by Lowell Bliss
This is Part 2 of a series, “The Unemployed Climate Activist”: how to re-position a vision for climate action now that, as per the findings of a Harris Poll, Americans “battered by pandemic and economic collapse [seem to have lost] the capacity to care about the environment”? (Part one: here)
A political cartoon went viral, but then an Unemployed Climate Activist came along and broke it. Understanding what went wrong might be the first step in re-launching and redirecting our climate action.
On Wednesday, March 11 of this year, political cartoonist Graeme MacKay published a piece in the Hamilton Spectator. A sandcastle country (Canada, with Toronto recognizable on the east and the Rocky Mountains to the west) lay in the path of not one tsunami, but two: COVID-19 and a recession. MacKay would later comment, “One of editorial cartoondom’s most recognized and overused cliché is the visual of a tsunami or tidal wave about to wreak havoc on humanity. It’s internationally recognized and a winner in the wordless cartoon contest world.”
In the cartoon, political leaders—unseen because they are either hunkered down in Toronto or because they are very, very tiny in the face of a crisis—reassure Canada: “Be sure to wash your hands and all will be well.” It’s a silly statement to make anyway given the size of the COVID-19 wave, but MacKay’s point is that there is a second, larger and more destructive wave lurking behind the first one. The recession cares nothing about handwashing. Two days earlier, President Trump had met with Congressional leaders to discuss the two tsunamis. The idea of a payroll tax cut was floated. “Instead,” as MacKay writes, “they recommended a variety of other steps, some narrowly aimed at addressing the outbreak and some intended to bolster the broader economy. One lesson from the last recession is that the government has to move quickly.” “’You’ve got to go big, and you’ve got to go fast,’” MacKay writes, quoting a former Federal Reserve staff member. Indeed, within the next seven days, MacKay’s own province, Ontario, would be shut down, ordering measures that went far beyond hand washing. Ottawa would launch Canadian relief and stimulus packages at a speed to outmatch Washington.
The Unemployed Climate Activist finds MacKay’s cartoon a tad bit confusing. The Unemployed Climate Activist (henceforth called a “UCA”) is a term that I coined after the release of a recent Harris Poll of Americans which shows that concerns about climate change has plummeted. Whereas in December 2019, climate change registered first among the most important issues facing society, now it is considered second-to-last on a list of a dozen concerns. So, where am I supposed to position myself, a UCA, in MacKay’s cartoon? I too am based in Canada on that vulnerable stretch of sand bar. I too feel the threat of the pandemic and the recession. But as a climate activist, is it my job to climb to the top of his sandcastled CN Tower and yell out to Canadians, “Now, as I was saying about global warming . . .”? There are a number of features in MacKay’s cartoon that a climate activist would find familiar. I feel the vulnerability of our cities in the face of sea-level rise and other climate change impacts. I have agonized over the immensity of those impacts, racing toward our shores “about to wreak havoc on humanity.” Small individual measures—like handwashing during a pandemic, or recycling during an ecological crisis—are important, but are not commensurate responses to the impending challenges. Every climate activist knows we also need action on the governmental and global level. We need to go big and go fast. But how is my voice on climate change to be heard above the crash of the immediate COVID-19 and recession waves?
Part of my confusion regarding MacKay’s cartoon is the basic question of what point he is trying to make. Is he is trying to portray the vulnerability of Canada and the inadequacy of a small response to the coronavirus? Or is he trying to say: “Look, there is a second crisis riding on the tail of the first, but it is hidden by the immediacy of the first crisis”? If we read left to right, then the recession is MacKay’s big revelation: don’t neglect to take action on what will be bigger and more deadly, just because, for right now, it is obscured by the more immediate.
MacKay’s cartoon quickly went viral, which for the cartoonist in the internet age means more than just hits, links, and reposts. Cartoons get redrawn. The text, of course, translated into other languages, must be re-lettered which is a function of an artist’s skill, not a typesetter’s. The Canadian flag as an image was replaced by the Italian or the British flag, etc. But at some point, the cartoon fell into the hands of a UCA, supposedly in Argentina judging from the flag used in the redrawn cartoon. He or she contemplated MacKay’s point about a larger, more destructive wave, obscured by the first wave but just as inexorable, and seems to have thought, “Hmm, if there is a second hidden wave, then why not a third one as well?” He or she sketched in a large green ominous wave to the far right of the panel and labelled it “climate change.” Presto! He or she was unemployed no more. “Relegate climate change to second-to-the-last on your Harris Poll of concerns, will you?” the re-employed climate activist was saying, “I’ll show you!”
MacKay stumbled upon this adaptation and took the point. He however did not like the artist’s new rendering nor did he like the fact that his signature, or moniker as cartoonists call it, was left off. On May 23, MacKay released his own officially authorized adaptation.
In my opinion, the cartoon is now essentially broke. Here’s three reasons why:
It is now a portrait of despair. Look at the size of those waves relative to the city that our loved ones inhabit. Even the first and smallest wave is enough to crush the city. The second wave will wash the broken debris out to sea and the third wave will cover it beneath the seas so that Toronto, like Atlantis, will be remembered no more. MacKay exhorts us to “go big and go fast” with solutions and responses but. . . really? Who can withstand these three tsunamis, crashing so quickly one upon the next?
The cartoon turns our activism into a pissing match: “My issue is bigger than your issue!” “Na-ah, my issue will kill more people than your issue and have longer term impacts.” I once heard an older black woman respond to a group of white climate activists: “Caring for the environment is important,” she said, “but don’t you know that our young black men are already an endangered species?” Fortune magazine, as far as I can tell, has yet to release more data from their Harris Poll, but for climate change to drop to second-to-last on a list of a dozen concerns suggests that there are at least eight other tsunamis that MacKay could have sketched in front of the climate change wave. I for one am not going to argue that Black Lives Matter matters less than climate change. In the infinite heart of God’s compassion, we never have to play a zero-sum game.
Finally, MacKay’s revised cartoon is broken because it precludes integration and holism. The COVID-19 wave and the recession wave are presented in the correct order of when they arrive on our shores, but as Donald Trump is quick to point out: we wouldn’t have a recession if it wasn’t for the coronavirus. Or more accurately according to some Trump-supporters: we wouldn’t have a recession if it wasn’t for our over-reactive, shut-down-the-economy response to the coronavirus. So, the first wave is pulling the second, although in a real ocean, I believe that subsequent waves push the first ones. Indeed, there has been some study about how climate change pushes pandemics, but again, out in the real ocean: individual waves aren’t labelled, they certainly aren’t colour-coded, they aren’t prioritized, and neither are tsunamis their own root cause. It’s all one body of water!
How would I, a UCA looking to become re-employed, fix this cartoon and supply it with hope and wisdom? I am not adept with pen and ink and I do want to honour Graeme MacKay’s giftedness, so I won’t presume to be the 1681stamateur to plagiarize his artwork. (That’s an actual count as of July 11; MacKay is googling you guys!) Instead, I’ll just make some suggestions. First, regarding hope, I would draw the city and the sandbar bigger. True, the politicians in the city who are suggesting small solutions and speaking out false hope are appropriately tiny—but the country and the people and the land itself is stronger and more inherently resilient than currently portrayed. We will survive. Secondly as pertains to hope, I would not leave the backside of the waves hidden. If we chose to do so, coming down the backside of COVID-19 will be a season to harvest wisdom: to understand our interconnectedness as human beings inhabiting a single planet, to honour science and expertise in new ways, to realize that natural processes care very little about our political ideology, to recognize the collective power of individual behaviour changes (“wear a mask!”) coupled with massive government intervention for the common good. In the same way, coming down the backside of the recession will be an opportunity to choose resilience and sustainability over the false paradigm of “unlimited economic growth.” It is NOT the case that Republicans like Bush and Trump wreck the economy and then Democrats like Obama or Biden come along and fix it again. In the last two centuries of human existence, we have stumbled upon fossil fuels as a cheap source of labor, like a strong man-child born of a woman (Earth) that we’ve considered our slave. We can use the backside of the recession wave to re-evaluate our relationship to the planet, to our extraction economy, to the fossil fuel bubble, and to an economic paradigm that we have too quickly adopted as the Gospel truth. COVID-19 and the recession will be awful (and in fact already are) but they can also be our best preparation for climate change. We UCAs can re-employ ourselves by becoming wisdom-gatherers and resilience-builders. We must become among the loudest voices for hope.
How would I revise MacKay’s cartoon to promote wisdom? In my opinion, MacKay admits his own confusion about his own cartoon when he draws our attention to one last uncovered revision. Reportedly, a marine biologist from Mombasa, Kenya added a fourth wave and made it the most ominous wave of all: “Biodiversity Collapse.” But please Mr. MacKay and everyone else, . . . enough new waves! Enough differentiation and prioritizing! Instead, if this UCA ever hopes to be re-employed in climate action, I need one final cartoon where all the labels are removed, and all the waves are inked with the same colour. I don’t care if you colour them all blue so as to emphasize they are all made up of the same substance: water. Or if you wish, you can colour them all black to make them as threatening as the last one. If I were to sit down in front of such a cartoon and reflect, I believe that my wisdom would grow in two respects. First, I would be re-employed with an even greater understanding of just how vulnerable the people and the land I love are. This is a particularly troubled time on our planet and there are great and inexorable troubles on the ocean’s horizon. For my privileged lifetime, I have mainly thought that my cities were mighty, and the oceans were placid. MacKay’s cartoon can cut through my hubris and remaining denial—what I recently saw called “toxic optimism”—and it can spark renewed compassion.
Secondly as pertains wisdom, a revised cartoon with no differentiated waves would encourage me to lay down my siloed and competitive activism and instead re-approach climate action with a greater sense of holism, greater integration, greater solidarity and inter-sectionality with how others are approaching our common troubled waters. I always prided myself as I thought I was ordering my activism according to a quotation from Thoreau: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” I thought I was the one striking at the root of evil, but when I became focused too exclusively on climate change, then I failed to see how my striking had become hacking instead. What is the root evil behind climate inaction, behind a failed COVID-19 response, behind an oppressive capitalism, behind systemic racism, between a rising fascism? It is there where I want to employ love, justice, and the good news of the Resurrection. I understand the division of labour and a difference in callings, but if I am re-employed as a climate activist, it will only be because I am first and foremost a love activist, a justice activist, a life activist. If there is any cartooning in my future, it will be to do my part—small as it may be—in drawing a world where “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).