Authors and global warming: why care and why CLI FI can help raise awareness

The Guardian – 31 May 2013:


Global warning: the rise of ‘cli-fi’
Unlike most science fiction, novels about climate change focus on an immediate and intense threat rather than discovery. By Rodge Glass

Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder is out with a new book, ‘Anna – A fable about the Earth’s climate and environment’. Fiction, in other words, about climate change. Something we haven’t seen much of among international bestsellers til this date. But, when you think about it: Why is that so? Wouldn’t you expect authors, of all people – with their writing skills and visionary minds – to be the first ones to understand that the planet badly needs their contritution to a global Carbon Awareness Campaign?









Obviously not, judging from the answers that two Danish authors gave to the Danish newspaper Information which on 25 February published an article about Gaarder’s new book under the headline ‘The crisis of the Earth also concerns authors and intellectuals’. (Klodens krise angår også forfattere og intellektuelle)



The acclaimed Danish author Ib Michael cannot see why it should be specifically the authors’ responsibility to deal with the climate and environment: “The sole responsibility of the author is to write good books, no matter what it’s about,” he told Information.



I would like to challenge that attitude.



And so would Jostein Gaarder. His new book is so far only available in Norwegian, but Gaarder is not just any author: he has another book out which is translated into 60 languages. 22 years ago, he wrote the bestseller ‘Sophie’s World’ which sold in 40 million copies. In 1995, it was the most sold book in the world.



With some of all the royalties which trickled in on his bank account, Jostein Gaarder and his wife established the environment award, the Sophie Prize, which each year since 1997 has rewarded a person who has made special efforts to create awareness about climate change and the environment, with 100,000 US dollars.



With the new book, Jostein Gaarder simply wants to increase awareness — both among young people and adults — about what climate change and environmental matter is about, he told the Danish newspaper:



“Namely that for the first time in the history of mankind we see, at worst, the contours of a collapse of our civilization. Today, we have an economic system which is on a collision course with what nature can endure.”



“We cannot just keep writing about relationships, about our relationship to one another — which is, of course, what literature is all about these days. We must also write about our relationship with the planet we live on, and we must be consistent in our ethical reflection,” Jostein Gaarder was quoted as saying.



The Danish author Susanne Staun, who was asked for a response to Gaarder’s statement, disagreed. She only wants to deal with issues that she’s passionate about, and she can certainly not see why it should be the authors’ responsibility to inform citizens about climate change and the environment. “If Jostein Gaarder is passionate about climate, he must of course write about that. But he must also allow the rest of us to write about what we are passionate about,” said Susanne Staun, while admitting that among Danish authors there is “a massive black hole” as far as their knowledge about climate change and the environment is concerned.



According to Gaarder, an ignorance of huge dimensions exists among even prominent Norwegian intellectuals. If you ask them a very basic, scientific question such as: “How much have humans increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere since industrialisation took off?”, they don’t know it. “They know nothing!”, Gaarder exclaimed to the Danish journalist of Information, Jørgen Steen Nielsen.



Well, how about the rest of us? Do we know the answer? I didn’t. Do you?



The answer is that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by around 40 percent since humanity began burning off oil, coal and gas.









The two Danish authors’ statements provoked me. Couldn’t help it, half an hour after I had read Jørgen Steen Nielsen’s article, I had to post a long comment below it.



Artists, filmmakers and — sorry to say — not least our dear novelists, authors and writers at all levels and in almost all countries around the world have failed completely in relation to this question of how — or if — we can handle the climate catastrophe that common people only much too slowly are waking up to realise that all of humanity will be facing in just a few years’ time.



The news of four degrees global warming by 2060 — and the consequences of this — are too incomprehensible. And too uncomfortable. Too hard to deal with.



Apparently also for the artists.



Literature plays — or could have played — a very special role here. Authors and artists carry a special responsibility, in my opinion. Much would have looked differently today if an army of artistic and creative talents already a long time ago had begun to play on all keys of their keyboards and use all their specific artistic skills to move us, alert us and give us the inclination to engage in these questions of climate change — if, with both seriousness and humour, with nightmare scenarios as well as ingenious solutions, they had shown the way — if, with commitment and passion, they had thrown themselves into the huge project of visualizing and articulating to the world’s population what kind of future the grown-up generations of today are in the process of creating — or rather: destroying — for our children, grandchildren and future generations — only because of convenience, indolence, laziness, materialism and short-sighted protection of yesterday’s investments in oil-based industry and infrastructure, the jobs related to it, and the share which a good number of those people with political power have in the profits from the extraction of oil, coal and gas.



Jostein Gaarder speaks about the ignorance of Norwegian intellectuals. At the risk of generalising, and solely based on the few authors I know personally, it is my impression that Jostein Gaarder’s statement is absolutely fitting and true in regard to Danish authors just as well.



(I don’t know about other countries… but please fill us in if you, dear reader, are from another country: how is it with the intellectuals and authors in your country?)



It is only when you begin to dig deeper down into the matter that it dawns on you how ignorant you have actually been for so many years.



I speak for myself here. It is just a few months ago I got a wet ‘wake-up’-cloth thrown in my face by the Danish climate minister, when he, in December 2012, returned from a Global Climate Summit in Doha, and in a television interview had difficulty concealing his anxiety and frustration with the situation. The situation which, according to a newly published report from the World Bank with its estimated four degrees global warming by 2060, means that we should begin to prepare ourselves for a collapse of civilization as we know it — a collapse of the day to day with all its relatively safety and cosiness as we have become so used to, not least in the Nordic countries.



Wow! Now they talk about a possible collapse of our civilization? That opened my ears and eyes. The world stood still for a second: Did someone say, “collapse of our civilization”? Was I the only one hearing the minister say that?



Until then I had lived in a kind of certainty our good world leaders would deal with this climate change problem, and eventually, after some negotiations back and forth, fix it.



But “No!” sounded the word from Doha: “We will not fix it. We cannot handle it, simply. This problem is a political dead duck because it is border-crossing and has such long-term impacts that it is impossible to solve by political means,” was how the message from Doha could be understood between the lines.



Well, so what?!



Can the Danes not hear it, inside there, in their closed cheese bell? Can’t they be reached?



Apparently not. We know nothing, because we would rather not know anything. We are very sorry, dear Mik, but we do not want to be disturbed in our comfortable, busy daily lives which are so rich and full with our facebook updates, children, Oscar awards on tv and horsemeat-scandal headlines all over the newspaper — or in our affluent writer-hideaways in tropical safe havens where we can really immerse ourselves and be passionately writing about our personal relationship experiences and concerns…



Why is it this picture reminds me of children playing in the sandbox, not looking up, while the dark clouds pull together over them?









Dear friends, authors, artists. The level of consciousness must be raised now.

And it honestly ought to be the authors who took the lead in a wave of new sustainable consciousness.



The urgency is hair-raising, although too much CO2 already floats around in the atmosphere, the ice is melting and climate change scientists have already long considered it a battle lost… There is still much we can change and achieve if we manage to saddle, change priorities, and start to be much more CO2-conscious in our behavior and the things we spend our time, money and energy on. The transition to a sustainable lifestyle with renewable energy and green consciousness is not a long-haired, leftist dream. It’s fierce survival. Not for that businessman who currently feels untouchable in high-tech surroundings of glass and steel. But for his children.



I actually had always thought that such sensitive, intelligent and humane personalities as artists often are, would be those who would go up front in such a process. But I have noticed by the reactions I get on my Facebook page and blog notes that it is not — which is of course is also very well reflected by the two Danish authors’ comments on the article in Information.



Therefore, all thumbs up from here to this Norwegian writer who, as a one-off in Oil Country with his fiction novel ‘Anna’ dares to make the attempt to bring the Drama about the Climate in under the skin of all of us. I will buy his book because he should know that the signals he is sending out are so highly commendable.



It is the thought that counts here.



And even if the book turns out to be… maybe not so good, and even when it doesn’t turn into a new bestseller for Jostein Gaarder, wouldn’t that be exactly what’s needed in order to inspire others to try and do better?



For we have yet to see a novelist create the ultimate eye-opening drama about what life will be like in Denmark when the global temperature has risen four degrees, the water stands 1.5 meters higher, and entire nations have been plunged into homelessness, drought, crop failure — yes, and everything we just did not even imagine yet … but which a good writer maybe would able to? And done in such a way, that we actually feel like reading it.



Global warming — and our reluctance to address the problem, although we could easily do it, if only we would get out of our comfortable sofas — is absolutely the biggest and most important question of our time. So we don’t want to hear about it. It’s obviously easier to keep blinders on and stay in the sandbox under the cheese bell with a vague hope that the sinister storm will pass over by itself — or that some clever engineers will solve the climate problem for us at the last minute. In any case, it won’t be affecting us — us, the decision-makers of society today, who according to the calendar will be long gone by the time the shit hits the fan.



As Jostein Gaarder points out: In the relationship between the present and future generations, lawlessness prevails. Our children will be facing a problem if they should want to go to court to ask for compensation from the fossil-fuel riches for the terrible destruction the CO2-emissions have caused: by the time the catastrophe begins to roll out, the culprits will probably more or less all be dead and gone.



So we can stay in our cozy cuddly cheese bell some years more where we can keep discussing and chitchatting about what is close around us — and leave it up to our children and grandchildren to deal with the mess and the guarding of themselves against the man-made climate chaos we — their parents — hand over to them.



Or …? should we, in the 12th hour, throw away the blinders, “take the spoon in the other hand,” as we say in Danish, and — like Jostein Gaarder — individually and separately begin to take personal responsibility for the mess, spend time and energy to study and enlighten ourselves on the matter, and then use all the combined forces we have participating in a joint effort to reverse the CO2 catastrophe before it is really too late?



If you are a parent, you should be doing it because it is your duty. You can make use of just those skills and that training, that starting point, that you have right now. You can start contributing simply with what you are able to:



If you are an architect, you begin to familiarise yourself with how to build the most sustainable houses.



If you are a home owner, you begin to recycle, buy green products and teach your kids about sustainability.



If you are an author, wow! you have readers already… You throw yourself into considerations of how you can write a fantastic new book, a masterpiece that will change the world because it makes such a deep impression that it motivates its readers to go straight into action, into a sustainable lifestyle, or both. You could actually also do something different this time around: who says that writers always have to write books? You could use your talent to write an open letter to the Prime Minister or the United Nations, an essay, a play, a screenplay, an action plan…



“It is with our thoughts we create the world,” said Gautama Buddha 2,500 years ago. That concept, which I believe is true in many ways, places authors in a special position. With their intellect, insight and imagination they also are carriers of a unique potential: The ability to articulate visions as well as horror scenarios for the future. Stuff we can take inspiration from. Learn from.



We need to take responsibility at a personal level now. Simply because this is a matter of urgency. Not for you and me. But for those children we have brought into the world, because we thought we could give them and share with them a good life. And because we naively thought that planet Earth would just continue to be a great place to live.









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‘Anna – A fable about the Earth’s climate and environment’ by Jostein Gaarder is currently being translated into Czech, German, Greek, Indonesian, and Spanish. It is for sale in Norwegian on cdon.no

Dagbladet Information – 25 February 2013:

Klodens krise angår også forfattere og intellektuelle

“Throughout history literature has been dealing with the great human issues such as war, love, illness, etc. Now the climate is also one of those big questions, but an ignorance of huge dimensions prevails among the intellectuals, says the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder, who is out with a new youth novel.”



Wikipedia, the open encyclopedia:

wikipedia.org/wiki/Jostein_Gaarder









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‘Anna. A fable about the earth’s climate and environment’

Here is the publisher’s description of Jostein Gaarder’s book:





‘Anna. A fable about the earth’s climate and environment’ is a typical Jostein Gaarder novel with a crafty build-up of events that makes the reader curious and excited. How is all of this connected?



When Anna turns 16 on 12 December 2012 she receives Aunt Sunniva’s red ruby ring, an old heirloom. Anna thinks about the people who have lived on the earth before her. Perhaps that is why she is so concerned about the fact that the earth is in danger, that with our eyes open and at a rapid pace, we are actually in the process of destroying the biological diversity − and thereby the foundation of existence for future generations. This upsets Anna. She also has a rich imagination. She has an imaginative capacity that is so intense that she has lately begun receiving images and thoughts from another reality, perhaps from another era. It is therefore not so strange that her parents send her to Dr. Benjamin, who is a psychiatrist. But he does not believe that there is anything wrong with Anna; on the contrary, he thinks she is a strong girl who is concerned about important things.



In another reality Nova awakens on 12 December 2082. She is in bed in her room with the terminal that provides her with all of the information her heart could possibly desire. It can retrieve photos from the whole world whenever she wants. She receives all of the information about the earth’s condition subsequent to the global warming that ran amok a few decades before. Nova receives messages constantly about animal species that have become extinct, the Earth is no longer as fertile, green and beautiful, and Nova is furious about the human beings of previous generations who did not succeed in saving the earth in time. But this morning she just wants to enjoy herself and sets the terminal so that it only gives her pictures of the earth as it was before 12 December 2012 – which is the date of great-grandmother Anna’s 16th birthday. Her great-grandmother is still alive and at this moment she enters Nova’s room dressed in a blue kimono and wearing a red ruby ring on her finger. The red ring has magical powers …



‘Anna’ is a fabulous story that glides back and forth between time frames and the two main characters Anna and Nova. The plot of this exciting novel goes beyond the limits of possibility. At the same time, this is a serious story about how things may turn out for the Earth if we do not come to our senses and recognise our responsibility as residents of this planet. It’s still not too late. Is it? We can certainly be given another chance?



First published: 2013



aschehougagency.no











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Climate-related fiction literature





• ‘Vapor Trails’ is an eco-thriller by RP Siegel and Roger Saillant — the first in a series covering the human side of various sustainability issues including energy, food, and water in an exciting and entertaining format.



With stories derived from real world events, the book exposes intrigue at the highest corporate level which unravels when one senior executive defects from the dark conspiracy in order to escape from the burden of his past, regain self respect and perhaps open himself to the potential of a new love. Written by two authorities on sustainable business and the environment. » Available as e-book on Amazon.com











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• ‘Wool’ is a science-fiction’s underground hit, currently a New York Times bestseller. The story takes us to a ruined and toxic landscape, where a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside.



His fateful decision unleashes a drastic series of events. An unlikely candidate is appointed to replace him: Juliette, a mechanic with no training in law, whose special knack is fixing machines. Now Juliette is about to be entrusted with fixing her silo, and she will soon learn just how badly her world is broken. The silo is about to confront what its history has only hinted about and its inhabitants have never dared to whisper. Uprising.

» Available on Amazon.com









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• ‘Flight Behavior’ is Barbara Kingsolver’s fourteenth book, (Harper; November 2012; $28.99). The novel is a heady exploration of climate change, along with media exploitation and political opportunism that lie at the root of what may be our most urgent modern dilemma.



Set in Appalachia, a region to which Kingsolver has returned often in both her acclaimed fiction and nonfiction, its suspenseful narrative traces the unforeseen impact of global concerns on the ordinary citizens of a rural community. As environmental, economic, and political issues converge, the residents of Feathertown, Tennessee, are forced to come to terms with their changing place in the larger world.

The book was in the New York Times bestseller list in June 2013.

» Read more on kingsolver.com. Review.









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Cli-Fi

You can search for ‘climate fiction’ on Amazon, which will instantly bringing up over 730 different books.



Whereas 10 or 20 years ago it would have been difficult to identify even a handful of books that fell under this banner, there is now a growing corpus of novels setting out to warn readers of possible environmental nightmares to come.



Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Flight Behaviour’, the story of a forest valley filled with an apparent lake of fire, is shortlisted for the 2013 Women’s prize for fiction.



There is Nathaniel Rich’s ‘Odds Against Tomorrow’, set in a future New York, about a mathematician who deals in worst-case scenarios.



In Liz Jensen’s 2009 eco-thriller ‘The Rapture’, summer temperatures are asphyxiating and Armageddon is near; her most recent book, ‘The Uninvited’, features uncanny warnings from a desperate future.



Perhaps the most high-profile cli-fi author is Margaret Atwood, whose 2009 ‘The Year of the Flood’ features survivors of a biological catastrophe also central to her 2003 novel ‘Oryx and Crake’.



The Guardian – 31 May 2013:

Global warning: the rise of ‘cli-fi’

Unlike most science fiction, novels about climate change focus on an immediate and intense threat rather than discovery. By Rodge Glass

Eco-dystopias: Special Issue of Critical Survey- Completed articles by 1st September 2013

r.w.hughes@herts.ac.uk, p.a.wheeler@herts.ac.uk,





CLI FI
aka
Eco-dystopias: Special Issue of Critical Survey- Completed articles by 1st September 2013


full name / name of organization:

Critical Survey

contact email:

r.w.hughes@herts.ac.uk

CFP: Special issue of Critical Survey on Eco-dystopias for publication in 2013.



Submissions are invited of completed articles for a special issue of the journal Critical Survey, devoted to representations of environmental dystopias in literature and the visual arts.

Recent discussions in the media have focused attention on the emergence of ‘cli-fi’ (climate fiction) as a sub-genre of science fiction. Works of cli-fi explore imaginary futures -- and presents and pasts -- and places in which global environmental catastrophe, brought on by climate change, has come to pass. Writing in The Guardian in May 2013, the novelist Rodge Glass noted that Dan Bloom coined the term and that “[w]hereas 10 or 20 years ago it would have been difficult to identify even a handful of books that fell under this banner, there is now a growing corpus of novels setting out to warn readers of possible environmental nightmares to come.” This crop of recent responses to climate change can, however, be mapped against a much more extensive body of dystopian imaginings that might broadly be termed ‘ecological’ rather than – or as well as -- ‘social’ or ‘political’. A great deal of dystopian writing and film-making since the 1950s has responded to the prevailing discourses of environmentalism.

This special issue invites critical essays that consider dystopian imaginative responses (in fiction, poetry, film, or the visual arts) to environmental anxiety, not necessarily limited to our current focus on climate change. Potential submissions might explore, for instance, how writers, film-makers or artists have addressed the ecological implications of:

• Overpopulation

• Viruses, outbreaks, epidemics

• Genetic engineering

• Virtual reality, cybernetics, robotics

• Deforestation

• Species extinction

• Climate change

Completed essays should be submitted to Dr Rowland Hughes (r.w.hughes@herts.ac.uk) and/or Dr Pat Wheeler (p.a.wheeler@herts.ac.uk) by 1st September 2013, with the intention of going to press before the end of 2013.
r.w.hughes@herts.ac.uk, p.a.wheeler@herts.ac.uk,






cfp categories:

ecocriticism_and_environmental_studies

film_and_television

interdisciplinary

journals_and_collections_of_essays

popular_culture

science_and_culture

By web submission at 06/13/2013 - 15:56

Yeni Bir Tür Doğdu! ''CLI FI'' -- A report from Turkey in TURKISH

Yeni Bir Tür Doğdu! Climate Fiction aka CLI FI (Danielus Bloomalus)


By Haberi Paylaşın

http://pcillu101.blogspot.com





Yoksa küresel ısınma ve iklim değişimi yeni bir edebiyat dalı mı yarattı? Edebiyat araştırmacıları tartışadursun, iklim değişikliğini konu edinen romanların sayısı giderek artıyor. 1980 doğumlu genç Amerikan yazarlarından Nathaniel Rich’in, Sandy kasırgasından az önce yayına yolladığı, kapağında sular altındaki Manhattan illüstrasyonu bulunan Odds Against Tomorrow ise, CLI FI türünün son örneği olarak kayıtlara geçti bile.



Heyzen ATEŞ



Sandy fırtınası geçtiğimiz son­bahar New York’u vurduğun­da Farrar, Straus&Giroux yayınevi de başka pek çok işyeri gibi, tabir yerindeyse, muhtemelen kepenkleri indirmişti. O fırtına iki şeyi bütün netliğiyle ispatladı: 1- Tabiat felaketleri dünya metropo­lü, üçüncü dünya ülkesi dinlemez. 2 – İklim değişimi ve küresel ısınma artık yüzleşilmesi gereken gerçek­lerdir. Bunları ben söylemiyorum, FSG’nin editörlerinden Brian Gittis söylüyor ve ekliyor, “Dünyanın en muhteşem şehrinde yaşıyorduk ama elektriklerin yeniden bağlanması bir hafta sürdü.” Elektrikleri geldi, Git­tis ofisine döndü ve karşısında kü­çük dilini yutmasına neden olacak bir kitap buldu.



Son okuma için yollanan kitabın kapağında sular altında kalmış bir Manhattan vardı. Fırtınanın hemen sonrasında kitabın karşısına çıkı­şını “Tam bir alacakaranlık kuşağı anıydı” diye özetliyor Gittis. Bahsi geçen kitapsa Nathaniel Rich’in Odds Against Tomorrow adlı ya­pıtı. Roman, felaket senaryolarıyla ilgili hesaplamalar yapıp bu hesap­lamaları büyük şirketlere satan bir dâhiyi konu alıyordu. Kitabının yazılışından sonra yaşananlar dü­şünüldüğünde -New York’u vuran fırtına ve sel baskınları- yazarın kehanette bulunduğunu söyleyesi geliyor insanın. Bulunmamıştı elbet­te, yazdıkları gerçekleştiği için o da herkes kadar şaşkındı. “Romanımı son bir kez gözden geçirip yatmaya gittim ve sabah uyandığımda tele­vizyon ekranında romanımda tasvir ettiğim manzaralar yayınlanıyordu. Çok ürkütücüydü. Ama içinde yaşa­dığımız çağ böyle bir çağ. En kötü kâbuslarımızın gerçek olduğunu görüyoruz.”



“Odds Against Tomorrow”, akade­misyenlerin çerçevesi konusunda yeni yeni uzlaşmaya vardığı bir edebiyat türünün son örneklerin­den. Yazarlar, özellikle son on yıl­da çevre felaketlerini ve dünyanın dengesinin bozuluşunu konu alan romanlar yazmaya başladı. Bu ede­biyat türüne “CLI FI” veya kısaca Cli-Fi (‘klay fay’ diye okunu­yor) deniyor.



“Yeni gerçekliği anlatan yeni bir roman türü gerekiyordu, korku ve­rici, bütün dünyayı etkileyen ve her şeyin hızla değiştiği bir dönemden geçiyoruz. Roman yazarlarının gö­revi neler olup bittiğini çözmeye ça­lışmak ve alternatifleri kurgulamak değilse nedir?” diyor Rich.



Romanda İklim Değişikliği



Yanlış anlaşılmasın, çevre sorunları­nı ele alan romanların yeni ortaya çıktığını iddia etmiyorum. Sel bas­kınları, fırtınalar, çölleşme, özetle felaketler uzun zamandır romancıla­rın, özellikle de bilimkurgu yazarla­rının kullandığı unsurlar. J.G. Bal­lard The Drowned World’ü (Dünya Sular Altında) ve Margaret Atwood, Antilop ve Flurya’yı yazmıştı za­ten. Ama iki yaklaşım arasında çok ciddi bir fark var: Bilimkurgu eser­leri distopik gelecekleri anlatırken, Cli-Fi bugün yaşanan distopyaları konu alıyor. Akademisyenlerin bu romanları yeni bir başlık altında değerlendirmeyi düşünmesinin ne­deni de bu yaklaşım farkı. Georgia Üniversitesi Dünya ve Atmosferik Bilimler Fakültesi profesörlerinden Judith Curry otorite kabul edilen akademisyenlerden. Hazırladığı lis­teye göre iklim değişimi ilk olarak Michael Crichton’ın 2004 tarihli State of Fear (Korku Devleti) roma­nında ana tema olarak ele alınmış. (Romanın konusu eko-teröristler). Onu ileride bu köşenin konusu olacak, Ian McEwan’ın Solar’ı ta­kip ediyor. Türün örnekleri tek tek sayamayacağım kadar çok ama cli-fi’ın önde gelen yazarlarından aktivist Barbara Kingsolver, geçen Kasım’da yaptığı “Romanda İklim Değişikliği” başlıklı konuşmasında yazarları konuyu yazmaya iten ne­denlerin son derece aşikâr olduğu­nu dile getiriyor: “İklim değişiminin bütün delillerini gördüğümüz halde hâlâ ona inanmıyoruz; inanmak is­temiyoruz. Bizi küresel ısınmaya inanmaya veya inanmamaya iten gerekçeler neler?”



Burada yazarın değindiği aslında çok önemli bir konu. Kitabın kapa­ğına “küresel ısınma” veya “çevre felaketi” yazdığınız anda okuyucu kaybediyorsunuz, çünkü insanlar buna inanmak istemedikleri gibi bu laflardan bıktılar da. Bilimsel ger­çekler muhafazakâr kesimi ikna et­meye yetmiyor. Yazarlar da haliyle farklı çözümler üretiyorlar. Nathani­el Rich en kurnaz davranan yazar­lardan. Romanın konusu iklim deği­şimi ve çevre felaketleri olsa da üç yüz sayfa boyunca tek bir kez bile iklim değişimi veya küresel ısınma tabirleri geçmiyor. Bu bilinçli bir tercih. Bir röportajda yaptığı açıkla­maysa şöyle: “Bu tanımlar tüketildi, içleri boşaltıldı, klişeye dönüştürül­dü. Yazar olarak klişelerden olabil­diğince sakınmanız gerekir.”



Elbette herkes aynı fikirde değil, açık açık “başımız belada” diye hay­kıranlar da var. 2012’de From Here (Buradan) romanını yazan Daniel Kramb açık açık endişelerini dile getirenlerden. “Ben başka yazarlar gibi iklim değişimini fon müziği olarak kullanmadım” diyor Daniel Kramb. “Romanımın kalbinde bu var ve 21. yüzyılda bu konuyu işleyen daha bir sürü roman göreceğiz.”



Akademisyenler ve eleştirmenler de aynı fikirde. New York Times’ın yakın zamanda Nathaniel Rich’e bu konuda bir yazı sipariş etmesi bunun en güzel örneği. Bu roman­ların ne kadarı Türkçeye kazandı­rılacak bilmiyorum ama yakın za­manda Ian McEwan’ın “Solar”ını ve Nathaniel Rich’in “Odds Against Tomorrow”unu bu sayfalarda size tanıtmaya çalışacağım…

Anthony Weiner’s Wholesome ''People'' Magazine Spread in 2012 Was a Public Relations Plant Engineered by a highly-paid PR operative for Weiner named Sandra Sobieraj Westfall

Anthony Weiner’s Wholesome ''People'' Magazine Spread in 2012 Was a Public Relations Plant Engineered by a highly-paid PR operative for Weiner named Sandra Sobieraj Westfall
ETHICAL OR UNETHICAL?




“Anthony has spent every day since [the scandal] trying to be the best dad and husband he can be,” his wife told People in 2012.



A high-profile PR engineering (READ: PLANTED FOR A HIGH PRICE) interview with People Magazine seen as a first step in rehabilitating his tattered image came a week after Anthony Weiner allegedly stared an online relationship with a woman that quickly descended into dirty messages and pictures.



According to the gossip website The Dirty, Weiner and his alleged sexting partner began talking on July 12, 2012. One week later, Weiner’s first interview with his wife Huma Abedin where he addressed the sexting scandal that brought down his career ran in People.



“I’m very happy in my present life,” Weiner told People in the July 18th profile.



“Anthony has spent every day since [the scandal] trying to be the best dad and husband he can be,” his wife said. “I’m proud to be married to him.”

Anthony Weiner 'I Feel Like a Different Person'

By Sandra Sobieraj Westfall


For the First Time, New Parents Weiner and Huma Abedin Talk About Saving Their Marriage After He Resigned from Congress in Scandal-and the Future

From PEOPLE Magazine

Click to enlarge FacebookTwitterE-mailThe former congressman from Queens, wearing seersucker shorts, black socks and a Mets cap, is crooning "Joy to the World" as he shampoos his 6-month-old son Jordan's hair over the sink. He then slides on shower sandals to fetch blankets from the coin-op dryer in the basement of his Manhattan apartment building. "I really do feel like a very, very different person," says Anthony Weiner.



But who he used to be is the guy most people know: an outspoken seven-term Democrat forced to resign in June 2011 after he was caught sexting and sending lewd photos of himself to at least six women, none of whom was wife Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton. In a tearful press conference at the time, Weiner croaked into the microphones, "She deserves much better than this, and I know that."



Today Weiner, 47, says that "I've had enormous regrets about what I put Huma through, how I let my constituents down. But it's not like I sit all day replaying it in my mind. With a baby, it is pretty easy to put things into perspective." Whether this once-ambitious politician will remain a happy househusband, however, made recent headlines when the New York Post reported that Weiner was speaking with former aides about a run, possibly for New York City mayor. Weiner shoots the rumor down. "I can't say absolutely that I will never run for public office again, but I'm very happy in my present life. I'm not doing anything to plan a campaign." He can't resist adding, "The only next dramatic steps I'm planning on are Jordan's first."



A year ago, such domestic bliss was in doubt. When his wife's pregnancy was outed by the press, the question of whether she would stay with her husband of one year was second in people's minds only to What was he thinking? Their union not only stayed intact, but appears to have thrived. That's a big reason the usually press-shy Abedin, 37, has invited a reporter into their home. "I'm proud to be married to him," she says. "My husband did a really stupid thing. It was an extremely painful time. But there was love and a commitment to this marriage." She tears up speaking of the paparazzi who still seek them out. "It took a lot of work to get where we are today, but I want people to know we're a normal family."



Weiner says he sought professional counseling but won't go into detail except to say that it helped. Abedin concurs: "Anthony has spent every day since then trying to be the best dad and husband he can be." That includes doing all-repeat all-the laundry, and keeping things going when his wife goes to Washington for her work at the State Department. He has done some paid consulting from home, but has otherwise lain low.



Should he want to reenter politics, says Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, "it will take time, but he is the kind of fellow who can rebuild a public life. He had a constituency that adored him, and he worked very hard."



It's a leap to believe that Weiner is content being out of the mix. He gave interviews about the recent Supreme Court health-care decision and reads The New York Times to his son, but says, "I'm not watching C-SPAN3 in the middle of the night, regretting how my life has turned out." After owning up to the naughty photos, Weiner at first tried to keep his seat. "He broke no law, and he hurt only his family," notes Sheinkopf. Other politicians, including Weiner's friend Bill Clinton, have sprung back from worse. Both Clintons were supportive of Weiner, but House colleagues demanded he go. Even after he did, comics (among them pal Jon Stewart) had at him. You don't hear so many Weiner gags these days, and yet, he says, "I'm still trying to sort out exactly where I am in the public consciousness." He asks with a knowing grin, "You wonder if my name was Mitchell whether the scandal would have been as bad."

Grandpa commits suicide over poor smartphone skills?

This is not a funny story, but it's comes right from a vernacular newspaper in

Taiwan, a Chinese-language tabloid called "Apple Daily," which has nothing to do

with that other ''Apple'' company where we often see headlines such as "Apple faces fresh questions after another apparent suicide by factory worker in China."



No, this is a sad and tragic story, and while not all the details are in yet, we cannot really say the middle-aged man committed suicide -- despite leaving a suicide note in his car after drinking pesticide and burning coals in the cab of his truck. There might have been other family and domestic and personal problems the police report did not go into yet, and I suspect this wasn't a simple case of, as the headline in Taiwan in English translation read: "Smartphone confusion leads to man's suicide."



Questions remain. But to see how the story unfolds, take the English-language translation of the Chinese-language article in the Apple Daily that appeared in a recent edition of an expat daily newspaper and website in Taipei, which reads, in part: "A 57-year-old man who killed himself left a suicide note saying he felt life was meaningless because he did not know how to use a computer or smartphone. The man, a vegetable vendor, was found dead inside his small truck on Thursday. Police were cited as saying that [the middle-aged man] drank some pesticide and burned coal inside his vehicle."



There's more, in translation, but it pretty much tells the story: "Police found an old cellphone and a suicide note, among other things, inside the truck, and cited the man's apparent suicide note that read: 'I suddenly understand that I should [die] now. I have been unable to keep up with the times. Those computers, mobile phones, I know nothing about them. What's the meaning of living on?'"



Police contacted the dead man's son to try to get more information about the apparent suicide. They concluded after hearing the man's son say that he felt his father ''must have been depressed by the fact that he did not know how to use smartphones or the Internet, things that his three grandsons liked.''



According to the son, in his mid-30s, the father often visited his three grandchildren in a nearby city, but always complained that he had very little to say to the children and did not know how to communicate with them due to his lack of skills in using smartphones or computers.



,

"My father hardly had any interactions with his grandsons because of the technological gap," the son told police.



But there's more to this story, and don't take the headline in Taiwan at face value: "Smartphone confusion leads to man's suicide."



Because the deceased had personal problems as well, and his choice to commit suicide could very well have come from other issues. According to police, the man had recently starting living alone after divorcing his second wife, and there are few other details available about what might have led the man to an early grave. In Taiwan, however, according to some religions popular here, suicide is not seen in the same way as Westerners think of suicide in the North America or Europe. Suicide in some Asian cultures can be a way to solve problems and reincarnate in a new body or realm, so this man's suicide note must be read in this light, too.



Still, whatever happened, this apparent suicide is a cautionary tale, although this reporter has no real lock on what it means.



Are smartphones dangerous for intergenerational communication? That shouldn't be the case. Was this man depressed about other things in his life, and perhaps even suffering from clinical depression? Could be. We will never know.



My own headline, for what it's worth, would have been: "Elderly man commits suicide; smartphone connection unproven."

"SILENT NIGHT: The World After Climate Change" -- a new nonfiction book by someone like Elizabeth Kolbert of New Yorker fame

"SILENT NIGHT: The World After Climate Change"
345 pages
Random
$29.99

We have commissioned climate writer Elizabeth Kolbert, should she wish to accept the assignment, to write a powerful nonfiction report on what life after climate change might be like on this Earth, and for those remants of
Humankind still alive then, surely not the 9 billion people of today. Her book will have the impact of Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING, and will be read by millions of people in 35 languages. If Kolbert does not accept this commission, other writers are more than welcome to apply.

Silent Night is a book that was widely credited with helping launch the contemporary global ''STOP c02 NOW by tightening the noose around coal and oil'' movement.




The New Yorker started serializing SILENT NIGHT in June 1925, and it was published in book form (and as an ebook.)

 When the book Silent Night was published, Kolbert was already a well-known writer  but had not previously been a social critic. The book was widely read—especially after its selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the New York Times best-seller list—and inspired widespread public concerns with stopping the use of all coal and oil use worldwide. Silent Night facilitated the ban of C02 emissions worldwide in 2033.


Kolbert  accused the energy lobby and industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting industry claims uncritically.



Silent Night has been featured in many lists of the best nonfiction books of the 21st century. In the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Nonfiction it was at #5, and it was at No.78 in the conservative National Review. Most recently, Silent Night was named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time by the editors of Discover Magazine.

The book argued that uncontrolled coal and oil use and concommitant CO2 emissions worldwide in CHINA INDIA JAPAN AND THE USA AND EUROPE was harming prospects for the survival of the human species beyond the year 2500 AD. Its title was meant to evoke A SILENT NIGHT in which no bird songs could be heard, because they had all vanished as a result of AGW AND CLIMATE CHANGE Its title was inspired by a poem by John Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci", which contained the lines "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing, for 'tis a silent, silent night now......"

Xeni Jardin Talks About Her Ongoing Recovery From Breast Cancer

Xeni Jardin Talks About Her Ongoing Recovery From Breast Cancer


By Liana Aghajanian
Jul. 25 2033 AD
Xeni Jardin live-tweeted her cancer diagnosis — and all the pain that followed.



"I have breast cancer and I'm in good hands."



Those are the words Xeni Jardin, tech journalist, blogger and Boing Boing editor, tweeted to more than 50,000 followers after being diagnosed with cancer in December 2011.



It was on a hunch that Jardin had decided to get a mammogram — her first — after a close friend called with a devastating diagnosis of her own. Wanting to diffuse her anxiety about the procedure, Jardin had been live-tweeting when she got the bad news. "I'm really hoping this involves lasers and cats," she wrote in between tweets praising the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills. She'd found the clinic the same way she finds places to eat brunch: Yelp.



The month that followed was the hardest of her life.



She cried. She sat in her car in parking lots, screaming. She called close friends and family to let them know, but her sharp reporting instincts also kicked in as her subject became herself and her disease.



Online, she talked about her chemotherapy infusions, shared snapshots of her medicine cabinet overflowing with prescription drugs and posted stunning portraits of herself descending into machines for one scan or another.



"It's like being assigned a beat that you don't want by an editor you can't argue with," she says.



A year and a half after her diagnosis, Jardin is taking it one day at a time, knowing that she's still in treatment, with more surgery ahead and no guarantees.



"The only closure you get as a cancer patient is the kind that you don't want," she says. "I'm here today, I'm having a good day and doing the work that I love."



Cropped, beautifully shaded gray-and-white hair has replaced the signature Marilyn Monroe–esque blond curls Jardin sported before her diagnosis. But the vivacious spirit of a self-described intergalactic space princess seems stronger than ever.



In fact, Jardin recently returned to her home in Santa Monica after spending six weeks in Guatemala covering the trial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. Montt was accused of genocide and crimes against humanity during the Central American country's 36-year bloody civil war, in which 200,000 Guatemalans, including large indigenous populations, were killed.



Even in California, Jardin had been unable to peel herself away from the coverage, spending every waking hour watching the story unfold in the courtroom through a live feed. Soon she and her boyfriend, Miles O'Brien, a noted science journalist and former CNN reporter and anchor, were headed to Guatemala on assignment for PBS Newshour, where O'Brien is a science correspondent. They reported on how forensics were used to document charges of genocide.



It's the first time a former head of state has been put on trial for genocide in his home country — and the first time since Jardin's diagnosis that she was able to do the kind of reporting she is most passionate about, drawing attention to an area of the world and a story about which most Americans remain in the dark.



But the stakes of being in Guatemala as a foreign reporter were raised when her social media activity was broadcast on a channel catering to a right-wing audience harboring contempt for the genocide trial, she says. After experiencing a new kind of hostility after that airing, and needing to return to the United States for more medical tests, she knew it was time to go home. Jardin and O'Brien's report on the science behind the historic trial aired in May.



Originally from Richmond, Va., Jardin spent time as a web developer before reporting for publications from coast to coast. It was a little more than a decade ago that she came to BoingBoing.net, the group blog at the forefront of tech culture, for which she is best known. (She's now a co-editor.) She also contributes to NPR and Wired magazine and appears on broadcast news channels as a tech expert, effortlessly switching between roles.



Jardin quickly developed a following as something of a virtual Wonder Woman. She's been listed in Fortune magazine as a blogger businesspeople could not ignore and hosts the Webby-honored "Boing Boing Video," which appears in-flight on Virgin America. Last year, she became a founding board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit committed to funding and promoting public-interest journalism that exposes corruption.



But her cancer coverage was something altogether new. Jardin's brutally honest, humorous and often heart-wrenching micro-storytelling redefined the concept of community, becoming a nexus for discussion while providing real-time glimpses into the life of a cancer patient — and experiences that usually remain behind closed doors.



Her Twitter feed proved to be an amazing source of comfort to her.

"I wish that I could have somehow captured the replies as a stream, because there was just an overwhelming flood of love and support from every single person I knew who was connected to the Internet," Jardin says.




By chronicling her use of medical marijuana to reduce chemo's gruesome effects, Jardin also highlighted an oft-forgotten aspect of L.A.'s controversial relationship with cannabis: the way it bypasses those who need it most.



"The medical marijuana system in Los Angeles is utterly broken for people with cancer," she says. "It is way easier for a well-off stoner to access some bud to enjoy on the weekend than it is for a seriously ill person."



After finishing treatment, Jardin, now 43, recuperated in Hawaii. There, the deep-ocean swims that once gave her panic attacks became a symbolic way to deal with her heightened awareness of her own mortality.



"I could grudgingly say that my inspiration nugget from this whole fucking marathon of shit the last year and a half is that human beings are healing machines," she says. "Every single day I am stunned and amazed at my own body's capacity to cope with a brutal treatment I had to go through, to cope and adapt, to make normal something that is not normal."