I don’t write primarily about Climate Change. I am not competent. I don’t know why the existence of El Nino makes a cyclone less likely off the coast of Queensland in December and why Cyclone Jasper happens anyway, or why the Jet Stream bounces up and down and why that affects the weather in the south of England where I live. And I don’t stay awake at night thinking about the bee count or wondering whether King Charles being on our side is going to make any difference. I cultivate my garden; I write my books. I confess I’m startled when a primrose chooses to bloom in October, and I worry about strong winds hurling tiles off the roof. And yet more and more the issue of climate change has been creeping into my books; and I suspect this is true of many writers.
I think this is what happens. There’s the writer sitting at her desk about to start a new chapter or a new book or a new poem, when Chicken Little goes screeching past the window: “The Sky is falling! The Sky is falling!” The writer peers through the window and sees that the sky is indeed lower than it was yesterday, and this goes on day after day. In Aesop the Fox (Spinifex, 2018) for instance, I thought I’d have fun playing with the writing of fables. But Sprite (the fabulist from our time who has gone back to Aesop’s times) keeps badgering Aesop with the question: Why didn’t you save the world? Aesop seems to think that in his time the world didn’t need saving. Sprite knows that in her time it definitely does, the fact of global warming impinges on her daily. So then, what can writers do? Shout about it? Explain that we’d be silly not to take action. Bring the situation to everyone’s attention.
In the children’s book, The Antarctic Mission (Tulika, 2020) I was concerned with pointing out that opposites are related. But there are more important things happening in Antarctica than penguins having their colours reversed and the snow turning multicoloured because of a naughty goblin. The four adventurers have to try to deal with the goblin as well as with the more serious problem of global warming.
Shupi’s Choices in Matriarchs, Cows and Epic Villains (forthcoming) was intended primarily to show the absurdity of applying so-called ‘heroic’ norms to twenty-first century lives As usual, the issue of what is happening to our planet crept in. Here’s what Heckle and Grackle, a pair of mynas, have to say about us as a species.
‘The trouble is you don’t know what’s good for you – just like the rest of your species!’ Grackle interrupted.
That startled me. ‘What do you mean like the rest of my species?’ I asked. Perhaps I could get them to change the subject.
Heckle shrugged as though stating the obvious. ‘There’s global destruction going on and you just don’t stop, or even pause. You carry on burning fossil fuels, polluting the air, clogging the oceans and all in the name of progress. You’re insane!’
‘And you’ve sent up a load of space junk to circle the planet!’ Grackle continued.
‘I know about global warming,’ I muttered feebly. ‘We’re doing our best.’
‘No, you’re not!’ they both squawked.
‘Well, what should we do?’
‘Give up being Boss Species, proceed cautiously. AND UNDERSTAND THAT THE UNIVERSE WAS NOT CONSTRUCTED SOLELY FOR YOU!’ Grackle shouted.
She was beyond exasperation. She sounded despairing and that silenced me.
After a while Heckle said more gently, ‘Do you know the story of the Five Monkeys? Well, listen and learn.’
ALAS, POOR MONKEY
Five monkeys, who were whooping it up in the middle of the night, fell into a well. The well was dry, but they were bruised and frightened. They began to blame each other.
‘You led us into this!’ they shouted at the monkey who had fallen in first.
‘You had the torch. If you had pointed it at the ground instead of at the sky, this wouldn’t have happened. And anyway, when you saw me fall, you shouldn’t have followed,’ retorted the first monkey.
And so it went on. By the second day they were hungry and thirsty. They realized they had a problem. They used up that day arguing about the nature of the well, why it had it appeared, and whether it had always been there.
By the third day they understood they had a serious problem. They spent that day arguing about the best solution.
And on the fourth day they agreed on a solution they thought would work. They estimated the depth of the well. They carefully calculated the height of each monkey. And they concluded that if they stood on each other’s shoulders, the monkey on top would be able to leap out and fetch a rope.
This time they argued about who would be on top and who at the bottom. They argued so endlessly that the rains came, and they all drowned.’
‘Let that be a lesson to you!’ Grackle added. As they prepared to leave, they had the self-satisfied look of a pair of myna birds who had done their best to help the benighted.
In The Good-Hearted Gardeners I started out thinking about language: it’s limitations and its power to express, to communicate and to silence others - by not letting them speak, by demeaning their speech, by making one kind of speech supreme over all others. Who had we silenced more than anyone else? The birds and the beasts, whom we were hauling along to destruction along with ourselves. Once they decide to speak to us (and we’re willing to listen), it’s obvious that climate changing is the impending danger that has to be tackled right away. With their help, much is possible. I had fun letting them make money to start the campaign by betting on horse races. These were sure bets because the horses decided who would win.
In the fantasy, they’re successful, but is it relevant to what’s actually going on? The story allows me to show implicitly that the rest of creation also matters. It’s our sense that we are of supreme importance that has made us so destructive. We don’t understand that we are part of an eco-system. Half the time we don’t even understand that other people matter. If a distant island is drowned in the Pacific, it does matter, it matters hugely. “No man is an island...” Moreover, we are only one species among many others.
I can rant on, or write on. I don’t know how much difference a writer can make. But I think that climate change is entering the work of more and more writers because of the Elephant in the room. What elephant? Climate change! And the elephant is growing larger and larger. It focuses the attention.
Internationally acclaimed author Suniti Namjoshi is an important figure in contemporary literature in English. A writer of fables, poetry, satirical fiction, children’s fictions, she has published over 30 titles in India, Australia, Canada and Britain. Born in Mumbai in 1941, she first wrote and published in India, then moved to Canada, and then to a small seaside village in the south-west of England with writer, Gillian Hanscombe. She was recently made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her books include Feminist Fables, Goja, Suki and Aesop the Fox from Spinifex. Her latest book is The Good-Hearted Gardeners (Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2023).
Short story by Neal Stephenson
Anthropocene Magazine is publishing the Climate Parables, a speculative fiction series about what life would be like in the near and distant future if we succeeded in mitigating climate change.
Their latest is Firing Brimstone by Neal Stephenson. With 18 supersonic shots to the stratosphere, the Pina2bo system went fully operational right under the nose of an oblivious world. But would this hand-picked party of global elites back an American tycoon’s audacious scheme to reverse global warming?