immanence

With reality like this, who needs fiction?

It’s from Fort McMurray, last week. Harrowing.

While the impact of such images is undeniable, the debate over whether and how they are related to climate change is a debate the rest of us should not shy away from. Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece in The New Yorker acknowledges that “To raise environmental concerns in the midst of human tragedy is to risk the charge of insensitivity,” but replies that

“to fail to acknowledge the connection is to risk another kind of offense. We are all consumers of oil, not to mention coal and natural gas, which means that we’ve all contributed to the latest inferno. We need to own up to our responsibility, and then we need to do something about it. The fire next time is one that we’ve been warned about, and that we’ve all had a hand in starting.”

It would be different if Fort McMurray were not the epicenter of the extreme oil project.

That said, Blair King makes a good point in arguing that environmentalists need to be careful with the tempting “This is climate change” meme:

“Beating climate change is like preparing for a marathon. It means getting a lot of people on your side and working hard on a day-to-day basis. It means a lot of honest, hard work and that work can’t be faked. You can’t cheat. You have to build that base fairly. You have to tell the truth; make the best case you can and admit when you don’t have all the cards or all the answers. If you try to build that base by misleading the public or stretching the truth then it is like skipping your long runs, on race day you will start out fine but peter out long before the finish.”

Instead, what he advocates is that we “put it a different way”:

“Explain to them that this is a foreshadowing of a future to come under climate change. Right now the worst fire seasons typically follow an El Nino and only come around every 4-5 years. But under a climate change scenario it will be like having an El Nino year every year. We can do the work to avoid this bleak future but need to start taking action now.”

That, I think, is exactly why the image resonates with many of us. It’s a foreshadowing of something that awaits; and as foreshadowing (to the extent that it’s effective), it’s brilliant fiction.

Yes, images like these are “true” and “factual”; they are documentary images. But, as any science studies student knows, facts are only as good as the theories within which their factuality makes sense. Documents are only as valid as the contextualizing narratives that determine their meanings. This means they work as fiction, as literature, as rhetoric and socio-affective construction.

The point is not that this image shows climate change. It’s that it evokes it. Showing assumes a direct, unmediated and untranslated revelation of reality (the sleight of hand that Latour calls “Double Click”). Evocation is always mediated, and the point is to pay attention to the ways in which that mediation happens, is built, can fail (in all manner of ways), and can happen otherwise.