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Smog-ridden cities. Endless war. Water so polluted that it can’t be drunk Crop failure. Acid rain. A pandemic in antibiotic-resistant diseases. Declining life expectancy. Collapsing agriculture, endangered bees. Mass extinctions have decimated most birds and fish. Only the wealthy can afford organic food while the rest of the population must eat lab-produced junk with added tranquilizers. A celebrity president spreads misinformation using tweet-like slogans. While his followers block roads and resorting to terrorism, a disillusioned academic attempts to bring about positive change but fails.
This is not a bad nightmare version of recent climate change headlines. This is the dark vision from the 50-year-old dystopian novel. The Sheep Look upBy John Brunner. Brunner, a British writer, was among a few writers who were early advocates for environmental activism.
No more heroes
The novel is experimental in style and bleak in outlook. It lacks heroes and villains. The chapters show 12 months of America’s gradual decline as unrestricted pollutants wipe out the water and food supplies. Austin Train, an environmentalist trying to convince others that they must act immediately to protect human life, is one of the best lines. He is mostly ignored throughout the novel.
The book reminds us of the courage that activists like Greta Thunberg have. Vanessa NakateThey should not be dismissed or ignored. Instead, they should be praised for speaking truth to power. All of us need to heed their warnings. We must act now to reduce our global warming impact. The West has become too dependent upon the outsourcing of our pollution to distant lands. It’s time to stop outsourcing our dissent.
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Failure to act
Brunner wrote his novel in the same year as the publication of The. Club of RomeInternational group of economists, policymakers, and business leaders published their influential report. Growth: The Limits. It used computer projections to warn that the planet was lacking the resources necessary to support current projections of human growth and consumption.
Cover illustration by Irving Freeman & Mark Rubin, CC BY
There were signs that human activity was causing environmental damage since the 1960s. Author Rachel Carson wrote her acclaimed Silent Spring in 1962 – and in 1965 the US science advisory Report of the committeeLyndon Johnson, the US president, was contacted about the dangers of pollution.
Brunner was surprised that more people weren’t alarmed. The Sheep Look Up warns people about what happens if they fail to prevent a disaster from unfolding. The future may not be as resilient as the present. This is demonstrated by the most recent scenarios forecasted in the most recent IPCC report.
As one of Brunner’s characters observed: “This is the future, unless we prevent it.”
Fiction’s influencers
While some early readers made a grim assessment that environmental activism was futile, others saw it as a call for action. Brunner used scifi as a form social and political criticism, which was something that was relatively new at the time.
It can be difficult to understand abstract projections about pollution, droughts, and emissions. But ResearchIt is clear that fictions are not real. MetaphorsThey play an important role in helping us understand complex social problems.
StorytellingIt helps us to recognize the ConsequencesWe follow the impact of characters’ choices on our decisions to act or react.
Psychologists and clinicians around the world are now studying a condition known as “climate anxiety” or “eco-anxiety”. As the name suggests, it’s marked by anxiety, panic attacks, depression and feelings of anger and betrayal. A recent global surveyOf 10,000 young people, 75% felt the future was scary and 59% were very or very worried about climate change.
But what about some? Researchers CampaignersAnother thing we have found is that anxiety decreases when people come together and focus on a collective goal.
The art of great storytelling is about revealing the choices we have before us. And this is all part of Brunner’s technique. It links the great dystopias from the 20th century. George Orwell Aldous HuxleyTo the modern-day climate fiction Margaret Atwood Amitav Ghosh.
What’s next?
Brunner’s dire predictions have not completely come to pass. Evidently, there have been dramatic changes. dangerous environmental changesSteps forward in knowledge, but also to the rescue. This year marks 50 years since the founding of the United Nations Environment Programme, and the 30th Anniversary of the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.
There have been important achievements in curbing the pollution, starting with the Montreal Protocol and ending with the Clean Water Act. 2015 Paris Agreement. Brunner might be surprised that voices from all walks of the globe are calling for urgent, systemic changes.
