imes anyone has an immediae need

or e Weaher Channel hese days, andeven hen, is a srong claim. Mos people1

don hink abou he channel much a all,even as heyre using weaher.comWCsonline armor is sel-iled mobile app. Myown impression o he channel was ha i wasa relic, rarely spoted excep or on he o-color, wall-mouned screens o reiremenhomes and Laundromas. Bu, as i urns ou,WC he channel has a regular audience ohardcore ans. And, among hose people, heconsensus is ha somehing has gone erri-

1. And when I say, Mos people, I mean he peoplewho mater o media oules, i.e., 25-54-year-oldsweans o own a lapop and a smarphone and maybesome oher ype o smar device.


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bly, erribly wrong.

ake ormer WC an PiLoad413 (his

Yahoo username):

Wha has happened o heWeaher Channel...my WeaherChannel? Huh? Where he hell isi? Like an sereoypical 85-year-old man in his den, I would wachhe orcass and lisen o hemusic or hours on end. Believei or no I enjoyed seeing heemperaures change and ponder

wheher or no a snowsormis coming our wayNow, we

have our ellow Sorm rackersand Weaher Geeks replaced byhe snoty-voiced dumb broads

wih ake is and merosexualprety boys wih ake ans one

would nd on he oherwiseless-sophisicaed 24-hour newsneworksWho hough hahis would be a good idea ourn my Weaher Channel inoanoher dumb McNews channel?

PiLoad is apoplecic, and hes no alone.

WC has become a poliically correc An-

hropogenic Global Warming inoainmen

blizzard o chaty b.s. which has shoulderedou he channels ormer comprehensive,

useul, helpul hard weaher daa, wries

Jordynne L. And rom Adam L., I no lon-ger wach WC because hey made all hese

annoying & aggravaing changes. I wish i

was like i was back in he early 80s. Androm an anonymous commener: I was 8

when I sared waching, and I have apes o

he weaher channel, and cry when I wach

hem. Wh

tni vol. 12: weather

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