{"id":8751,"date":"2016-05-09T09:24:08","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T14:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8751"},"modified":"2021-06-10T08:53:54","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T13:53:54","slug":"fort-mcmurray-as-fictive-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/05\/09\/fort-mcmurray-as-fictive-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort McMurray as fictive image"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With reality like this, who needs fiction?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i13EDTnoj1w?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s from Fort McMurray, last week. Harrowing.<\/p>\n<p>While the impact of such images is undeniable, the debate over whether and how they are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.climatecentral.org\/news\/climate-context-fort-mcmurray-wildfire-20311\">related to climate change<\/a> is a debate the rest of us should not shy away from. <!--more-->Elizabeth Kolbert&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/fort-mcmurray-and-the-fires-of-climate-change\">piece<\/a> in The New Yorker acknowledges that &#8220;To raise environmental concerns in the midst of human tragedy is to risk the charge of insensitivity,&#8221; but replies that<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">&#8220;to fail to acknowledge the connection is to risk another kind of offense. We\u00a0<em>are <\/em>all consumers of oil, not to mention coal and natural gas, which means that we\u2019ve 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\u2019ve been warned about, and that we\u2019ve all had a hand in starting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It would be different if Fort McMurray were not the epicenter of the extreme oil project.<\/p>\n<p>That said, Blair King makes a good point in <a href=\"https:\/\/achemistinlangley.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/06\/on-fighting-climate-change-running-a-marathon-and-climate-activists-crying-wolf\/\">arguing that<\/a>\u00a0environmentalists need to be careful with the tempting\u00a0&#8220;This is climate change&#8221; meme:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">&#8220;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\u2019t be faked. You can\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Instead, what he advocates is that we &#8220;put it a different way&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That, I think, is exactly why the image resonates with\u00a0many of us. It&#8217;s a foreshadowing of something that awaits; and as foreshadowing (to the extent that it&#8217;s effective), it&#8217;s <em>brilliant fiction<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, images like these are &#8220;true&#8221; and &#8220;factual&#8221;; they are documentary images. But, as any science studies student knows, facts\u00a0are 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.\u00a0This means they work as fiction, as literature, as rhetoric and socio-affective construction.<\/p>\n<p>The point is not that this image <em>shows<\/em> climate change. It&#8217;s that it <em>evokes<\/em> it. <em>Showing<\/em>\u00a0assumes\u00a0a direct, unmediated and untranslated revelation of reality (the sleight of hand that Latour calls &#8220;Double Click&#8221;).\u00a0<em>Evocation<\/em> is always <em>mediated<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With reality like this, who needs fiction? It&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[520594,689354],"tags":[123667,58956,350227,292,350236,16788,350237,23,16878],"class_list":["post-8751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-politics","category-image_nation","tag-anthropocene","tag-climate-denialism","tag-climate-science","tag-environmental-communication","tag-fact","tag-latour","tag-mediation","tag-rhetoric","tag-science-studies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2h9","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1198,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/15\/climate-denialism-as-hysteria\/","url_meta":{"origin":8751,"position":0},"title":"climate denialism as hysteria?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Dipping once again into the public debate around climate change science -- today it's in the responses to MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel's op-ed in the Boston Globe, to which no less than 15 comments were added in the couple of minutes it took me to write these first couple of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ft0p3003d3_00001.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/02\/ft0p3003d3_00001.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8394,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/09\/18\/eco-humanities-glossolalia\/","url_meta":{"origin":8751,"position":1},"title":"Eco-humanities glossolalia","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I've just come across the earliest outline I wrote for the course I'm currently teaching (in its third incarnation), \"Environmental Literature, Arts, and Media.\" The course has also turned into a book project I'm working on, which will be a thematic primer to the environmental arts and humanities.\u00a0Both course and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Academe&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1359,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/26\/the-house-of-cards-house-of-cards\/","url_meta":{"origin":8751,"position":2},"title":"the &#8220;house of cards&#8221; house of cards","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"For all my skepticism toward most \"climate skepticism,\" I find the case of Judith Curry very interesting. This recent post at her blog Climate Etc. repeatedly resorts to metaphors like \"'Alice down the rabbit hole' moments\" and \"bucket[s] of cold water being poured over my head\" to describe her experiences\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"house-of-cards.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/10\/house-of-cards.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1145,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/10\/30\/climate-change-supermodeling\/","url_meta":{"origin":8751,"position":3},"title":"climate change supermodeling?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kdz555JBIwY&hl=en&fs=1& Also published at Indications. Having just written a piece for Environmental Communication about the promises and pitfalls of cognitive science-based approaches to communicating about issues like climate change, I can't help commenting on this video and blog post that arrived this morning on my blog reader from identity campaigning,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/kdz555JBIwY\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7269,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/02\/03\/climate-denials-dark-money-smoke-machine\/","url_meta":{"origin":8751,"position":4},"title":"Climate denial&#8217;s &#8220;dark money&#8221; smoke machine","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Since I was traveling at the time, I failed to note an interesting story that got covered in the science press about the organizational support and funding behind the climate denial movement. As reported in articles in Scientific American, The Guardian, and elsewhere, a recent peer-reviewed study published in Climatic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"SloMoSmokeScreen07-5930","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/02\/SloMoSmokeScreen07-5930-275x139.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12628,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/07\/29\/readings-on-ecofascism-and-far-right-ecologism\/","url_meta":{"origin":8751,"position":5},"title":"Readings on ecofascism and far-right ecologism","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 29, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"While it's easy to overuse the term \"ecofascism,\" applying it to things that don't necessarily deserve it (the debate might be a little like the one I've been following over whether Putinist Russia qualifies as fascist), it's important for anyone involved in environmental issues to have a sense of where\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Eco-culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/EcQmYSeE4rc\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8751"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8753,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8751\/revisions\/8753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}