Introduction

This thesis provides me with an opportunity to combine two interests, firstly, my concern for the environment, and secondly, my personal interest in British literature and comedy, and more specifically the work of comedian and novelist Ben Elton. Today, environmental change is a hot issue (excusez le mot), and linking it with English literature, or rather British comedy in particular, will hopefully provide an original and productive meeting between two frameworks. I intend to shed a fresh light upon a global problem about which a great deal has already been said, and remains to be said.

Another reason why I have chosen this subject is the fact that the environment, and especially its change, has become a prominent issue over the past decades. Climate Change or Global Warming and related issues such as air pollution, the hole in the planet’s protective ozone layer, the harmful effects of acid rain, the disappearance of snow on permanently frosted slopes, the melting of polar ice-caps, the subsequent rise of the sea level, the overcutting of the world’s last remaining great forests, the loss of topsoil and groundwater, the overfishing and toxic poisoning of the oceans, the fact that we are drowning in our own garbage, the increasing rate of extinction of plant and animal species. the potential danger of UV-rays,… all of these things and their apocalyptic potentialities have become an ever- increasing aspect of worry for many people over the past twenty to thirty years.

In the seventies and eighties environmental concern was primarily the domain of young subcultures such as hippies and punks. Yet the winds have been turning for quite some time now. ‘Ordinary’ households across the globe are expressing their concern, and, more importantly, this concern has been institutionalised. Political measures have already been introduced in order to contain the problem and international conferences have resulted in agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol.

The environment is accordingly receiving attention in today’s media. Not only are there more news reports about it, there are also an increasing number of novels containing an environmental theme published each year, and this environmental frenzy did not go unnoticed by Hollywood either. Films such as The Day After Tomorrow and An Inconvenient Truth display an apocalyptic vision of a very near future, due to man’s lack of respect for the environment.

1 During my research for this thesis, I was quite surprised to see that there is in fact, to this day, a heated debate going on about the climate and the role of mankind in its change. Subsequently, I could not help but notice that the modern media today only provides very one-sided reports on this matter. What is going on? As I will explain in detail, the discussion on whether the environment is actually going to waste or not has been abandoned or ignored (cf. chapter one) and replaced by the seemingly overall agreement that man is the one to blame. The only debate that still seems to be conducted is when this ecological point of no return will occur. The question is no longer ‘if’, but ‘when’. And the opinions on when this apocalypse will occur, vary greatly.

This ice-age could even start next summer, or any other given moment in the next hundred years […] Realistically this means that the threat posed by the ice lessens the average lifespan of every human on this planet by several years. […] Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Nepal, and New- Zealand are countries that are in danger of being completely or almost completely destroyed by land-ice. 1 (my translation - S.V.)

These are the words of a BBC documentary from 1974. And these are the words of Al Gore in the 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth:

For a long time, the scientists have been telling us global warming increases the temperature of the top layer in the ocean, and that causes the average hurricane to become a lot stronger. So, the fact that the ocean temperatures did go up because of global warming, because of man- made global warming, starting around in the seventies and then we had a string of unusually strong hurricanes outside the boundaries of this multi-decadal cycle that is a real factor; there are scientists who point that out, and they're right, but we're exceeding those boundaries now. (…) The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this. But the political systems around the world have held this at arm's length because it's an inconvenient truth, because they don't want to accept that it's a moral imperative.2

1BBC 1974, as quoted in: Karel Beckman, Het Broeikaseffect Bestaat Niet. De mythe van de ondergang van het milieu. Amsterdam 1999. p.15 2 Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Paramount 2006

2 Quite in opposition to what Al Gore tells us, there still exists a heated debate within the scientific community today. Exemplary of this is the 2007 documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle. The film brings together sceptical scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus regarding human-caused (or anthropogenic) global warming. The film claims that in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has misrepresented the data, and that the actual relationship between carbon dioxide and the temperature is the other way round (that is, rise in temperature causes an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The film implicitly accuses An Inconvenient Truth of manipulating scientific data to meet political ends.

The health of the planet we live on concerns us all, but in a world of terrorism, cancer, spin doctors and viewer ratings, in short, in a world in which fear sells, it is best to adopt a sceptical stance, to do one’s own research and to try and draw one’s own (careful) conclusions.

For the reader’s sake, I must add that there is a lack of academic sources concerning Ben Elton3. This is due to his not being a writer of ‘literature’. At first, this seemed somewhat of a disadvantage, especially when writing a thesis primarily concerned with his writings. But in time, I came to regard this as an advantage. I do not envy those who write about the work of a classic, great author, such as Shakespeare. Their notepads or screens can never be blanc. Literally thousands of other people’s ideas must unequivocally and endlessly echo within the paper. It is difficult to make a contribution in a field where the soil has been exhausted. There is too little breathing space left for new ideas to take root. I am probably one of the first students of English to tackle environmental literature, and to boot link it with Ben Elton. Especially from chapter three onward, some of my secondary literature may even appear far- fetched to the reader, but he or she should remember that I chose to contribute something to a new field of interest, instead of selecting one of those often-treaded paths, solidly worn out in the concrete of seasoned ideas.

There is surprisingly little academic interest in ecology from a literary point of view. Luckily, one publication has recently given a strong new impulse towards more research in this virginal field of interest. The link between literature and ecology has been made by Cheryll Burgess Glotfelty. From the 1980s onward, she has been pursuing an interest in

3 This excludes website and newspaper articles

3 ecology, while remaining a literary professional. She coined the concept of ecocriticism.

Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artefacts of language and literature. As a critical stance, it has one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human and the nonhuman.4

Glotfelty has edited and published an anthology of ecocritical essays in 1996 under the title The Ecocriticism Reader, Landmarks in literary ecology. She was the first American academic whose appointment included ’literature and the environment’.5 As Love points out, our society has been faced with three crises in the last thirty years: civil rights, women’s liberation, and environmental degradation.

All three have become subject of widespread social concern. The discipline of English has addressed the concerns of civil rights, equality for minorities, and women’s liberation through widespread attention and no small amount of action in such crucial areas as hiring and promotion practices, literary theory and criticism, and canon-formation. Race, class, and gender are the words which we see and hear everywhere at our professional meetings and in our current publications. But curiously enough, the English profession has failed to respond in any significant way to the issue of the environment, the acknowledgement of our place within the natural world and our need to live heedfully within it, at peril of our very survival.6

I am convinced that the new and rapidly growing field of literary ecology, in its crossing of the boundaries between the humanities and the sciences, has a bright future ahead of it.

The facts and fictions of climate change, and the overblown debate surrounding it, will be my object of attention in the first chapter of this thesis, entitled Apocalypse Now? This chapter will serve as a reference frame for the rise of a fairly recent phenomenon, namely the publication of novels primarily concerned with ecology. A few terms denoting this phenomenon are nature writing(mostly concerning non-fiction), eco-fiction (Robinson7), eco-

4 Cheryll Glotfelty, Introduction, Literary studies in an age of environmental crisis. In: The Ecocriticism Reader, Landmarks in literary ecology, Georgia, 1996, p. xix (Hereafter cited as Glotfelty) 5 Glotfelty p. 11 6 Glen A. Love, Revaluing Nature, in Glotfelty, p. 226 7 Eliot Fintushel, ”Kim Stanley Robinson: Götterdämmerung on ice”, Publishers Weekly, 22 June 1998, p 72

4 thriller (Poyer8), and eco-literature. I will discuss this new genre in the second chapter, entitled Eco-fiction. In the third chapter, I posit the British comedian and writer Ben Elton as somewhat of a pioneer in this genre and I discuss his play Gasping(1990). In the fourth and fifth chapter, I focus on Stark(1989) and This Other Eden(1992), respectively.

I became acquainted with the work of Ben Elton a few years ago, and I have read his entire oeuvre since. I have always had a preference for his early works, even though his later works are, in most respects, more mature and simply better written. Elton’s first novels (and plays) show a rebelliousness and a degree of dedication that only a young idealistic writer can possess. One needs only to glance at The Young Ones9 to see this young Elton in action. In his later works, however, his dedication to the ideals of his youth - most importantly, the environment – seems all but vanished from his prose10. Hence my decision to focus on three of his early works, namely Stark, Gasping, and This Other Eden.

Throughout the history of the ecological debate, there have been exaggerations and discrepancies between research results in both camps, as I intend to show in my introductory chapter. I will show that ecology is a very uncertain business, especially when it comes to predicting future changes. This uncertainty is not compatible with either contemporary politics or modern media. Hence the importance of environmental rhetoric in winning the hearts and minds of people. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate how ‘environmentally – conscious’ literature, of which Elton’s early works are clear examples, represents this debate in fictional writing.

8 David Poyer, The enemy is us: Ecology, Science, Heroes, and Villains in the Post-Cold-War World, Florida 1994 9 BBC 1982, co-written with Rik Mayall, and Lise Mayer (directed by Geoff Posner, produced by Paul Jackson) 10 This does not mean that no traces of his left-wing idealism are to be found in later novels or screenplays, but these ideals have shifted from the centre of his work to the periphery. In The Thin Blue Line, (starring Rowan Atkinson) for instance, there is one episode in which a small band of sympathetically portrayed environmentalists occupy a forest in order to prevent it from being cut down. Yet this single episode fades when compared to the ecologically apocalyptic proportions and atmosphere of the two novels and the play under discussion here.

5 I. Apocalypse Now?

1.1 Climate change: encompassing the debate.

In this chapter, I formulate a broad overview of the climate crisis in which we find ourselves today. Firstly, I attempt to isolate the facts of this increasingly politicised debate. Secondly, I assess the hot air surrounding these facts. It is not my intention to overload the reader with technical terminology, but some use of it is inevitable. It is my impression that a brief albeit exemplary background on the climate is necessary to ensure an adequate comprehension of literary ecology. One cannot investigate the products of the environmental debate if one does not understand its origins.

1.1.1 What is happening?

The sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing. John Keats

Over the last few decades, our scientific knowledge about environmental problems has increased exponentially. Oddly enough, this knowledge has not led to more consensus on the matter. Despite an overwhelming number of sources on the environment, there is still a great deal of disagreement about environmental issues.

Environmental information suffers from the same problem as much of the other merchandise in the information trade. There is a general lack of quality control on the traded product. Much traded information is either incomplete, or out of date, or outright wrong. Therefore environmental issues are a continuing source of debate. Several general questions and issues form the substance of this debate. What are we doing to this planet? Will our species survive? Are we destroying other species with which we share the planet? Could it be that we have already gone too far?11

11 William H. Baarschers, Eco-facts & Eco-fiction. Understanding the environmental debate. London 1996, p. i

6 The level of disagreement on many ecological issues has even led science philosopher Ravetz and natural scientist Funtowicz to describe ecological science as a postmodern science, in that there is not one truth, but many truths.12 Yet in the end, despite differences of opinion, there can be only one truth. Whichever side lets interests or biases dominate their communication runs the risk of being caught up by reality. Large fishing concerns may fulminate on fishing quota, but when the fish population collapses due to overfishing, they end up proven mistaken in the end. The same goes for the other side, when Greenpeace depicts a certain practice wrongly, they have to cope with tons of negative publicity and credibility loss.

Let us start with the basics. The main concern of climate change is global warming, which is in turn based on the naturally occurring greenhouse effect. The principle behind this is quite simple:

Several types of gases can reflect or trap heat, including water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2),

methane (CH4), laughing gas (N2O), CFC gases and ozone. [These] greenhouse gases trap some of the heat emitted by the earth, rather like having a blanket wrapped around the globe. The basic greenhouse effect is good – if the atmosphere did not contain greenhouse gases the average temperature on the Earth would be approximately 33°-35°C colder.13

The problem is that man has increased these greenhouse gases, notably CO2, because of the use of fossil fuels. Logically, if greenhouse gases reflect heat, then more gases will lead to more heat. Of course given that all other possible temperature-altering factors remain equal. This is ‘the man-made greenhouse effect or the anthropogenic greenhouse effect’ 14. That this effect exists is quite uncontroversial and widely accepted. This is important to know. Many people believe that the debate centres around the question whether or not fossil fuels have an effect on the atmosphere. There is no question about this. According to Ernst-Detlef Schulze, independent researchers on Mount Mauna Loa, Hawaii, have been measuring an increase in

CO2 emissions over the past 47 years. The measurements started in 1957. CO2-concentration is highest in winter, in which plants stop growing, and lowest in summer, i.e. in the growth period of plants. Oxygen levels in the atmosphere dropped as CO2-concentration increased.

This proves that increasing CO2-concentration is a direct consequence of human combustion

12 Lucas Reijnders, “Kakofonie van onenigheid”, Natuur & Techniek, 67(1999), nr. 6, 89 ff. 13 Bjorn Lomborg, The skeptical environmentalist: Measuring the real state of the world, Cambridge 2001, p.260 (Hereafter cited as Lomborg) 14Lomborg, p.260

7 processes.15 Long-term empirical research such as the Mauna Loa findings are very rare, yet ecological scientists are very much dependent upon this type of research.

And yes, it is true that temperatures have risen over the past 150 years, and still continue to do so. From 1856 to 2000, the average temperature worldwide has risen by 0.4 – 0.8°C16. There are two periods in which the increase is more prominent, namely 1910-1940 and from 1975 until today. “The second period coincides with the greenhouse concern, but oddly enough, no satisfactory explanation17 is given for the first period, and least of all a man- made explanation.”18 The fact that the last few decades were the warmest in the last 1,000 years has given rise to the much discussed and mediatised “hockey stick” graph.

The so-called “smoking gun” of man-made global warming was the famous “hockey stick” graph, which showed a flat temperature record taking a noticeable upward bend in the last generation.19

Critics of the global warming theory tend to downplay the possible human causes for this upward trend, and they generally blame the slight increase in temperature on the idea that the earth is still emerging from the ‘little ice age’, which is purported to have lasted from the 14th up to the 19th century. This, together with irregular solar activity20, are the most common arguments used in defence of a natural cause for global warming, as opposed to the ‘unnatural’ influence of man.

In 1996, the authority on climate change, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) concluded that “mankind has an unmistakeable influence on the global climate.”21 Up until now, the IPCC has published four reports on the state of the current and future climate. The first report, issued in 1990, presented a scenario in which nothing would be done to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The projected consequences from this scenario were then contrasted to consequences of other scenarios controlling gas emission. The scenarios were updated in 1992, 1996, and 2000. The differences between these official

15 Ernst-Detlef Schulze, “De Milieuramp 'Mens' Biogeochemie brengt invloed mens op aarde in kaart”, Natuur & Techniek, 69 (2001) nr. 1, 50 ff. (Hereafter cited as Schulze) 16Lomborg, p.270 17 ‘The IPCC believes that some of the increase can be attributed to solar irradiation.’ (Lomborg) 18 Lomborg, p.277 19 Steven F. Hayward, “Cooled down”, National Review, 31 January 2005, p.37 (Hereafter cited as Hayward) 20 Nigel Calder, The Manic Sun: Weather theories confounded, Pikington press, London 1997. 21 Schulze, p.50

8 scenarios, not including countless unofficial climate-predicting models in research centres around the globe, are, to say the least, broad.

Forecasting a century in the future is a business fraught with pitfalls, as we can tell from past forecasts. Some predictions turned out to be spectacularly wrong and some surprisingly prescient, but of course the problem is telling one from the other without the advantage of hindsight.22

The most important factor in forecasting is the emission of fossil fuels, but the main problem is most probably determining the role of other elements and deciding to what extent to incorporate them in the forecasting model. The IPCC did try to standardize the global climate forecasts in 1992 by introducing report IS92a, including six scenarios of future population, economic growth, deforestation rates, energy supplies, etc.. However, these factors are clearly prone to changes, as the future population number of IS92a expects “8.4 billion people in 2025, which is almost half a billion beyond what the UN expects today.”23

Another example is the proposed growth rate of CO2 emissions, again in report IS92a

The IPCC have assumed that the CO2 concentration will rise by 0.64 percent per year, from

1990 to 2100. However, this is much higher than the observed growth rate. In the 1980s, CO2 concentration grew by 0.47 percent, in the 1990s by just 0.43 percent. Focusing on such small percentages is not merely pedantic, since these are cumulative growth rates, the IPCC estimate

means that CO2 concentration will double in 109 years, whereas a sustained growth at the 24 observed rate means a CO2 doubling in 154 years.

These ‘small’ discrepancies show us exactly how much doubt there still is about where the climate is headed. […] the Greenland ice sheet and much of the polar ice caps could melt, raising the global sea- level by as much as 30 feet, inundating billions in coastal areas.(Keep in mind, though, that such a scenario would take decades to play out, unlike a tsunami.) But hold on: A variant of the catastrophe theory holds that warming might cause the Greenland and polar ice sheets to thicken and bring on a new ice age – the scenario of the movie The Day After Tomorrow. Incidentally, the sea level would fall by several feet, creating new opportunities for beachfront development. These competing scenarios have some theoretical plausibility, but the inability

22 Lomborg, p.278 23 Lomborg, p.278 24 Lomborg, p.279

9 of the scientific community to assign a probability estimate to either a temperature increase or the effects of such an increase shows how limited our climate knowledge remains. Although computer climate models are being constantly refined and improved, their compound uncertainties and blind spots make it impossible to know the probability of any future outcome.25

In other words, the data of many computer climate models is potentially correct inasmuch it is potentially incorrect. Yet these models, especially the IPCC ones, constitute the very basis of the environmental concern, and a great deal of reporters and environmentalists base their writings and polemics on them.

However, one can make the valid claim that these 1992 scenarios are dated. Indeed, in 2000, the IPCC provided 40 new scenarios instead of six in 1992. With this, one can easily conclude that the climate model builders have explicitly abandoned the idea of predicting the future, but are instead talking about many possible futures. This year, in 2007, another IPCC report on the status of the environment is due.

An example of another, European Community issued climate model is ESCAPE, which was developed by the RIVM26 in Bilthoven (Holland) in cooperation with the Climatic Research Unit in Norwich in 1994. It consists of three models, namely an emission model, a physical-chemical-biological model, and an effects model. J. Rotmans, one of the RIVM scientists working on the project, says that ESCAPE was meant to predict annual outcomes from 1990 to 2100. ESCAPE consists of many submodels, which each contain a large number of variables and parameters, of which each has its own uncertain factors. This results in an accumulation of uncertainties. As a result of this, Rotmans concludes, whilst having himself worked on ESCAPE, that the predicting value of a model like ESCAPE is hence relatively small.27

25 Hayward, p. 36-37 26 Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieuhygiëne (RIVM), Bilthoven en Rijksuniversiteit Limburg, Bilthoven, Maastricht 27 J. Rotmans, “Berekend beleid - Zorgen voor het klimaat van morgen”, Natuur & Techniek, 62 (1994), nr. 2, 114 ff.

10 The only thing that the scientific community is certain about today is that the earth is getting warmer. They do not know what caused it or what the consequences could be. There are three other facts. The quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are increasing and this is most probably because of human activity. The second is that we are currently probably still in a natural warming trend that started around 1850, with the end of the ‘little ice age’. And finally: nobody knows to what extent this warming is due to man’s or nature’s doing.

1.1.2 Hot Air

One of the consequences of the broad media coverage of the problem is that many people find in global warming a convenient scapegoat for a wide host of problems, ranging from the slightest weather anomaly to the increase of asthma patients to the East-Asian tsunami. These are the words of Steven Hayward, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators in an article in the National Review:

After the near record January 1996 blizzard hit the northeastern US, Newsweek ran a cover story attributing the storm to climate change. A year later, when an unusually warm winter led to early snowmelt and floods in the upper Midwest, Vice president Al Gore and others attributed it to climate change. And the three hurricanes that struck Florida in close succession last summer were a bonanza for the climate-change chorus, even though serious climate scientists readily admit that ascribing today’s extreme weather events to global warming is scientifically unsupportable. In fact, the intensity of hurricanes and cyclones has slightly diminished over the past 30 years.28

I hesitate to use the word global paranoia, as this would suggest an unreasonable fear, and the fact of the matter is that we do not know to what extent these fears are reasonable.

As I have stated above, although they are constantly being altered and refined, computer climate models are hardly reliable. This is perhaps one of the reasons why environmental activists clutch at any event to prove that global warming is well under way,

28 Hayward, p.36

11 even if the scientific evidence is still contradictory. Recently, global warming has been linked up with an increase in storms and hurricanes29 . Is there a link?

Katrina was a level 1 storm, the lowest category of hurricane, until blistering temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico supercharged it to level 5. The storm’s virulence was likely related to global climate warming, much like the recent forest fires that ravaged Southern California, floods that covered much of Bangladesh, and European heat waves that killed 35,000 people two summers ago. (…) We’re already seeing storms of exceptional violence accompanying the heating of our oceans by a single degree. Given that New Orleans may cost as much as $100 billion, what will be the level of destruction as global temperatures continue to increase?30 (my italics- S.V.)

This quote illustrates the unspoken fear in many people’s minds. Ever since the hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans almost two years ago, it ignited public fears about the possible effects of global warming on hurricanes, and the debate is dividing the scientific community since. There are scientists who blame global warming, and there are those who see a peak in the natural cycle of hurricane-powering conditions31. The official American instance, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) argues that the increase in hurricanes comes from ‘such conditions as warm water, low wind shear, and favourable eastern winds.’32 The words of a NOAA scientist in an article by Bret Schulte on this matter are: ‘We see absolutely no indication that greenhouse warming is causing any of it.’ Yet several independent studies indicate otherwise. One of these studies mentioned in this article is from researchers at Georgia Tech and indicates a ‘worldwide doubling of class four and five storms over the past 35 years.’33 Now let us contrast this with the final sentence of one of the previous quotes, namely by Steven Hayward in the National Review: “the intensity of hurricanes and cyclones has slightly diminished over the past 30 years.”34 This should give the reader an idea of the levels of controversy among the sources. Even if Hayward does not explicitly mention his sources for this statement, considering his academic background, it is probably a trustworthy one.

29 Bret Shulte, “A Storm over Warming”, U.S. News and World Report, 141(2006) nr. 8 (Hereafter cited as Schulte) 30 Paul Rogat Lieb,”What are the lessons of New Orleans?”, Earth Island Journal. www.Earthisland.com 31 The so-called Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. 30 Shulte, 2006 33 report by E. Kerry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the report by Webster and Curry, Georgia Tech 34 Hayward, p. 37

12 Aggravating this debate are charges that NOAA is warning its scientists not to speak openly about global warming. In November 2005, NOAA issued a report claiming that the consensus among its scientists was that recent hurricane activity resulted primarily from natural causes. After internal and external protest, NOAA added a footnote to the report, stating that the report ‘does not necessarily represent the views of all NOAA scientists’35.

This debate exemplifies the controversy and lack of consensus throughout the scientific community, not merely on the debate on hurricanes, but on the broader issue of global warming itself. I could easily continue providing examples of controversial sources and bickering scientists, but I believe that my point has been made.

1.1.3 No more Questions

Over the past decade, the consensus may not have grown within the specialized scientific community, but the general public seems convinced that the ecological environment is going to waste. In my opinion, the reasons for this are threefold. There are political, commercial, and psychological reasons. The chronological order in which they occurred is however problematic to determine.

First of all, the exact origins of the environmental debate are uncertain. In the next chapter, I trace them back to the publication of Silent Spring in the 1960s and link them to the rise of systemic uncertainty. Once the seeds of the debate were planted, however, political parties, organizations and individuals recognized its potential to attract the attention of the voters, and used it to further their political goals. The result being that, from the early sixties up until now, green parties and activist minorities have been steadily growing in number and size, while even right-wing parties have eventually incorporated some or other environmental policy into their program, thus answering to voter’s concerns.

Secondly, again in the 1960s, opportunistic publishers and corporations, too, began to recognize the political unrest and the public’s thirst for security, and attempted to curve this into commercial gain. Forgotten environmental writings from obscure 1950s writers were

35 Shulte 2006

13 reprinted in the 1960s and quickly became bestsellers.36 For a contemporary example of this, one only has to take a look at television commercials and before long, one will notice that most new products tend to play the energy-saving card rather heavily.

Thirdly, the incorporation of environmental discourse into politics and commercial discourse has resulted in a more widespread public belief in an impending environmental apocalypse, and hence, a more widespread fear. In times of uncertainty, people tend to seek psychological compensation and reassurance in ecological writings and apocalyptic narratives, which provides them with a future scenario, thus eliminating uncertainty. This in turn will lead to an increase of political action and commercial sales figures.

One can not help but notice that this entire train of thought can function perfectly well, and probably has, without any contribution from science. Scientists only became involved in this debate during the late seventies and eighties, and most have been very careful with their conclusions regarding matters such as global warming. They have never had any control over public fears. Today, many (young) scientists are very much drawn to the environmental cause, because of what has happened and is happening in the public sphere. This is not mere speculation on my part. In the October 2006 magazine of the International Water Association, there is not one voice that questions climate change. Its cover shows a picture of a dried-up Australian water basin with the words “Resource risks of climate change” above it.

The cover story[…] illustrates, through the example of Australia, how the issue is coming to the fore. Suppliers therefore increasingly face the prospect of having to factor climate change into their resource planning. A challenge with climate change is that it may not be clear how any particular supplier is likely to be affected. Even so, suppliers should by now be thinking in terms of whether the service they provide is sustainable and, as a part of that, whether their resources are sustainable. Climate change should therefore be part of that thinking.37

36 i.e. writers such as John Muir and Aldo Leopold (cf. chapter 2) 37 Keith Hayward (editor), “Creating a climate for change”, Water 21, October 2006, London. pp. 10

14 1.2 Note

Above, I have illustrated the extent of the environmental debate. Climate models, hurricanes, greenhouse gases and the likes aside, I must stress however, that in this thesis, I do not wish to use the analysis of an ecologically conscious writer’s work as a springboard for leaping into discussions of urgent environmental issues, nor will I assume a patronizing eco- police position. I refrain from openly taking sides in the debate of believers versus non- believers. Especially because this division is a false one. We are all environmentalists. everyone has concerns about the environment, after all, we live in it. At the same time, however, we are all anti-environmentalists, we all pollute, and hence contribute to the worsening state of the planet. There is a large grey area between the two extremes.

Along the wide political spectrum of environmental interests, the catastrophist activists occupy the left, the cornucopian38 optimists are on the right. A bewildered public and beleaguered governments huddle in the middle.39

The scientific side of the ecological debate is not the focal point of this thesis. But considering how the eco-apocalyptic narrative is a literary expression of this debate, I deemed a certain background knowledge necessary. Before looking at how Elton adapts the environmental debate in his work, we needed to know why he does so. Is there a clear reason to demonise the rich and powerful, or to blame corporate businesses or industries? The answer is far from simple. In this chapter, I have shown that there are few facts, many fictions, and infinite uncertainties connected to the debate. The green side of the argument is often vaguely constructed, unstable, extremist, and most importantly, hard to prove. Yet eco-literature has been around for over half a century, steadily expanding over the years and feeding on people’s fear. This relatively new genre is the subject of chapter two.

38 A cornucopia is ‘something that is or contains a large supply of good things’ Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford university press 2000 39 William H. Baarschers, Eco-facts and Eco-fiction: Understanding the Environmental Debate. New York 1996 p. ix

15 II Eco-literature

In this chapter, I will firstly discuss the possible origins of ecological awareness and the history of ecological literature. In the second part, I attempt to explain the success of the genre today. In the third part of this chapter, I outline the specific characteristics of this relatively new genre. Finally, by way of illustration, I provide a brief bibliographical selection of eco-literature.

2.1 origins and history

I’ll walk the depths of the deepest forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden, … It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall. Bob Dylan

2.1.1 Environmental Concern

In the context of this thesis, I disagree with the definition of ‘environment’ given in the dictionary. The environment is not the natural, factual world outside, but rather an idea in the minds of people. In this thesis, I will argue about the environment as the product of the discourse about nature established in scientific disciplines such as biology and ecology, in government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the IPCC, in fiction and nonfiction books such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring(1962) or Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb(1968). As rhetoricians Herndl and Brown put it:

In a very real sense, there is no objective environment separate from the words we use to represent it. We can define the environment and how it is affected by our actions only through the language we have developed to talk about these issues. As rhetorical theorists have long

16 argued, what we know, how we know it, and who can speak about it authoritatively are largely determined by our language.40

This does not mean that I draw upon the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, i.e. that we are prisoners of our language, that nothing can exist outside of it. I do not wish to sound relativistic, but language shapes -and gives history to- our world. And this includes the environment.

Apocalyptic narratives have played a large role in shaping environmental discourse, these narratives have served and still serve environmentalist polemics. Depicting the end of the world as the result of trying to control and restrain nature is the activist, 20th-century answer to 19th-century progress narratives in which the idea of progress is linked with human ‘victory over nature’. Other than proclaiming the end of the world, these prophetic narratives seek to signify something by portraying this apocalyptic vision. On the one hand, this is rooted in the rebellious spirit of the sixties:

[They] represent a radical attempt to replace the ideology of progress and to dislodge from power its primary perpetuators and beneficiaries in big business, big government, and big science – to overturn the technocapitalist enterprise that fuels the economy of the developed world.41

This is likely to sound like radical communist propaganda to most people. Most writers of influential apocalyptic narratives would agree. They do not feel the need to undertake an offensive on the ideology of progress or even on science, technology, or liberal democracy. “These texts appear not as the rhetorical equivalent of total war but as shock tactics to win the hearts and minds of the general public.”42 In this sentence, the phrase ‘the general public’ is of the utmost importance. More than forty years since the publication of Silent Spring(cf. below), I think we can agree that the general public is very much being alerted to the problem. As I have stated in the introduction, ‘ordinary households across the globe’ are expressing their concern. Especially before the 1960’s, the environment used to be mainly the concern of an activist minority.

40 Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown, Introduction. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996, p. 3 41 Killingsworth and Palmer, Millennial Ecology, The Apocalyptic Narrative from Silent Spring to Global Warming. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996, p.22 (Hereafter cited as Killingsworth and Palmer) 42 Killingsworth and Palmer, p.22

17 2.1.2 Rachel Carson and other pioneers

The first popular treatments of ecology, in the sense that humans were threatening to destroy their environment, can be traced back to the Sci-Fi / Horror novels and movies of the early postwar period, and more specifically to the spectre of nuclear radiation. A giant octopus, Godzilla, giant ants, moths, spiders and even giant carnivorous bunnies, or conversely, shrinking humans, were all popular expressions of the sense that people had lost control over science. Much like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,43 who could no longer control his magical brooms, our scientists, industrialists, and military men seemed to have lost all control and were happily leading us into ecological Armageddon. These apocalyptic narratives are all based upon fear. More specifically, it is man’s fear of losing control over his own creations. Man is obsessed with order, and is very much dependent upon routine. Whenever something unexpected happens, we instantly attempt to explain it in order to control it. This is how most religions originated. Originally, man turned to the gods for reassurance. The 19th century brought industrialization and secularisation to the Western world. Ever since, people started to turn away from religion. Instead, they worshipped a new god, the god of science. Science could provide rational answers to questions where the old religions could not. Think about the example of lightning. It is only reasonable to fear unknown external factors. But what if an increasingly large part of society, i.e. science and technology, which is a domain on which we have become very dependent, also had uncertain elements?

This provides the ultimate horror scenario. What if science, the greatest achievement of the human mind, can no longer be trusted? What if technology goes haywire? An internal factor providing security would be out of our control. What if we can no longer trust our own creations? A great deal of science-fiction novels or television series are based on this44. In these narratives, mankind has originally created artificial intelligence, but this technology has evolved on its own and has grown more intelligent and efficient than its creator. This is the ultimate nightmare for humanity. Mary Shelley had already understood this when she wrote The Monster of Frankenstein. Ever since, entire oeuvres have been built based upon this fear, just look at Asimov or Crichton. I will not discuss Mary Shelley here. It is relevant, however,

43James Algar, Fantasia, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Walt Disney Pictures 1942 44 e.g. novels such as Asimov’s I, Robot, Crichton’s Jurassic Park, Dan Simmons’ Hyperion/Endymion cycle,… television series such as Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek, Larson’s Battlestar Galactica,…

18 to note that the fear of an ecological apocalypse, and hence the very basis of the eco-literature genre is deeply rooted in the fear of losing control over our own science and technology. This apocalyptic angst explains the rise of environmentalism.

[…]apocalyptic prophecies have appeared throughout modernity as a kind of rhetorical and ideological counterweight to the scientific worldview, technological development, and liberal democracy that characterize the dominant culture.45

Eco-literature is different from traditional science-fiction, however. This genre introduces an important new factor which sets it apart from science fiction, namely the natural environment. Industrialization, capitalism, and big business represent the side of science and technology which has gotten out of control, not on its own, as in science fiction, but because of the added ingredients of money and human greed. Technology, which originally was a good thing, has turned into ‘evil science’. In eco-literature, this is represented by the rich and ruthless antagonist. This is pitted against the exact opposite of science and technology, its anti-god, namely an idealistic, Rousseau-esque nature. This side of the debate is represented in two ways, firstly by the idealistic protagonist. It is no coincidence that two of the main characters in Stark are hippies. Secondly, this side of the debate is represented more clearly by portraying an ideal vision of man coexisting peacefully with the environment. In Gasping(1990), a letter from an Indian Chief (cf. chapter three) provides the contrast to the ruthless world of business. In Stark(1989), this role is taken up by the Aboriginals (chapter four), and in This Other Eden(1993), it’s the Irish (chapter five).

If we are to look at the history of - and the very first examples of - ecological writings, which, as stated above, seem to draw upon a fundamental human angst, we must take a brief look at Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

It is a seminal work. Silent Spring is noteworthy for two reasons. Firstly, because it helped to create a public backlash against the pesticide DDT, which contributed to a ban in 1972 by the American Environmental Protection Agency. Secondly, Carson's book is an excellent example of the romanticization of nature from which the environmental movement draws the majority of its arguments.46

45 Killingsworth and Palmer, p.24 46 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson

19 The history of the environmental movement began with Silent Spring. The book was published in 1962, and quickly became a bestseller. The first large wave of environmental awareness followed in its wake. The scientific community reacted ambiguously, several authors wrote admiring reviews, while others fervently attacked Carson’s work. Nonetheless, its impact was enormous. Killingsworth and Palmer47 mention that Bob Dylan picked up the theme of acid rain in his 1963 protest song A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall: “the pellets of poison… flooding [the] waters” (cf. epigraph to this chapter). It is also noteworthy that “…the executioner’s face is always well hidden.” This nicely illustrates the faceless, unidentifiable, and invisible character of the eco-apocalyptic fear. According to Killingsworth and Palmer, key environmental authors that predate Carson, such as John Muir48 and Aldo Leopold49, did not really gain a wide readership until after the publication of Silent Spring. Before, these authors were thought of as either “harmless crazies or dangerous fanatics”50. This is because neither Leopold or Muir succeeded in convincing the public. Why?

The success of Silent Spring becomes more understandable if we take the temporal framework into consideration, i.e. the public’s growing fear and uneasiness over science and technology in the Cold War era. Carson mostly discusses agricultural chemicals and poisoned soil. What has made her powerful rhetoric so appealing and convincing to the public at the time, is that she explicitly compares nuclear and agricultural science, as in the following excerpt:

Radiation is no longer merely the background radiation of rocks, the bombardment of cosmic rays, the ultraviolet of the sun that have existed before there was any life on earth; radiation is

47 Killingsworth and Palmer, p.27

48 John Muir (1838 – 1914) was one of the first modern preservationists. His writings tell of his travels in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Muir is still read today. His direct activism helped save the Yosemite Valley and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. His writings and philosophy strongly influenced the formation of the modern environmental movement. He appears on the Californian quarter. http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/

49 Aldo Leopold (1887 - 1948) was a United States ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness preservation. Aldo Leopold is considered to be the father of wildlife management in the United States and was a life-long fisherman and hunter. He is the founder of the Wilderness Society. http://www.aldoleopold.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold

50 Killingsworth and Palmer, p.27

20 now the unnatural creation of man’s tampering with the atom. The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are the synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature.51

And one page further:

Next to the possibility of the extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s total environment with substances of incredible potential for harm.52

These passages illustrate the style and rhetoric of the entire book, another reason for its success. She employs popularising, simple language, containing only black-and-white images. The ‘natural’ is constantly pitted against the ‘unnatural’, the epitome of which is science. Man is ‘tampering with the atom’. In her own metaphors, agricultural chemicals are ‘brewed’ like a witches’ stew and sprayed over the world like a ‘chemical death rain’.

Rachel Carson knew perfectly well that scientists do not ‘brew’ things in their laboratories, but the association with evil, the image of a ‘witches’ brew’ was a tool she needed in order to be heard.53

Throughout her book, science is attacked as if it were sorcery; in doing so, she is attacking the human desire to control nature, as this is in fact the main purpose of both magic and science. Science is man’s monumental struggle to control that which cannot be tamed. Throughout the Middle Ages, thousands of people died because they were accused of witchcraft. Science and reason have long since elevated mankind above that level. Yet throughout Silent Spring, Carson inverts the Enlightenment idea of science as a beacon for human progress and seems to adopt a medieval, almost gothic perspective, tapping into the fear of losing control over our own creations (cf. first paragraph of this section). This greatly appealed to public concerns of nuclear annihilation at the time. Magic and science are two

51Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, New York 1962, pp. 17 ( Hereafter cited as Carson) 52 Carson, p. 18 53 William H. Baarschers, Eco-fact and eco-fiction: Understanding the Environmental Debate. New York 1996 p. ix (hereafter cited as Baarschers)

21 sides of the same coin. Mickey Mouse uses magic to animate his broom, whereas Dr. Frankenstein uses science to animate his creation.

Similar to Carson, Al Gore (cf. chapter one) attempts to appeal to public fears. Gore explicitly and seriously mentions the Holocaust. Battling environmental degradation is a ‘moral imperative’, no less important than stopping the Holocaust.

In his 1992 book “Earth in the Balance,” he wrote that “today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin.” He repeatedly refers to the ‘unfolding ecological holocaust’. (…) In “An Inconvenient Truth” and in interviews, Gore sticks to his guns. He quotes Churchill’s warning about the gathering storm of fascism and declares: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequence.” In interviews, Gore calls global warming skeptics “deniers” with an acid surely intended to conjure comparison to Holocaust deniers. 54

This clearly shows that fear is (and always has been) a determining factor within environmental works. William H. Baarschers accurately describes this as ‘agnosophobia, the fear of the unknown.’55 Defenders of the environmentalist cause seem to think that they can scare people into paying attention to their cause. If public fears have been awakened, the message will surely get across. Rachel Carson refers to the Cold War to get her reader’s attention. Al Gore refers to the Holocaust. If it were plausible, Gore would probably not hesitate to link environmental degradation to Al-Qaida.

In this respect, it is interesting to have a look at the prologue of Silent Spring. It is hardly two pages long and is entitled ‘A Fable for Tomorrow’56. As opposed to what the title suggests, it is written in the past tense, to suggest that it has already happened. “There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.” The town is situated in a beautiful pastoral landscape, where people are happy and birds are singing in every season, where “even in winter, the roadsides were places of beauty”. yet this extremely idyllic scene passes when suddenly “a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change.” “Some evil spell had settled on the community”,

54 Jonah Goldberg, “Al Gore’s horror theatre”, The Examiner Online, 15 June, 2006. (http://www.examiner.com/a-150483~Jonah_Goldberg__Al_Gore_s_horror_theater.html) 55 Baarschers, p.230 56 Carson, pp.2-3

22 almost every single animal dies, except for some ‘moribund’ birds. The people of the town sicken and even the children die. And “the roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire”. Who is responsible for this? “No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.” By stating that the people themselves are responsible, Carson eliminates the possibility of a conventional external villain, as the reader would have expected. At the end of the prologue, Carson explains:

This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim spectre has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we shall all know. What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain.57

The language in ‘A Fable for Tomorrow’ expresses fear of the end of the world, while it evokes ‘the grim spectre’ of ‘evil science’, which can be easily linked to ‘the mad scientist’- figure of popular culture. Killingsworth and Palmer state that this prologue experiments with the merging of genres, i.e. “one has to read it simultaneously as a fable, a psychologically complex tragedy (with the community as its flawed protagonist), and as an actual report of events.”58 I will argue that this mixing of genres also occurs in other apocalyptic narratives, namely in the works of Ben Elton.

Five years after the publication of Silent Spring, another apocalyptic writer climbed the stage, Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb was published in 1968 and also became a bestseller. As the title suggests, Ehrlich discusses the worst-case scenarios of population explosion and seems very much indebted to Thomas Malthus. Ehrlich predicts a Malthusian catastrophe due to population growth outpacing agricultural growth. He advocates social engineering and government control of the family. His conclusion is very similar to Carson’s:

57 Carson, p.3 58 Killingsworth and Palmer, p.23

23 Unwittingly, we have created for ourselves a new and dangerous world. We would be wise to move through it as though our lives were at stake.59

Other than Carson and Ehrlich, I must also mention Ernest Callenbach briefly. In 1975, he published Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston. The society described in it is one of the very first ecological utopias and had a great influence upon the green movement.

The impressive, environmentally benign energy, homebuilding and transportation technology described in Ecotopia was based on research findings published in such journals as Scientific American.[…] Callenbach’s main ideas for Ecotopian values and practices were based on actual experimentation taking place in the American West.60

Its importance is not so much literary, but rather the fact that it expressed on paper the future dreams and ideals of a great deal of people. It became somewhat of a bible for New-age hippies and green movements in the 1970’s. I must add that this book belongs in a different strand of ecological writing. It is not an apocalyptic narrative, as it portrays an idyllic fantasy world. It belongs to the genre of ecological mysticism, the peace-loving younger brother of the eco-apocalyptic narrative.

These three writers, and many others (cf. section 2.4. Bibliographical selection) have greatly contributed to the rise of environmental awareness during the sixties and seventies. By the late seventies, anti-environmentalists were pushed into a defensive position. Under the Reagan administration in the eighties, the environmental wave had somewhat slackened. Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior James Watt labelled environmentalists as anti-American, as enemies of democracy and even as ‘communists’.61 By the late eighties, the time was ripe for the second wave of environmental awareness. It is exemplary that in 1989, Time magazine’s person of the year award went to ‘The Endangered Earth’.

In 1988, in the midst of the hottest summer on record, while fires raged in Yellowstone and medical waste littered beaches on the eastern seaboard, the mass media awoke to the theory that by drastically increasing the amount of carbon molecules in the upper atmosphere,

59 Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, New York 1968, p.231 60 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Callenbach 61 Killingsworth and Palmer, p.36

24 advanced technological societies may have begun an irreversible cycle of global warming that, if it continued unabated, would radically alter the conditions of life on earth. This new awareness stimulated a revival of millennial ecology, culminating in what now appears to be a significant extension of sympathy for the environmentalist cause.62

It may be worthy to note that this was written in 1996. Anno 2007, the culmination point is no longer a mere ‘extension of sympathy’, but a widespread global fear in a world where ecological plans are (slowly) being implemented by governments. Yet the ‘final countdown’- feeling is still pervasive in many people’s minds and all hope for a better future seems lost.

2.2 Systemic Uncertainty

Today, in the 21st century, fear and its influence on the perception of reality still play an important role. It is a fact that we are very much influenced by the media reporting on terrorism and global warming. But simply stating that ‘fear sells’ and be done with the matter is not sufficient. The question to which it boils down to is ‘Why are we so susceptible to fear?’ and ‘Why does it sell?’ In order to provide a plausible answer to this matter, a brief excursion into the realm of political science is needed.63

According to Rik Coolsaet, there are four intertwined long-term cycles influencing our world today. These are respectively the disappearance of a unilaterally accepted world power64; the birth of a new technological age; globalisation speeding up; and the dawn of the age of ‘high’ politics. Together with the end of the Cold War and the subsequent end of a bipolar world system, these four cycles have contributed to the rise of a certain feeling, characteristic for a more chaotic world, a world disorder65.

Usually, these cycles do not coincide together, and the uncertainty flowing from one cycle is compensated by a lasting security from the others. This has not been the case in the nineties,

62 Killingsworth and Palmer, p.37 63 Rik Coolsaet, Macht en waarden in de wereldpolitiek: Actuele vraagstukken in de internationale politiek. Gent, Academia Press, ed. 2006-2007(Hereafter cited as Coolsaet) 64 For many political scientists, The United States can no longer be considered (or at least will soon cease to be) a world power. Since Vietnam, their real power and influence has been steadily decreasing. For information about this, I recommend Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham and London 2004 65 Coolsaet p.29

25 because the cycles then were simultaneously affecting the central levels of analysis of the international ties.66(my translation-S.V.)

These levels of analysis are conceptual frameworks or perspectives through which one analyses actors and processes within international relations. There are four levels67, i.e. the individual, society, the state, and the international system. These levels shape the interpretation and representation of a given fact. A time in which all four levels are shifting simultaneously, is termed a period of systemic uncertainty. From the nineties up until today, we have been experiencing such a period.

We were used to a dominant world power, but now it is less and less able to dictate the rules of the game. The faith in building an improved post-World War II society has disappeared due to a generalised belief in the advantages of the divorce of economy and politics, and in the myths of a so-called irrevocable globalisation. The exaggerated faith in globalisation has led people to believe that governments are no longer capable, or even necessary, to govern the current world order. Technological developments have shattered the idea that wealth will continue to increase and that unemployment will continue to drop. All these uncertainties have, in the end, burdened the individual with more questions than answers, making the temptation to search for ‘false securities’ irresistible, in other words, to find easy answers to complex situations.68(my translation-S.V)

This kind of uncertainty can easily be linked to the environmental debate, and in my opinion, it is one of its prime instigators. Easy answers can abundantly be found in ecological literature. Apocalyptic narratives do not provide false security, but in a sense, they do provide the certainty of future uncertainty. These narratives serve to confirm and enhance the doubts and fears readers already have. This systemic fear has a great influence over the perception of reality, yet this is sometimes in stark contrast with the real state of the world.69 First of all, since the end of the Cold War, the number, size and intensity of war-related violence has systematically dropped. Most wars today are fought in Africa. On the African continent, more people die because of war than the casualties of all other continents combined.. Secondly, the number of international crises(which are said to forebode war) is

66 Coolsaet,p.30 67 Coolsaet p.30 68 Coolsaet, p.31 69 The reader may recall the subtitle of Bjorn Lomborgs book The Sceptical Environmentalist (cf. chapter one), i.e. Measuring the real state of the world.

26 dropping. Thirdly, the number of genocides is dropping. Fourthly, the number of fugitives in the world is dropping. And finally, democracy and civil rights are gaining ground. 70 Coolsaet concludes that the world has become a safer place, contrary to people’s feelings, and contrary to what we are told by media daily. But he hastens to add:

Yet this good news is not a guarantee for a golden future. International cooperation is being threatened by new forms of polarisation and by a growing number of fault lines throughout the international community.71(my translation-S.V.)

2.3 Conclusion

By way of concluding this chapter on eco-literature, I have summed up eight characteristics typical of eco-apocalyptic narratives.

1. The success of ecological literature is based on an innate human fear, a sort of existential angst which is rather difficult to pin down. In my opinion, it is based upon man’s obsessive desire to control and order the world. In this train of thought, that which will be feared most is not an external unknown element, (as society will easily incorporate this) but uncertainty from within. This uncertainty is what Baarschers calls agnosophobia, i.e fear of the unknown. Ever since man started to develop technology, the fear of losing control over our own (often powerful) creations has grown. Mary Shelley already knew this. . 2. An apocalyptic narrative is a mix of genres. This can be observed in the prologue to Silent Spring. ‘A Fable for Tomorrow thus experiments with the merging of genres. It requires readers to view the text simultaneously as a fable, a psychologically complex tragedy(with a flawed protagonist-the community), and a report of actual occurrences’72 It is a hybrid, relatively subjective genre, which oddly enough, thrives in a modern culture that places increasingly high value on specialized, objective knowledge. These narratives are very much in contrast to scientific writing.

70 These five facts are drawn from Coolsaet p.21-27 71 Coolsaet, p. 27 72 Killingsworth and Palmer, pp.30

27 Scientific writing treats the objectivity of the scientist, the writer’s rhetorical stance, as a matter of convention; at issue in such texts are the accuracy of data, the soundness of method, and the validity of knowledge chains. Nature writing accommodates natural history but foregrounds the construction of writer’s personae and ethos in light of ethical judgments about how to be and act at home (i.e. ecologically) in the natural world.73

3. It is not because a certain scenario does not become reality (such as Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb), that its basic message and signalling function as a marker of the spirit of the times, should be dismissed. Neither can we simply dismiss its writer as a prophet of doom.

4. The aim of environmental works, even nonfiction works, is not to predict the future, but to change it. It aims to transform the consciousness that a problem exists into acceptance of action toward a solution by prefacing the solution with a future scenario of what could happen if action is not taken, if the problem goes untreated.74

In other words, eco-apocalyptic narratives attempt to transform the public’s mentality, in order to change the future, which is currently a grim one. Its aim is therefore not scientific, but political.

5. The more extreme the hyperbole of destruction is, the more radical the writer advocates ideological and political change.

6. To obtain the political goal, the writer must convince the reader of his beliefs. Undeniably, a radical, short-term, preferably detailed worst-case scenario will have more chance of succeeding than a careful long-term scientific analysis in which every change is minute. Even though the latter will be closer to reality, it is the former that will sell. In other words, the political goal is compulsorily linked to commercial factors.

73 H. Lewis Ulman, Thinking Like a Mountain, Persona, Ethos, and Judgment in American Nature writing. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996 p.49 74 Killingsworth and Palmer, p.22

28 7. Usually, the reader of these narratives will already be somewhat environmentally concerned. Hence the main effect of ecological literature is to confirm, increase, and perpetuate this concern. And in this sense, eco-literature provides certainty of future insecurity.

8. I disagree with Killingsworth and Palmer when they state that “The apocalyptic narrative has appeared in those moments of history when the movement is seeking to expand, to appeal to new segments of the general public, to annex new territories in a kind of rhetorical imperialism.[…] the apocalyptic narrative becomes a kind of political barometer.”75 In my opinion, the apocalyptic narrative has been around since time immemorial, but has only received attention from the general public during certain periods. Probably nobody would have heard of Silent Spring had Carson not published it during the heyday of the Cold War. Parallels can be drawn to our current situation. Had it not been for the convergence of systemic uncertainty in the nineties, Ben Elton might never have been so successful. It is my belief that, because of a pervasive feeling of insecurity during periods of unstable peace and possible attacks, people seek the means to clarify an uncertain future, they seek ‘easy answers to complex situations’, and this is psychologically compensated through increased public attention for apocalyptic narratives, leading to the expansion of the environmental movement. Killingsworth and Palmer invert cause and effect, turning this hypothesis around when they state that, when the movement expands, apocalyptic narratives appear. This seems highly unlikely to me, as no cause for the expansion is given.

75 Killingsworth and Palmer, pp.41

29 2.4. Brief bibliographic selection

By way of illustration to this chapter on ecological fiction, I provide a selection of novels and even some screenplays concerned with the environment.

Eco-apocalyptic narratives (chronological)

. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. (1962) . Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle. (1963) All water on the planet freezes because of a military experiment gone wrong. . Ballard, James. The Burning World.(1964) Industrial pollution prevents the evaporation of water, causing major draughts. . Aldiss, Brian. Earthworks.(1965) About soil exhaustion. . Blish, James. We All Die Naked. (1969) Often cited as the very first prediction of the Greenhouse effect. . Ehrlich, Paul. Ecocatastrophe.(1969) Presents a condensed version of his predictions in The Population bomb (1968). . Brunner, John. The Sheep Look Up. (1972): Well-researched, polyperspectivous tale about the destruction of the U.S through agricultural, military, and industrial pollution. . Offut, Andrew J. The Castle Keeps. (1972) . Wylie, Philip. The End of the Dream. (1972) . McLaughlin, Dean. To Walk with Thunder. (1973) . Hayes, Ralph. Last View of Eden. (1981) A powerful chemical product is accidentally mixed up with animal fodder. . Duncan, David James, The River Why? (1983) California . Herbert, Brian. The Garbage Chronicles. (1985) Earth throws its garbage into space rather than recycling it. . Streiber, Whitney and James Kunetka. Nature’s End. (1986) . Elton, Ben. Stark. London (1989) . Elton, Ben. Gasping. London (1990) . Brin, David. Earth. (1990) . Tobias, Michel. Fatal Exposure. (1991) About a hole in the ozone layer over Seattle.

30 . Elton, Ben, This Other Eden. London (1993) . Poyer, David Winter in the Heart (1993): about toxic waste dumping by major oil executive. . David Poyer, Louisiana Blue.(1994): corrupt oil company executive willing to cause a major environmental disaster for cash. . Robinson, Kim Stanley. Antarctica.(1998) . Clarke, Brian. The Stream. (2000) Won the Natural World Book Prize. . Peterson, Brenda. Animal Heart.(2004) . Railsback, Brian. The Darkest Clearing.(2004) . Spooks, BBC, episode 10, series 5 (2006) An environmental terrorist group storms the Thames Barrier and threatens to flood London. They demand that the government publish a secret document entitled ‘Aftermath’. The document is in fact a proposal to abandon any attempt to tackle global warming and instead build on economic and military strength so that Britain and America can control the remaining resources.

New-wave Eco-mysticism and Eco-feminism (alphabetical)

. Callenbach, Ernst. Ecotopia. (1975) . Herbert, Frank. Dune. (1965) Classic sci-fi trilogy about a desert world with very original water-saving technology. . Le Guin, Ursula. The Word for World is Forest. (1972) Post-Vietnam account of deforestation by Marines on a tree world. . Le Guin, Ursula. Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences. (1987) Short pieces about a time where humans can talk to and empathically ‘feel’ animals and plants. . Varley, John. Titan. (1979) . Schmidt, Dennis. Satori. (1981) The last part of a trilogy which describes life on a colony world where Zen-spiritualism and limited technology go hand in hand

31 III GASPING

The previous two chapters have served as an introduction to ecology and ecological fiction. By now, the reader should have acquired sufficient background knowledge on eco- apocalyptic narratives, and I can finally start with Stark, This Other Eden, and Gasping by Ben Elton. The lion’s share of this thesis will consist of my discussion of these three literary works. In this chapter, I discuss Elton’s play Gasping, a fairly short and simple play, which makes it a perfect hors d’oeuvre. As I have stated in my introduction, sources on Ben Elton are scarce, and some of my secondary literature may appear far-fetched to the reader. But rather than trying to sow on an already exhausted field, I have chosen to contribute something to a new field.

3.1 Ben Elton: Bio- and bibliographic introduction

Benjamin Charles Elton was born on 3 May 1959 in Catford, South London to a distinguished academic family, who had originally fled from Prague to England in 1938 to escape Hitler’s anti-semitism. The youngest of four, Ben went to Godalming Grammar school, followed drama classes and wrote his first play at the age of 15. In 1977, he studied drama at Manchester University together with Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmundson76. After graduating in 1980, Ben started on his career as a stand-up comedian, and became a central figure in the alternative comedy scene in the 1980s. During this time he was especially critical of the Thatcherite regime. He started out as a stand-up comedian, but quickly began writing for and acting in television, and wrote novels, plays and screenplays, while still continuing his stand-up comedy career.

His first television success was at the age of 23 as co-writer of the television sitcom The Young Ones. By 1985, he became the youngest sole scriptwriter for the BBC with his comedy-drama series Happy Families. Also in 1985, Elton began his successful writing partnership with Richard Curtis. Together they wrote Blackadder 2, Blackadder the Third and Blackadder Goes Forth. The Blackadder series became a world-wide hit and won numerous awards, including four BAFTA awards and an Emmy. In 1990 he starred in his own stand-up comedy and sketch series entitled The Man from Auntie (punning on The Man from

76 Elton later worked together with them on The Young Ones. Mayall and Edmundson later became widely known because of their sitcom Bottom.

32 U.N.C.L.E, ‘Auntie’ is a nickname for the BBC). Also widely known is his 1995-1996 television sitcom The Thin Blue Line, starring Rowan Atkinson. It ran for two series and won the 1995 British Comedy Award and both the public and professional Jury Awards at Reims.

Stark is Elton’s first novel and was published in 1989. It is set in Australia (and was also written there) and became a bestseller. It has sold well over a million copies. Stark was made into a television film in 1993 in which Elton himself starred as the character CD. Elton has written ten novels since then: Gridlock77 (1991), This Other Eden (1993), Popcorn (1996), Blast from the Past (1998), Inconceivable(1999), Dead Famous (2001), High Society (2002), Past Mortem (2004), The First Casualty (2005), and Chart Throb (2006). Other than these eleven novels, Ben Elton wrote three successful West End plays. In 1990, Gasping ran for nine and a half months at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London (West End), starring Hugh Laurie as Philip and featuring the voice of Stephen Fry. Elton’s second play, Silly Cow(1991) was again performed at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London and ran for a further eight months. Popcorn(1996) was adapted for the stage and won numerous awards in Australia and France. Blast from the Past(1998) was also adapted for the stage. More recently, Ben Elton has embarked on a career in musical theatre. He worked together with Andrew Lloyd Webber on The Beautiful Game (2000), and also wrote We Will Rock You (2003), featuring music by Queen. Again in 2003, he wrote Tonight’s the Night with music by Rod Steward.78

In 2001, he was widely criticized for hosting the Royal Variety Performance and for presenting his musical The Beautiful Game at George W. Bush’s inauguration. He has been labelled a hypocrite for going back on every left value he stood for in the 80s and 90s.

How does it look for the author of Gasping, a satire about greedy corporations franchising the air we breathe, to don the motley for a former governor of Texas who has been accused of favouring his friends in the petrochemical industry at the expense of the environment? 79

77 Chronologically, Gridlock(1991) was published in between Gasping(1990) and This Other Eden(1993), but for personal and practical reasons, I preferred This Other Eden to Gridlock. 78 Biographical information: Wong, Andrew. British Comedy: The Ben Elton FAQ. http://www.faqs/tv/british- comedy/Ben-Elton/, http://www.wikipedia.org, http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/profiles/ben_elton.shtml 79 Stephen Smith, “A Gong for Elton?”, New Statesman, 29 January 2001, p. 44

33 Unlike this reporter, I will not concern myself with Ben Elton’s personality or career choices, but rather with his works. Currently, Elton lives in Notting Hill, West London and has three children with his Australian wife Sophie Gare.

3.2 GASPING

In this section, I discuss a play by Ben Elton. I start with a summary of the scenes, for clarity’s sake. Secondly, I will discuss the antagonist character sir Chiffley Lockheart, followed by the protagonist, Philip. Thirdly, I will approach the role of money in the play from a socio-philosophical angle.

Gasping premiered at the Royal Theatre, West End, and ran for 8 and a half months. It is a play about corporate madness, the power of marketing and straightforward greed. The plot is fairly simple. In the world of Gasping, the very air we breathe has become another commodity, i.e. it has a price. A ruthless corporate executive, sir Chiffley Lockheart, is looking for a new idea. Philip, a rather dim-witted executive comes up with ‘designer air’. The ‘Suck and Blow’ is a machine that sucks in air, cleans it and stores it, eliminating the need to breathe second-hand air. The machine is a huge success and as the air grows thin, the price of air goes up. The main character Philip develops a conscience and decides to kill his own brainchild. Gasping is a very extreme satire on commodification.

3.2.1 Or How to Market Air (synopsis)

In scene one, a corporate executive, sir Chiffley Lockheart, is addressing his top young executive Philip and his junior partner Sandy (contrary to what the name suggests, Sandy is a man). It seems that sir Chiffley Lockheart is looking for the next “Pot Noodle”. Literally, a Pot Noodle is a large plastic cup with dried noodles in it, to which the consumer is instructed to add boiling water. It can be found in supermarkets. Obviously, sir Chiffley is using this in a metaphorical sense.

34 A Pot Noodle is the most beautiful thing on Earth. It is a new way of making money. A way of making money … where no money existed before: the very definition of excitement.80

In scene three, we are back in sir Chiffley’s office, a month later, and Philip has come up with a potential ‘Pot Noodle’. At first, the chief does not seem to be following Philip’s reasoning, but when Philip mentions ‘designer air’, the enormity of the idea sinks in. Sandy comes in with the machine, baptised Suck and Blow, and they perform a demonstration. Because the office is on complete security shutdown on account of this idea, all three nearly suffocate until Sandy hits the ‘Blow’ button. Obviously, this near-suffocating-scene prefigures what is still to come, i.e. suffocation on a global scale. In scene four, Philip and Sandy are in the office of advertising lady Kirsten. It seems that the target consumer is the yuppie, i.e. young, up-and-coming businessmen with several Porsches in their garage. This man is forced to breathe ‘Bus drivers’ farts81’. The advertising campaign is built upon class and it encourages discrimination. When the scene has ended, the audience hears a radio advertisement:

MUM’S VOICE: Well Jenny, that’s the floor done, I’ve cleaned the house from top to bottom, everything’s sparkling and ready for your birthday party. LITTLE JENNY’S VOICE: No it isn’t Mummy. MUM’S VOICE (laughing indulgently): All right Jenny, what have I missed? JENNY: All the lead, the carbon, the nicotine, the dried dead skin cells, the human methane, oh lots and lots of horrid poisonous muck! MUM: Well I can’t see any of that dear. JENNY: You can’t see it Mummy, but it’s there and I’m going to have the dirtiest, most unhealthy birthday party in my class. VOICE OVER: Doesn’t your child deserve the benefits of Suck and Blow…? Other people’s air: it’ll get right up your nose.82

This advertisement signals a time-lapse of several months, as two elements indicate. First of all, in scene four, ideas were still being developed, and the commercials were not on the air yet. Secondly, in terms of genre, this is an entirely different advertisement from the ones shown by Kirsten. As we can read, its target consumers are no longer yuppies. Having already

80 Ben Elton, Gasping, London 1990. p..10 (Hereafter cited as Gasping) 81 Gasping p.22 82 Gasping, p. 36-37

35 exhausted the yuppie market, Lockheart industries has apparently decided to address a wider audience, and is now targeting young families.

In scene five, Philip and sir Chiffley Lockheart are in a steam room together. Sir Chiffley is very pleased with Philip. Scene six and seven illustrate that, despite some minor setbacks, Suck and Blow is an enormous success. It seems that Lockheart industries won a court case in which the judge ruled that parents have the right to switch their kids’ schools on air cleanliness grounds. The next scene is set in sir Chiffley’s office. Philip is promoted to president of the entire Lockheart Air Division, but feels guilty because people are almost suffocating in the streets.

The difference between act one and act two is quite clear-cut. In act one, people were having minor problems breathing, but nothing serious. In act two, people are dying, of course mostly those on the lowest rung of the social ladder. The problem attains global proportions, Philip’s conscientious objections grow, and his conscience will prompt him to take action.

Act two, scene one is set in a large control room of a Lockheart air factory. It is its grand opening. Philip and Sandy discuss the problem of natural wind with sir Chiffley. Natural winds can unexpectedly carry oxygen into areas scheduled for wafting by Lockheart. Sir Chiffley comes up with a solution(cf. below).

The next two scenes are in stark contrast with the former one, as they both show how Suck and Blow has influenced everyday social life. They also show how quickly people seem to adapt to a rapid change. The first is a brief weather report, advising people to go to the coast tomorrow, so as to pick up some free oxygen. ”Really brisk, lovely, oxygen-saturated winds, so why not get the Suck and Blow in the car and go and pick a few breaths up for nothing… make a family picnic of it.”83 Obviously, the families will only be able to suck in the oxygen scraps left over by Lockheart’s huge mobile suckers. The second scene is even more distressing. Kirsten and Sandy have just hosted a dinner party. Kirsten is annoyed because one of their guests has been breathing rather heavily all evening. She says: “I wouldn’t mind but I was blowing some really terrific stuff tonight, Sicilian,

83 Gasping, p.76

36 sucked on the North face of Mount Etna, completely wasted on him of course.”84 Elton has even invented an entirely new term for this kind of people, as Sandy calls her an air snob.

Act two, scene four is a key scene and a mirror image to act one, scene five. Once again, Philip and sir Chiffley are in a steam room together. Philip is very much burdened by his conscience, worsened by a letter he has received. The letter is a copy of the reply that an Indian Chief, known as Seattle, sent in 1854 to the United States government as a reply to their request to buy land from him. Philip reads a few excerpts from it. Sir Chiffley does not know what has gotten into his right-hand man, and suggests he take some leave. In scene five, six, seven, and eight of act two, Philip is absent, with the exception of scene six (A), which is a brief tableau showing him ‘on leave’, drinking wine and watching TV.

In the following three brief scenes, Elton takes his story to another extreme. These scenes have three goals. First of all, they show the seriousness and extent of the suffocation problem. Secondly, the inept attitude of both politics and media, and thirdly, the (very meagre) measures taken with respect to the problem of mass suffocation. These scenes can be compared to scene two and three of act two. Again, a secondary (public) figure is addressing the general public, but instead of a weather lady, we get a politician and a journalist.

In scene five, the minister for the environment is making a speech, providing ‘advice’ rather than answers. He advises the (poorer) public to breathe as little as possible. They are advised to get rid of the dog, avoid the lavatory if possible, avoid love-making, and keep family discussion to a minimum. This clearly shows that politics are powerless against big business. This is one of many clichéd ideas that are very much present in environmental writing. The world of business is trans-national and all-powerful, governments, on the contrary, have to rely on the strength of the country’s economy. A multi-national corporation is not tied to one territory, and can threaten to take their business elsewhere. Hence politicians are in no position to argue. An often heard example is that major oil concerns are said to hold the U.S. government in the palm of their hand.

Scene six shows Sandy and Kirsten on a jet bound for Africa. Scene seven is set in an African relief camp. A reporter wearing an oxygen helmet is walking between corpses and

84 Gasping, p.80

37 gasping people. One of the things we hear from her is that approximately four million people have already died due to starvation, air riots, and suffocation. African people are gathered around three ancient, dilapidated Lockheart Blowers. Elton does not only criticise the world of business and politics in this play, but also takes a stab at the media. At the end of the reporter’s monologue, she addresses the cameraman in a ‘brisk, professional tone’: ‘Did you get the baby in Barry? The shot won’t work without the baby.’85 This indicates the hypocrisy and the lack of any real concern on her part. Only sensation, and manipulating people’s feelings are what matters. In scene eight, Sandy and sir Chiffley are walking through a ‘breather tube’, an enclosed tube at street level. Sir Chiffley is very much worried about the fact that people are learning to live with much less air, resulting in a lower ‘gulp’ price and massive losses for the air industry. The logical short-term solution for this is raising the price.

Scene nine is the final scene of the play. The setting is once again sir Chiffley’s office, where the play started. All four main characters are present. The air business is plummeting, the combination of huge stockpiles and massively decreased demand is leading the industry into a recession. In order to force up the price, by applying simple economic rules, the supply must drop, thus raising effective demand. Outside, large amounts of oxygen are being burned in order to ‘rationalize’ the stocks. When sir Chiffley reveals his plan to get rid of their largest competitor, i.e. natural photosynthesis, Philip comes into action. First, he gets rid of Kirsten and Sandy, next, he tells his boss he has another ‘Pot Noodle’-idea, and once again, sir Chiffley instantly puts the office on complete security shutdown. Finally, Philip smashes the Suck and Blow machine and both himself and his boss eventually suffocate.

3.2.2 Sir Chiffley Lockheart

Fiction is one of mankind’s prime means of articulating the concerns of an age, of exploring solutions, and even reaching consensus. Fiction requires antagonists, for it requires struggle and doubt. The protagonist must be involved in a fight against a credible opponent. According to David Poyer, the requirements of the antagonist are fourfold. He should be credible, vivid, less sympathetic than the protagonist, and most importantly, he should relate

85 Gasping, p.98

38 to a concern which the reader has.86 In other words, the antagonist in environmental fiction should be the embodiment of the reader’s fears. Poyer distinguishes several broad categories: The natural world The other, the ‘evil’ man/woman The corporation The institution e.g. the army (James Jones, From Here to Eternity), the Vatican (Eugene Sue, The Wandering Jew), the Mafia (John Grisham, The Firm) The enemy e.g. Germans, Yankees, Japanese, Vietcong, terrorists… The ideological enemy e.g. Nazi’s and Communists The Self 87

Sir Chiffley Lockheart, and every value he represents, obviously belongs in the third category. As his surname (subtly) suggests, he is cold-hearted, ruthless, and only cares about making more money. In a sense, he is barely human. His most important characteristic is his cold rationality and his perverted logic. Act one, scene eight is set in sir Chiffley’s office. Philip is being promoted to president of the entire Lockheart Air Division, but instead of being overjoyed, Philip is depressed because he has just become aware of the problem that the air is being sucked thin of oxygen:

PHILIP : […] within the localized environment, where mass sucking is taking place, there can develop a bit of a shortfall on breathing material… not for very long, but well, ‘not very long’ is actually quite a while in respiratory terms… It’s suddenly all got rather serious, in some areas brief periods have arisen where strolling for a bus has been a similar experience to climbing Mount Everest.88

Sir Chiffley Lockheart is anything but depressed about this, and in opposition to Philip, he sees new possibilities in this development. He proposes to build ‘Super Suckers’ and ‘Bumper Blowers’, in order to collect oxygen in under-populated areas. When city councils find their atmosphere temporarily thinned, they can hire Lockheart to make up for the shortfall by pumping some oxygen back into the public arena. This scene is the crucial turning-point in the play. At this point, Lockheart shifts from selling machines which store and filter air to selling simply oxygen-filled air. It is striking to see how easily sir Chiffley overcomes his

86 David Poyer, The Enemy is Us: Ecology, Science, Heroes, and Villains in the Post-Cold-War World, Florida 1994, p.2 (http://www.esva.net/%7Edavidpoyer/eco.htm) (Hereafter cited as Poyer) 87 Poyer, p.3 88 Gasping, p.56

39 moral objections. He tells Philip that the current situation is not their responsibility. They only make the machines, the problem exists because the consumer has created it by storing too much oxygen. By employing cold rationality, and by displacing responsibility, i.e. by blaming the consumer, sir Chiffley has no moral problems with exploiting this problem for profit. Air is the only natural resource which is still free. Hence it is only logical if they give the consumer the opportunity to buy it. This type of inverted logic is sir Chiffley’s trademark, and it returns a number of times throughout the play. Philip will desperately try to convince himself of the validity of this reasoning as the plot develops.

CHIEF: The air is a natural resource. Like food or coal. Is the grocer or the coal man wrong for selling his wares? And yet people need food and warmth as much as they need air. It seems that a man is to be allowed to put bread on his table, clothes on the backs of his children, buy land upon which they can run and play, and yet he is to be denied the chance to provide fully and properly for his family the most basic human prerequisite of the lot, the wherewithal to breathe. Denied that chance for fear that some hypothetical, free-loading drop-out may find himself momentarily out of breath.89

Another example of this reasoning can be found in act two, scene one. After sir Chiffley’s speech, Philip (who is slightly drunk) and Sandy are discussing the problem of wind with sir Chiffley. Natural winds can unexpectedly carry oxygen into areas scheduled for wafting by Lockheart. Again, sir Chiffley has an idea to put this to his advantage:

[…] the wind is the wind and I see no reason why we cannot put it to our advantage, most winds are fairly seasonal. It seems to me not an unreasonable idea that we might anticipate the majority of them. PHILIP(not understanding): Ye-es. CHIEF: And send mobile suckers to the coast in order to harvest the oxygen before the winds sweep inland. That way the basic minimum gulp price will be protected and the legitimate consumer will be protected from cowboys. PHILIP: Well of course, we have to protect the consumer. 90

89 Gasping, p. 60 90 Gasping, p. 75

40 Throughout the long history of the narrative in general, it is possible to observe an evolution. In classical mythology or medieval legends for example, the antagonist was an external factor, and the hero went out of his protected, idyllic community on a quest to fight an evil. In the end, having vanquished the evil, he returns and is celebrated. If we take a look at Russian literature, however, we see that the antagonist position has been internalised. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s torturer is nothing more than his conscience. Once the antagonism or reason for distress has been internalised, escape to a safe haven is no longer possible and the protagonist’s regression begins. A return to the idyllic original state of affairs is out of the question. In this respect, environmental literature takes up a quite unique position, as it is a mix of these two extremes.

In Gasping, the antagonist is an external factor, i.e. the head of a multinational corporation. But on the other hand, there is an important given which internally influences both the antagonist and the protagonist(s), namely the background factor of environmental degradation. To the protagonist, this is a problem. He is a ‘good’ person with a moral conscience, thus committed to rescuing, or at least caring about this background factor. The main character in Gasping takes up a unique position in this matter, because it is in fact Philip’s idea that is the cause of the problem, i.e. mass suffocation. Because of this, Philip’s actions at the end of the play cannot be considered as merely resulting out of ethical and moral principles, but first and foremost out of a guilty conscience. Guilt becomes the prime motivator. This sets Gasping apart from Stark and This Other Eden. In the last two only conscience, strong morals, principles, or plain idiocy figure as prime motivators.

For the antagonist however, environmental degradation is none of his concern, as ecology is very much inferior to the endless accumulation of wealth. Because he lacks a conscience, he is actually able to profit from polluting and destroying the earth. The stereotype of the ruthless businessman - who is successful only because he lacks a conscience - is very much present in this type of writing. To my knowledge, in every single environmental novel, in one way or another, there figures a successful, rich businessman unrestrained by conscience. Success and a lack of conscience had already been linked by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov kills his landlady in order to see if he is free of conscience, and if he is able to transcend petty moral laws. Raskolnikov is a man of limitless ambition. He desperately wants to become a great historical figure like Napoleon, who was responsible for the deaths of thousands, but was still hailed as a great man. Of

41 course, the protagonist in Crime and Punishment cannot escape his own conscience. In this sense, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is in fact a Raskolnikov avant-la-lettre when he exclaims that ‘conscience does make cowards of us all’91. This does not hold true for Philip however. His conscience does not make him a coward, quite the contrary, his feeling of guilt eventually prompts him to take action.

The antagonists in the writings of Ben Elton, i.e. Sly Moorcock (as representative of the Stark conspiracy), sir Chiffley Lockheart, and Plastic Tolstoy are exactly what Raskolnikov so badly wanted to be. They are superhuman. The cover of Stark states that “Stark has more money than God, and the social conscience of a dog on a croquet lawn. What’s more, they know the Earth is dying.”

3.2.3 Philip

In this section, I will discuss the moral regression of the main character, followed by its drastic resolution. Elton gradually lets Philip’s conscience come forward. The seeds of this are planted in act one, scene five, where Philip and sir Chiffley are in the executive Jacuzzi whirlpool bath. In this scene, we get the first hint of Philip’s naïve, soft side. Sir Chiffley is praising Suck and Blow as the marketing phenomenon of the decade, and Philip answers: “Yes, and even more satisfying is that we’ve improved the quality of people’s lives.”92 And a few pages further, while talking about Japanese competitors:

[…] After all, Suck and Blow isn’t just about money. Hell, let the Japs have a piece. We are building the future here, making a better, healthier, cleaner world for our children…93

In the first four scenes, Philip is portrayed as an utter idiot. It may be worth to bear in mind that this role was originally played by Hugh Laurie, whom the reader may remember as ‘The Prince Regent’ in Blackadder the Third and as ‘Lieutenant George’ in Blackadder goes Forth, and in both roles he plays a complete idiot. In Gasping, this effect is mainly achieved by having him speak gibberish constantly, there are many instances where he uses an alliterating proper name in front of several words. A few examples: Peter Profit, Terry Triumph, Derek

91 W. Shakespeare, Hamlet with sixteen lithographs by Eugene Delacroix. London 1976, p.71 92 Gasping, p.39 93 Gasping p.45

42 Disaster, Barry Button, Barry Bollocks, etc… Characteristic of this type of speech is the very discursive manner of speaking. Instead of simply answering ‘hardly’, Sandy says: ‘Twelve types of hardly’94. Apparently, this was the ‘in’ speech of yuppies in 1990, but it probably sounded rather stupid at the time, too. But in the Jacuzzi scene, Philip is quite suddenly speaking like a real person, and by making him say naïve but kind-hearted lines, Elton has begun to soften him up, in order to have him gain the sympathy of the public, as he later will become the tragic hero of the play.

In act one, scene eight, Philip gets promoted but does not seem very pleased with it, because people are starting to have trouble breathing in the streets. The chief tells Philip that this is not their problem, they just provide a service. As I have stated above, this type of inverted logic is sir Chiffley’s trademark, and Philip desperately tries to convince himself of the validity of this reasoning as the plot develops. In the next scene, during a conversation between Kirsten and Philip, it is striking how much effort Philip puts in trying to believe his boss’ words. He is copying sir Chiffley’s reasoning from the former scene in order to convince himself of its truth. It is as if he has constantly been repeating it to himself, as a mantra.

[…] Sadly there are still people who resent their councils having to buy in private air to make the streets safe. We’ve got to get people to understand that pushing private air into the public arena is the inevitable result of people’s God-given right to own their own air.95

Act two, scene four signals a moral landmark. This scene is a mirror image to act one, scene five. Once again, Philip and sir Chiffley are in a steam room together. Sir Chiffley is trying to be casual, but unlike the former steam room/Jacuzzi scene, Philip is very much burdened by his conscience. Someone has anonymously sent him a copy of letter that an Indian Chief, known as Seattle, supposedly sent in 1854 to the United States government as a reply to their request to buy land from him. Philip reads the letter from within his own limited world of business, i.e. he describes the tribe in corporate terms. These are a few excerpts from it: PHILIP:[…] Seattle has talked to his people and they have made a policy decision that (refers to letter) ‘Every part of the Earth is sacred’… and now he is memo-ing the US government on

94 Gasping p.93 95 Gasping, p.67

43 the issue. He continues… (reads)… ‘Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people’… […] PHILIP: […] ‘The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the Red man. There is no quiet place, no place to hear the unfurling of the leaves in Spring or the rustle of the insects’ wings’…96

Finally, Philip explains his point to sir Chiffley, who does not seem to understand what has gotten into him.

PHILIP (pacing about): Well sir, as I originally saw it, the real excitement of our sucking operations was that we had found a way to tame the final element for the good of mankind, just as land and food and power and water and the very land itself had once been tamed. CHIEF: Well, I think that’s a fair, if perhaps rather fanciful way of describing raking in a wadge of cash. PHILIP: Then, when people started wandering around going purple and gasping for breath I thought, ‘Whoops, hang on, hullo… I wasn’t under the impression that going purple and gasping for breath was particularly high up on the list of things that are for the good of mankind’… It struck me that it wasn’t awfully long since everybody had had enough to breathe, and now, bugger me, but for the good of mankind, they hadn’t any more… I mean old Seattle saw it coming with the land…97

Chief Seattle98(178?-1855) is a historical figure. He was the patriarch of the Duwamish and Suquamish Indians of Puget Sound99, and is best remembered for a treaty oration supposedly given in the year 1854, at the site of the present American metropolis Seattle. The speech has often been used to justify attitudes regarding the treatment of the native Americans and the environment in the United States. Its authenticity is problematic. In addition to this speech, Chief Seattle allegedly wrote a letter to President Franklin Pierce in the same year. This is the letter to which Elton refers. However, the historicity of the letter is highly problematic. As Jerry L. Clark puts it:

96 Gasping, p.86 97 Gasping p. 87-88 98 Also spelled ‘Sealth’ 99 Jerry L. Clark, Thus Spoke Chief Seattle: The Story of An Undocumented Speech, vol.18(1985) No.1,p.1 http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1985/spring/chief-seattle.html (Hereafter cited as Clark)

44 The purported letter by Chief Seattle to President Pierce is very likely spurious. Among other charges, it denounces the White Man’s propensity for shooting buffaloes from the windows of the ‘Iron Horse’ – a remarkable observation by Seattle, who never in his lifetime left the land west of the Cascade Mountains and thus never saw a railroad. […] A letter from an Indian in 1855 concerning Indian policy and directed to the President would have required the usual nineteenth-century red tape. […] A search of the records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior in the National Archives and the presidential papers of Franklin Pierce in the library of Congress has not uncovered even a trace of such a letter. It has not been found among the private papers of Pierce in the New Hampshire Historical Society. It is known that Seattle was non-literate, so yet another person must have written the alleged message – yet no source for the text of the 1855 letter has ever been discovered.100

It is unfortunate that the letter is most likely a fake, for the noble statements in it lose their historical validity and moral force if the letter is just the literary creation of a late 19th century opportunistic writer rather than the thoughts of an articulate and charismatic Indian chieftain. Most likely, in Gasping, Elton uses pseudo-historical evidence. This letter is used to invoke a harmonious, idyllic past, and Elton pits this against a dreadful present and future, very much in the manner of Rachel Carson’s prologue to Silent Spring.

At the end of the second Jacuzzi scene, sir Chiffley suggests that Philip take some leave, and again repeats his main argument, i.e. that the problem of people suffocating in the streets is none of their concern, it has nothing to do with them, as they only provide a service. The scene ends, and Philip did not provide an answer. This deviates from all former scenes in which Philip and his boss are present. Usually, Philip is seen to agree with everything his boss says, very often providing an echo. In this crucial scene, Philip’s conscience has finally conquered his loyalty and business instincts. In scene five, six, seven, and eight of act two, Philip is completely absent, with the only exception of scene six (A), which is a brief tableau showing him ‘on leave’, drinking wine and watching TV. In the final scene of the play, he returns. Because the climactic ending features both Philip and sir Chiffley Lockheart, I have chosen to discuss this scene in a separate section below.

100Clark,p.7

45 3.2.4. The Ending

Scene nine is the final scene of the play. The setting is once again sir Chiffley’s office, where the play started. All four main characters are present. The air business is plummeting, the combination of huge stockpiles and massively decreased demand is leading the industry into a recession. In order to force up the price, by applying simple economic rules, the supply must drop, thus raising effective demand. Outside, large amounts of oxygen are being burned in order to ‘rationalize’ the stocks. Philip objects and his boss answers:

CHIEF: Have you any idea how much grain was destroyed in the eighties Philip? While people starved, how much milk was poured away while babies screamed with want? Nobody likes it Philip, but you can’t just give the stuff away; that way lies financial anarchy.101

To top it off, it appears that there is also food in the fires outside, as Lockheart industries has sold their oxygen to the EEC agricultural cartel in order for them to burn their crops, as there is so little oxygen in the atmosphere that it is impossible to burn anything. Fire brigades have even been disbanded throughout Britain. Quite unexpectedly, Elton decides to deliver the final blow to Philip’s conscience, as Lockheart industries is about to tackle the problem of photosynthesis.

CHIEF: […] Just take a look at this Philip… it’s green chlorophyll, the greatest enemy of the Oxygen Industry. This little natural vandal could, in time, destroy us and the jobs that we create. […] SANDY: We have a global defoliation programme all geared up and ready to go. We’ve tested the chemicals on over a million beagles, and the last 100,000 or so survived more or less intact, so that should shut up the environmentalists.102

Dramatically, the chief snips off the head of one of his office plants. This is the point where Philip decides to take action. He says that he has an idea. Remembering Philip’s ‘Pot Noodle’ potential, sir Chiffley is instantly alert and interested. First, Philip fires Kirsten and sends her out together with Sandy. When the office is once again on complete security shutdown, Philip

101 Gasping p. 107 102 Gasping, p.108-109

46 starts to explain his idea. The following excerpt is rather long, but Philip’s cool, logical reasoning is quite funny, and I do not wish to deny it to the reader.

PHILIP: Well, I was looking at the suffering, the recession, the poverty, the suffocation that I had been a large part of causing… and I had this huge idea… CHIEF: Yes! PHILIP: I thought, ‘I know, I’ll kill myself.’ CHIEF: By which you mean? PHILIP: Kill myself. CHIEF (after pause): … So it’s not a metaphor? You actually mean, kill yourself, that’s your idea? PHILIP: Yes. CHIEF: But for God’s sake Philip, what are you saying? How can you blame yourself my boy, it was just good business, that’s all, you’re being stupid, foolish… PHILIP: Well yes, I must admit that after a bit that’s what I thought as well Chief. CHIEF: I’m extremely pleased to hear it. PHILIP: So I thought it would be better to kill you. CHIEF: What! PHILIP: But then I thought, Come on Phil, this is a brainstorming ideas session, let’s apply some Larry logic… no point in killing the Chief, I thought, that would be absurd… CHIEF: Good, excellent thought. PHILIP: He’s just one of many… CHIEF: Well quite. PHILIP: I should kill them all… CHIEF: Now look Philip please, for goodness sake…! PHILIP: No, hang on Chief, let me stage-by-stage you on this one… Next I thought, this is just ridiculous, I can’t possibly go and kill all the people who profit out of suffering…it would be impossible: in a way, we all do. CHIEF: Of course, thank heavens you’ve… PHILIP: So I just went back to the idea of killing you. CHIEF (after pause): … Yes and what did you think then? PHILIP: Nothing, I stopped there, that’s it, that’s my idea.103

Next, Philip smashes the Suck and Blow machine and casually mentions that he also went back to the idea of killing himself. As Philip calmly awaits his death, sir Chiffley is frantically

103 Gasping, p. 113-114-115

47 trying to turn off the security shutdown, but as it is on a timer, his attempts are futile. Next, he sacks Philip, lifts the Suck and Blow machine and hurls it through the window. A wind blows in, Chief stands, takes a huge gulp and triumphantly smiles upon a prostrate Philip. The smile ‘becomes glassy and transfixed as he can fool his lungs no longer and dies of suffocation.’104

This final scene is full of irony. Above, I have stated that sir Chiffley’s most remarkable trademark is his cold rationality, which is rooted in a clichéd world of harsh business. Philip’s explanation of his ‘idea’ is given in exactly this manner. Philip speaks politely, coolly and is utterly calm. He is employing the exact same rationality as his boss has done before him, but Philip arrives at a different conclusion. It is notable that Philip has taken up the dominant role in the conversation. He no longer echoes his boss’ words, and even interrupts sir Chiffley’s turns in order to follow his own ruthless resolution through to the end. Though he still uses his characteristic alliterating proper names (‘Larry Logic’), he talks plain, neutral English, without beating about the bush by using vivid metaphors. This clearly surprises sir Chiffley, who, up until the very end of the dialogue, keeps putting his trust in Philip, despite his obvious change in behaviour. This illustrates another stereotype of the ruthless businessman, i.e. he is oblivious to everything around him, he is out of touch with the ‘common world’. This includes his employees’ feelings or states of mind. Logically, this would result in his not being good at judging people. In Gasping, this is indeed the case, as sir Chiffley does not recognize Philip’s growing objections, and even trusts him while he harbours murderous intentions. Later on, in Stark, we will see that this is not always the case.

Another stereotypical trait, closely related to the former, is that the super-rich feel that they have the right to feel and act superior. If somebody without a six-figure income (i.e. everybody) bothers the stereotypical ruthless businessman, he nearly feels obliged to act condescendingly. This trait, too, is inverted and employed by Philip, as he is somewhat patronizing his boss in this scene. It is also quite ironic that the machine that was originally supposed to be providing them with air, is thrown out the window in order to let in air.

This final scene nicely illustrates the idea I have put forth in the previous chapter. Just as man seems to have lost control over science and technology, Philip has lost control over his own creation, over his very own monstrosity, the ‘Pot Noodle’. Another characteristic I have

104 Gasping, p. 118

48 discussed in the previous chapter is that environmental literature is a mix of genres. In a sense, Philip is an allegorical figure, and symbolises human society. He has made a mistake, but unlike mankind, he recognizes his mistake, carries the guilt that comes with it, and resolves to do something about it. Obviously Elton does not want us to go out and kill our employers, but the political message is quite unambiguous. The character of Philip is a model. Elton gets the political message across via Philip. By now, the reader will have realised that Gasping is very much a morality play. Philip is ‘Everyman’, and he is faced with choices. He could have chosen the easy path, by ignoring his conscience, but instead, he has chosen to listen to his conscience, and to act accordingly. On the other hand, Gasping is also a tragedy, with Philip as the hero, his tragic flaw being his conscience. Yet this conscience is also a blessing, this is what sets him apart from the antagonist and his minions. The exact opposite of the call of conscience is the call of money.

3.2.5 The power of money

In order to explain why being rich and lacking a moral conscience often seem to go hand in hand in popular culture, as it is the case in the works under discussion here, I will briefly discuss a work entitled Philosophie des Geldes105 by the German philosopher Simmel. Georg Simmel (1858-1918) was first and foremost a sociologist, but he can also be characterized as the first theoretician of modernity. In Philosophie des Geldes, Simmel discusses the role and influence of money in a modern society.

In our modern world order, the capitalist money economy dominates social life. Already according to Simmel, money is becoming more and more of a goal instead of a means. It has indeed taken up an important position in the minds and actions of many people. Simmel states that money has the power to reduce every value to a monetary value. All objects can be compared in terms of their cost, and in this sense, he regards money as the ultimate equalizing force in society. Increasingly, every good becomes interchangeable for money. The qualitative aspects of the object are neglected, only the quantitative matter. In modern terms, this phenomenon is termed commodification. This is exactly what Ben Elton’s play Gasping is about.

105 G. Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, 1900, Duncker & Humblot, München & Leipzig, 1930

49

Money will increasingly evolve towards money as a symbol. With regard to money itself, the question of what money actually is disappears. The substantial element becomes irrelevant, making the money ‘qualityless’. The only thing that matters with regard to money is ‘how much’, not ‘what kind of money’. Quantity outgrows quality. According to Simmel, the only quality of money is its quantity.106(my translation-S.V.)

To sir Chiffley Lockheart, the air, and by extension, the general environment, does not have any objective qualities. He does not care about ‘the unfurling of the leaves’, as Seattle put it, but only about the market value of the leaves. Absolutely everything, even a natural resource, has a price. This price has become its only quality. The objective qualities of any given good can become obsolete, to such a degree that only its price remains. This is what Elton is criticizing in Gasping. Sir Chiffley is right when he says that air is the only natural resource which is still free. Is paying for air really such an extreme scenario? Food, land, oil, wood, and water all have a price. Oil is the best example, its only quality is its market value.

Another important aspect which Simmel points to is the so-called ‘fascism of money’. As more and more goods become interchangeable for money, it will grow more powerful as the economy expands. In the end, money will have become the highest goal and value, and it will not tolerate other values alongside it. In other words, modern people will become so fixated on money, that they will make everything else inferior to it. This provides a possible explanation for the second trait of the ruthless businessman, i.e. his condescending attitude towards others.

Esthetical or moral values will be downgraded and will lose all specific qualities under the influence of money. Which means that they too, can be replaced by money, which in turn leads to more quantification, so that moral values can be expressed in numbers.107(my translation-S.V.)

An example of this theory put into practice can be observed in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, where the main character Raskolnikov murders his landlady, because he reasons that it is just for a man of genius to transgress moral law if it will ultimately benefit

106 T. Claes, Cultuurfilosofie I, 6 Leven in de Moderniteit, 2005-2006, p. 90 107 T. Claes, p. 90

50 humanity. Bearing Simmel in mind, it is significant that Raskolnikov not only kill his landlady, but also robs her. In doing so, he tries to silence his conscience. He symbolically replaces his morals with money. The amount of money he stole is in fact the amount for which he sold his unburdened moral conscience. Simmel discusses two psychological consequences of the dominance of money, on the one hand ethical egoism and on the other social individualism. Though money may be ‘qualityless’ and therefore neutral, Simmel states that, because of this neutrality, it can be used for whatever means. Therefore, money will be used for the strongest subjective impulses, and according to Simmel, these are selfish ones. He arrives at social individualism through the example of people handling large sums of money daily. In doing so, they move in many different social circles, and because of this, they can not be easily classified socially. Hence they can never commit themselves to anything but their own ‘selfish impulses’. Personally I do not agree with the idea that the strongest human impulse is egoism. But if Simmel made this rather misanthropic step in the 19th century, it is hardly surprising that others have followed. The stereotypical image of the rich and ruthless businessman has been around ever since the rise of industrialism.

In the first scene of Gasping, sir Chiffley Lockheart is explaining the Pot Noodle metaphor while talking about a recently acquired Rembrandt painting:

Pot Noodles come in all shapes and sizes. This picture is worth seventy-two million because that’s what I paid for it, nothing to do with its intrinsic value. There’s probably more light and colour in a packet of fruit-flavoured Polos. What makes the thing so special is that when I sell it the bidding will start at seventy-two million.108 (my bold-S.V.)

In this passage, it is as if Elton has been reading Simmel. Quality is disregarded, only quantity matters. Every commodity has acquired the properties of money, it is the only value that matters. Money is everything and yet nothing. Lockheart wants money for money’s sake, he longs for the sheer excitement of making ‘senior’ money.

108 Gasping, p.10

51 3.2.6 Conclusion

Based upon this chapter, it is possible to map the structure of Gasping as follows.:

CORNUCOPIANS Antagonist(s) =instigator of the ecological destruction β (Lockheart Industries) | money =motivation | ------Environmental Degradation (ecological Armageddon)------| conscience/guilt/ideals =motivation | Protagonist(s) =hero taking action α (Philip) CATASTROPHISTS

Fig.1 A provisional model illustrating the representation of the environmental debate in Gasping.

This (simple) structure can also be found in Stark and This Other Eden. Environmental degradation is central to all three apocalyptic narratives. It is a constant background noise in Elton’s early work. It is clearly visible in the diagram (in bold), and serves as a barrier between the β-side of the antagonist and the α-side of the protagonist. It closes off two separate worlds, i.e. the ‘evil’ world of the ruthless businessman, driven by money, and the ‘good’ world of the idealistic (non-)hero, who is motivated by his ideals. On the other hand, in Elton’s early works, environmental degradation is also what brings these two extremes together. Their paths cross because of it, and their two (psychological) worlds collide. The diagram also sums up the two sides of the environmental debate. On the one hand there are the believers, and on the other the non-believers, those who are sceptic towards the ecological degradation of our planet109. Baarschers terms these two opposing sides the cornucopian optimists and the catastrophist activists, respectively.

The catastrophists believe that, since ‘nature knows best’, an environmental calamity will turn the clock back for us. So far they have been wrong. And the cornucopians maintain that science and technology will solve all problems. So far they have been wrong.110

109 Gore compares this group to Holocaust deniers. (cf. chapter 2, 2.1.2) 110 Baarschers,p.224-225

52 Gasping stands apart from Stark and This Other Eden, as the protagonist Philip undergoes an evolution. Philip was originally part of the cornucopian, corporate side, but in the course of the play, he psychologically evolves towards a solitary position on the catastrophist α-side of the debate.

The reader will do well to study the model I have proposed above carefully. It is only a provisional model, and as I go along, I will refer to it often, adding new aspects, constantly refining it. This model will return at the end of each subsequent chapter. In this thesis, it serves as somewhat of an anchor point, as it graphically illustrates how the environmental debate is represented in the early works of Ben Elton.

53 IV STARK

In this chapter, I tackle a second example of environmental literature. Stark (1989) is Ben Elton’s debut novel. After a brief synopsis, I focus on the role of Aboriginals in this eco- apocalyptic narrative. Next, I describe what Elton means by the ‘avalanche factor’. In the fourth section of this chapter, I apply a rhetorical model for environmental discourse to Stark. In the fifth section of this chapter, I look at how Elton views the future, and how he treats those who are sceptical towards environmental degradation. Finally, by way of conclusion, I refine the model which I proposed at the end of the previous chapter.

4.1 Or How to Escape the Apocalypse: synopsis

The novel is mainly situated in Australia. In a nearby future, the richest capitalists in the world gather to form a consortium known as Stark. Together, they asses the ecological threat and conclude that the point of no return has been reached. The Earth is going to die. They decide to take drastic measures and escape to space while they still can. Sly Moorcock, a super-rich Australian businessman, is instructed to buy a patch of land deep in Western Australia, while other members buy other necessary equipment. The planetary treason is kept a secret, Stark is allegedly building hotels in the middle of the desert. A small group of hippies who call themselves the Eco Action Commando Unit slowly discovers the truth and tries to intervene.

The small group consists of four members. CD aka Colin Dobson is a poseur who desperately tries to be cool and never takes of his sunglasses. He gets carried along with the group because he is in love with Rachel. She is an intelligent and sexy woman who “doesn’t really care about anything. She was interested in someone who did.” CD haplessly follows her about, constantly failing in trying to impress her. Rachel is impressed, however, by a demonstration by two radical hippies, Walter and Zimmerman. Walter is the stereotypical hippy, “As green as an Eskimo’s hanky”, he is the founder the EcoAction group. His strong- arm sidekick, Zimmerman, is a fairly crazy Vietnam veteran who has lost his testicles in the war. “It is said that for those who experienced the horrors, each one had left a little piece of themselves out in Vietnam. In Zimmerman’s case it was his lunch-box.”

54

This group meets up with the Muldoons, an aboriginal couple, who has lost their land to the Stark conspiracy, and together they invade the Stark compound. They cannot prevent the six rockets, dubbed the Star Arks, from launching. They return home and decide that “it’s time to party like there’s no tomorrow.” In space, Sly Moorcock commits suicide.

The pioneers of Stark hated each other. They had created Hell in Heaven. They had escaped pollution on earth, only to discover that they had carried with them another pollution, a pollution that they could not escape. The pollution in their own souls.111

4.2 The Aboriginals

In the previous chapter (cf. 3.2.3), I stated that the letter from the Indian chief was used to invoke a harmonious, idyllic past, to contrast with a dreadful present and future, very much in the manner of Rachel Carson’s prologue to Silent Spring. The role of the Aboriginals in Stark is somewhat similar to the function of the letter in Gasping. Both provide a contrast, as these ‘primitive’ people show the reader an alternative way of living, i.e. the proper way to co-exist peacefully with mother nature, in opposition to modern man, who has lost touch with nature. Native, pre-colonised peoples are a very strong symbol of environmental concern.

[…] capitalists, whites, and Westerners have been far more implicated in the history of ecological destruction than pre-capitalist peoples, blacks, and non-Westerners. […] Anthropocentrism has served as the most fundamental kind of legitimation employed by whatever powerful class of social actors one wishes to focus on.112

This is where the Indians and Aborginals come into play. As non-white, non-Western peoples, they represent the ‘original’ human beings, their societies are ideally untainted by capitalism and industrialisation113. Both native peoples have often been represented as naïve, kind-hearted and innocent. They are treated very much like children. Yet they are revered by

111 Ben Elton, Stark, London 1989, p.453 (Hereafter cited as Stark) 112 Warwick Fox, quoted in H. Lewis Ulman, “Thinking like a Mountain” Persona, Ethos, and Judgment in American Nature writing. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996 p.69 113 cf. the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy (directed by Jamie Uys), in which an Australian pilot carelessly tosses out an empty coke bottle while flying over Aboriginal territory.

55 environmentalists for their ‘purity’ and other highly subjective qualities. The main reason why ‘primitive’ peoples often appear in environmental literature is because they can be very easily contrasted with the rich businessmen destroying the Earth. Fortunately, Elton does not put them on a pedestal:

It was not unknown for Aboriginals to take an interest in mining themselves. For years the do- gooders and bleeding-hearts had bleated on and on about Aboriginal self-determination; about giving them back control of their lives etc., etc.[…] Then along came the possibility of uranium on Aboriginal land and of course the same do-gooders were totally against more uranium mining but, unfortunately, some of their darling Abs weren’t. The Aboriginals saw that finally they had a chance of grabbing some white man’s money.114

They are portrayed as normal human beings. In Gasping, the Indian chief Seattle could ‘hear the unfurling of the leaves.’ In this novel however, Elton takes a much more pragmatic, realistic stance. The Aboriginals are not seen as some mythic race, mystically connected to nature. They do however provide a contrast with the West in terms of mentality:

Also he had his two front teeth removed, a practice which was utterly beyond Sly, it made the man look idiotic. But really it’s a question of what you’re used to. Mr Culboon and his wife both had big old floppy pot bellies. They were not a young couple and his especially hung like an enormous tea-bag across his belt. Neither he nor his wife were remotely self-conscious about this. Now the wife of one of Sly’s principal business rivals in Perth, a woman called Dixie Tyron, had also been developing a gut like that. She, unlike the Culboons, was not happy with it and had undergone a form of surgery recently developed in America, which involved injecting the fatty regions with some chemical which actually dissolves the fat, making it possible to suck it out. In comparison with this phenomenal self-mutilation, knocking out a tooth or two seemed merely eccentric.115

Obviously, Elton is talking about liposuction. Although plastic surgery was still in its earliest stages of development in ’89, Elton is already appalled by it. Not surprisingly, for it symbolizes absolute commodification. Plastic surgery is the epitome of high capitalism. For a price, the human body has become as malleable as a jar of children’s clay. After all, plastic surgery is highly ‘unnatural’. The term unnatural has steadily become more popular over the

114 Stark, p. 103 115 Stark, p 107-108

56 last few years, hand in hand with the rise of the debate over biologically engineered food. In This Other Eden(1993) plastic surgery and genetically modified food figures even more prominently.

If one defines ‘natural’ as the way things are in the untamed nature, i.e. outside of human control, then nothing that our species has ever invented or built is natural. The capability to produce new and improved things out of raw ‘natural’ material is - aside from language – what makes us distinctly human. Was it unnatural for prehistoric man to use a rock as a tool? In this sense, environmentalist are rather conservative. Plastic surgery and genetically modified vegetables are both seen as examples of man’s ‘tampering’ with nature. Man is ‘playing god’. This is very similar to Rachel Carson’s rhetoric (cf.2.1.2):

Radiation is no longer merely the background radiation of rocks, the bombardment of cosmic rays, the ultraviolet of the sun that have existed before there was any life on earth; radiation is now the unnatural creation of man’s tampering with the atom. The chemicals to which life is asked to make its adjustment are no longer merely the calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in rivers to the sea; they are the synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature.116 (my italics-S.V)

Liposuction is ‘unnatural’, in the exact same way that chemical science is. Both do not occur in nature. They are synthetic products. This way of thinking is was also a trademark of Aldo Leopold, one of the first environmentalists.(cf. 2.1.2): “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”117 The Aboriginals are said to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the environment, and are less obsessed by appearance. In other words, they are untainted by the evils of modern life. In Elton’s early works, ‘primitive’ cultures are morally superior to the modern, western world. This idea is clearly present in the parable of ‘the Desert Oak’, one of many short stories which interrupt the storyline. This particular desert tree stores water. Thirsty Aboriginals would make a small hole in its bark, quench their thirst and close the hole back up.

116Carson, p. 17 117 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949, quoted in Baarschers p. viii

57 The Aborigines were a Stone-Age society, one of the most primitive on Earth. They had not even developed a simple television game show. But they knew that if you looked after the environment there was a good chance it would look after you. [about mining-S.V] Sly and his friends had taken what they wanted from the land just as the Aboriginal had done. But they had no intention of bunging up their hole. Too expensive. Too much trouble. The term ‘primitive’ is clearly a highly subjective one.118

4.3 The Avalanche Factor

In the first chapter (cf.1.1.1), I have stated that the predicting value of climate models is relatively small, mainly because it is extremely problematic to determine exactly which variables and parameters are to be taken into account. On top of this, each climate model consists of several sub-models, of which each has its own uncertain factors. This results in an accumulation of uncertainties. In Stark, there is a group of scientists working for the Stark conspiracy. This group is also known as the ‘Armageddon Co-ordinating Group’ or ‘The Domesday Group’. This is basically a top secret research team whose main task is to predict the point at which eco-balance will become critical. In fact, these scientists are constantly building climate models. As is the case in reality, their models, too, are inaccurate.

[…]The Domesday Group were having to constantly revise their predictions backwards as events overtook them. Species of animals that were not meant to die out until mid-twenty-first century were already extinct. Trees were proving far less resilient against acid ‘die back’ than had been hoped. This meant that the bottom line, Vanishing Point, the moment at which the world will cease to be able to sustain balanced life, was approaching much faster than had been expected.119

The reason for this inaccuracy is succinctly named ‘the avalanche factor’:

It is relatively easy to deduce a cause from an effect, but a mental nightmare to predict effects from causes. Who could possibly have figured out that a factory in Manchester would cause an avalanche? You’d need a brain the size of Heathrow airport. But, once it’s happened, then it’s

118 Stark, p.76 119 Stark, p.162

58 comparatively easy to work backwards to the cause through a process of deduction. Causes do not become identified as causes until they have taken their effect.120

According to Elton, a factory in Manchester can cause an avalanche via the following chain of events: The factory causes air pollution, which in turn causes acid rain. This rain subsequently destroys crucial vegetation on mountain slopes, effectively turning the mountains bold. When there are fewer trees to anchor the layers of snow to the ground, there is an increase in avalanches. Elton’s ‘avalanche factor’ is an ideal metaphor for illustrating the type of uncertainty which continues to burden environmental sciences.

4.4 Three types of discourse in a two-sided debate

Rhetoricians Herndl and Brown offer a triangular model designed to ‘identify the dominant tendencies or orientation of a piece of environmental discourse.’

Ethnocentric (Ethos) Nature as resource

Regulatory Discourse

Ecocentric Anthropocentric (Pathos) (Logos)

Nature as Spirit Nature as Object

Poetic Discourse Scientific Discourse

121 Fig.2 A rhetorical model for environmental discourse

The regulatory discourse at the top of the model represents the discourse of the powerful institutions that make decisions and set environmental policy. This discourse usually regards nature as a resource, one among many others, to be managed for the greater social welfare. […] we call this an ethnocentric discourse, one devoted to

120 Stark, p.165 121 Herndl and Brown, Introduction. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996, p.11

59 negotiating the benefits of environmental policy measured against a broad range of social interests. […] The scientific discourse in the model represents the specialized discourse of the environmental sciences. Within this discourse, nature is usually regarded as an object of knowledge constructed through careful scientific methodology. Because this discourse locates the human researcher as outside and epistemologically above nature, we call this anthropocentric discourse.122

Given some nuance, this model can easily be applied to Stark. All three types of discourse occur. The ethnocentric discourse is represented by the powerful Stark conspiracy, who can only see the environment as a resource, as something to be exploited for financial gain. The commodification of nature:

Sly’s mining consortium hadn’t got everything it had wanted but they had got enough and Kalgoorkatta was by way of being a bit of a boom town. It was dangerous work and it certainly screwed up the land a bit, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Lots of eggs. What a mess it was! Until he flew over it Sly had never realized just how hellish a few hundred hectares of virtually unrestricted mining could look. […] a good approximation of Hades had been produced. The land was scarred and smashed and poisoned. Soon it would also be empty. When that happened Sly and his friends would fence it in and move on. Land was there to be used.123

This is also the case in Gasping:

CHIEF: The air is a natural resource. Like food or coal. Is the grocer or the coal man wrong for selling his wares? And yet people need food and warmth as much as they need air. It seems that a man is to be allowed to put bread on his table, clothes on the backs of his children, buy land upon which they can run and play, and yet he is to be denied the chance to provide fully and properly for his family the most basic human prerequisite of the lot, the wherewithal to breathe. Denied that chance for fear that some hypothetical, free-loading drop-out may find himself momentarily out of breath.124

122 Herndl and Brown, p.11 123 Stark, p.74 124 Gasping, p. 60

60 The anthropocentric discourse, on the other hand, is provided by the Domesday Group, led by Professor Durf, a one-eyed South African. Durf represents the scientific side of the debate, which sees nature as an object. It is Durf who comes up with the idea of ‘the avalanche factor’. In environmental literature, the anthropocentric discourse (on the scientific side) is closely connected to the ethnocentric discourse (on the corporate side). The scientists are working for Stark. As I said in chapter two, science and nature are two opposing forces in environmental literature. The combined force of science and money is nature’s greatest nemesis. It is no coincidence that Professor Durf only has one eye. This suggests that he is unable to ‘see’ the environmental, ecocentric side of the triangle. He is only able to see the money. Science and technology has been corrupted by greed. This leaves the ecocentric discourse in a solitary position (on the α-side of the diagram I proposed in 3.2.6, cf. below). In Stark, this is represented by the EcoAction team. They regard nature not as a resource or as an object, but as a ‘Spirit’, which is not to be exploited or ‘tampered with’. Nature should be left alone. Anything ‘unnatural’ can only have nefarious consequences. Man should take care of the environment.

4.5 A grim future

4.5.1 What about the sceptics?

The Eco-Action team is pitted against The Stark conspiracy and its members. Yet there is more to this than the classic ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ antagonism. The diagram at the end of the previous chapter also works for Stark. The ‘good guys’, motivated by ideals, represent the α-side of the argument, whereas the ‘bad guys’, motivated by money, represent the β-side. The main difference with the situation in Gasping is that there are no non-believers, or no ‘cornucopian optimists’ (in Baarschers’ terminology). In Gasping, Sir Chiffley Lockheart tended to downplay the ecological consequences of his actions. He only seemed to care about financial gain. In Stark, however, the conspirators know that they have destroyed the planet, perhaps even better than other people, due to the Domesday Group. When Sylvester (Sly) Moorcock is first invited to a Stark meeting, he does not know what to expect, except that it

61 has to do with making money. “Colossal, unimaginable, utterly meaningless sums of money, of that he was certain.”125 He is quite surprised when this turns out not to be the case.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Slampacker. ’Fourteen individual species of butterfly have become extinct since this meal began.’ There was a significant pause during which Sly tried to work out what he presumed was some tortuous Yankee metaphor. It wasn’t. Sly could scarcely believe his ears but Slampacker, a gung-ho, hard as nails mega-cynic, began to talk like some kind of damn hippy. He spoke of the ozone layer. He spoke of the greenhouse effect. He dwelt at great, and what Sly considered unnecessary, length on the various types of waste that are floating about in the world’s water system. He seemed particularly concerned about trees. […] Sly squirmed with annoyance. All the way from WA to hear some arsehole waffle on about a gull’s armpits? Somebody’s going to skin up a doobie in a minute and they’ll all start singing ‘Blowing in the Wind’, he reflected bitterly. 126

A few pages further, Sly realizes that they are not whining about the problem, but merely recognizing it. The situation on Earth has gotten so out of control that even those who profit from destroying the environment recognize that the Earth is going to die. These people would sooner die than cut their profit margins, so the only solution is to get out while they still can.

The fact that there are no representatives of the non-believers or the so-called ‘cornucopian optimists’ puts the current environmental debate into perspective. In Gasping, the main character was originally part of the cornucopian side, but evolves towards a catastrophist state of mind. In Stark, however, there are no longer any cornucopian optimists. It is a widely accepted fact that the world is going to die. The point of no return has been crossed. Elton seems to suggest that in a nearby future, nobody will doubt the validity of the global warming theory, not even the corporations that profit from it. In other words, Elton either ignores the critics, or portrays them as sly, greedy bastards with no conscience whatsoever. It should be noted that Stark was written in 1989, the nearby future is in fact today. Elton seeks to eliminate criticism, because he is very much convinced of the urgency of the ecological problem. Elton avoids the debate by ignoring critics in the same manner as Al Gore.

125 Stark, p.27 126 Stark, p.31

62 The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this. But the political systems around the world have held this at arm's length because it's an inconvenient truth, because they don't want to accept that it's a moral imperative.127 In paragraph 1.1.3, I referred to an international water association magazine with a dramatic cover photo of a parched Australian water basin, with the words ‘resource risks of climate change’ above it. This is a scientific magazine, yet no critical voices are to be found in the magazine. This example shows that the catastrophist (believer) side of the debate has gained considerable influence, while the cornucopian (non-believer) side has lost credibility. The role of ecological fiction in this evolution should not be underestimated.

4.5.2 Preaching the Green Gospel

In both Stark and This Other Eden (chapter five), Elton seems to suggest that it is only a matter of time before everyone becomes a pessimist. The ‘overwhelming’ evidence of climate change will soon bring even the most sceptic people around. Considering how Stark ends, Elton himself is surely no optimist. It is remarkable however, that such a pessimistic, even misanthropic worldview does not result in cynicism. Elton is anything but a cynic. His style of writing is witty, sometimes wry, but light-hearted and almost always politically correct. In his career as a writer, he has tackled other serious subjects, besides the degradation of the environment, such as infertility128, but always manages to keep the tone light. Stark is a debut, and it definitely has several flaws, most notably the fact that Elton often comes across rather pedantically. In Stark, Elton often diverts from the storyline and tells the reader a brief parable in between chapters. These stories are annoyingly didactic. It is as if he is lecturing the reader. Especially the moralising endings can be quite irksome. A small selection:

• ‘For those in peril from the sea’: About the dumping of excrement in the North Sea, which results in disease for the Pastel family because they have eaten bad mussels. “Poor Mummy Pastel ended up with acute viral gastroenteritis and died, but we’ve all got to go sometime.”129

127 Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Paramount 2006 128 Ben Elton, Inconceivable, London 1999 129 Stark, p.17

63 • ‘Dave and Bill: An Involuntary Killing’: Bill invents a new type of nylon, which is used in fishing nets. Dave the dolphin gets trapped in a net and dies. “You can’t stop progress and, after all, it’s only a few dolphins.”130 • ‘Crushed Iguana’: Bulldozers level the rainforest in order to make room for fast-food pastures. ‘Iggy’ is crushed. “Much of science and medicine is derived from plant and animal research. It’s just possible that the undiscovered cure for cancer went splat the day Slampacker sent Iggy to join Dave the dolphin and Mrs Pastel.”131

In his later novels, from Popcorn(1996) onwards, this didacticism abates somewhat, but it is very strongly present in all of his earlier works.

Before condemning Elton for his galloping didacticism, it’s worth bearing in mind that, without it, he probably wouldn’t have amounted to anything. When asked what it is that motivates him above all else, Elton always replies that it’s the desire to ‘communicate’. It’s his old-fashioned, socialist evangelism, his urge to instil his left-wing beliefs in others, that gives him his extraordinary energy. At bottom he’s a bug-eyed propagandist, a cross between Goebbels and George Bernard Shaw. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Britain would surely be a poorer place without him.132

Elton’s four first works, the three which I discuss in this thesis plus Gridlock(1991), all concern environmental issues. It is in these works that this ‘galloping didacticism’ is most prominent. Some readers may be put off by this. Elton is a concerned writer with strong convictions, a preacher of the Green gospel, and in his early works, he often gets carried away by his principles. Luckily, his witty style evens things out. To get the environmental message across, it might be wiser to insert the environment into the plot seamlessly, rather than diverting from the plot to lecture the reader. As David Poyer puts it:

To incorporate ecological awareness successfully, a work must not approach it preachifyingly or pedantically, but by incorporating ecological awareness seamlessly within the work,

130 Stark, p.44 131 Stark, p.51 132 Toby Young, “Ben Elton, A cross between Goebbels and George Bernard Shaw, even his jokes betray a galloping didacticism”. New Statesman, 24 january 2000. p.15

64 ALONG WITH all the traditional values of fiction – characterization, plot, style, and all the rest.133

4.6 Conclusion

Let us return to the model I have proposed at the end of chapter three. Some adjustments are in order. First of all, I have added the Indian and Aboriginal culture to the model. Both clearly have the same function in Elton’s narratives. They serve to inspire the protagonists (and the reader who identifies with them). Both cultures have an exemplary function, i.e. they provide a contrast with the β-side of the debate, and they show us an alternative way of living. Their ‘primitive’ culture serves as a bulwark against capitalist corporations. They remain untainted by capitalism and still have a ‘natural’ lifestyle.

Secondly, we can further refine the model by adding the three types of environmental discourse to the model. I have stated that, in environmental literature, science is in cahoots with the rich corporations, which puts both the anthropocentric and the ethnocentric discourse on the β-side of the debate. This leaves the ecocentric or poetic discourse in a solitary position on the α-side of the protagonist. I have put the three types of discourse close to the central axis of the diagram, because it represents the way in which the environment is psychologically regarded by both sides.

Thirdly, it is necessary to cross out the word ‘cornucopians’, and replace it by catastrophists. This is simply because there are no cornucopian characters in Elton’s apocalyptic narratives. A cornucopian is an optimist, someone who believes that science and technology will solve all ecological problems, and that the ecological apocalypse can still be averted. Only the antagonist from Gasping, sir Chiffley Lockheart, can be seen as a cornucopian, as he is constantly minimizing the ecological consequences of his actions in his quest for money, but this is simply because greed is sir Chiffley’s only motivation. Although in Gasping, the planet has not yet been polluted beyond all help. There might still be hope for future (technological) solutions. In Stark however, everyone acknowledges that the earth will die soon. The role of science and technology is restricted to reporting and predicting

133 Poyer, p.15

65 environmental disasters. Science does not try to avert planetary death, as it is already too late to act. Elton paints a very pessimistic picture of the future. All hope seems lost. Both sides are catastrophists.

CORNUCOPIANS CATASTROPHISTS

Antagonist(s) =instigator of the ecological destruction β (Lockheart, Stark) | money =motivation | Anthropocentric and ethnocentric discourse Environment as object or resource | ------Environmental Degradation (ecological Armageddon)------| Ecocentric discourse Nature as Spirit | conscience/guilt/ideals =motivation | Protagonist(s) =hero(es) taking action (Philip, EcoAction) | Ideals inspired by ‘primitive’cultures of Indians and Aboriginals α (Chief Seattle) (Culboons)

CATASTROPHISTS Fig.3 A provisional model illustrating the fictional representation of the environmental debate in Gasping and Stark (additions underlined)

66 V THIS OTHER EDEN

This royal throne of kings, This sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, This seat of Mars, This other Eden…134 W. Shakespeare, Richard II

5.1 The Final Solution

How can we combine our lifestyle, characterised by enormous consumption, with the desire to preserve the environment? This is one of the most fundamental questions with which many environmentalists are confronted

How can the standard of living attained through technological progress in the developed nations be maintained (and extended to developing and undeveloped nations) if the ecological consequences of development are prohibitive? Can economic prosperity for all and biodiversity be compatible, or do we have to sacrifice our living standard (and reduce our population dramatically) if we wish to avoid ecocatastrophe? Among environmental organizations, the fundamental question under debate is, how much change is necessary in our society to preserve the environment?135

This Other Eden provides an answer to this question. Science and technology have come up with a drastic solution, of course not a solution favouring the preservation of the environment, but a solution nonetheless. A ‘Claustrosphere’ is a self-contained living bubble. It filters air and water, can produce food, and works on solar power. It is the only way to survive planetary death, the idea being that when the eco-apocalypse is at hand, i.e. when human life is no longer possible, people are to get into their Claustrospheres, which are usually in their gardens, and set the time-safe lock for a minimum period of ten years. This moment is termed ‘the Rat Run’. Without the nefarious influence of man, the planetary ecosystem will then get a chance to heal itself. Because of the Claustrosphere, we can happily maintain our standard of living and keep polluting and wasting energy.

134 This Other Eden, p.381 135 Marilyn M. Cooper, Environmental Rhetoric in the Age of Hegemonic Politics. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996, p 236

67 This Other Eden is very similar to Stark. In both novels, people deal with the end of the world. Each novel proposes a different ‘solution’ to the same problem of planetary death. In Stark, only a select few, i.e. the super-rich, are allowed access to the Star Arks. This Other Eden proposes a more democratic (but no less drastic) solution. Claustrospheres come in all shapes and sizes, and most people can afford to purchase one. In opposition to the ending in Stark, This Other Eden has a more optimistic ending in which the planet survives.

5.2 Or how to sell The End Of The World (synopsis)

The novel is set in the future. The end of the world is near. The air has become unbreathable in big cities and the ozone layer has enormous holes in it, to the extent that people have their pores blocked regularly in order to walk the streets. In most large cities people live and work at night, and sleep during the daytime. Virtually all media are controlled by a man named Plastic Tolstoy. Television adverts have become the main programs. As the head of the Claustrosphere Company, Tolstoy’s main goal is to market Claustrospheres, which are self-contained living units, designed to survive planetary death. Opposing the Claustrosphere Company are Natura and its terrorist wing Mother Earth. This organisation is incredibly well-funded and has a vast array of resources at their disposal, such as military helicopters and the like. These international green terrorists attack the Claustrosphere Company, claiming that Claustrosphere people are hastening the end of the world. At least the greenies still attempt to prevent the ecological apocalypse. With their terrorist actions, they confront the public with the environmental problems from which it is hiding. The leader of Natura is the charismatic Jurgen Thor, or ‘The Green God’.

In the beginning of the novel, Nathan Hoddy, a Hollywood screenwriter comes up with an idea for a film. He proposes this idea to Plastic Tolstoy.

‘Like all through the picture, the greenies are trying to kill the head of Claustrosphere – we’ll fictionalise him, of course – meantime, they’re blessing this mysterious guy who makes it possible for them to continue the fight. Then at the end, they realise it’s the same person! That

68 Claustrosphere is part of the Green Movement! That’s when they learn the error of their ways. I mean, irony of what? You’ve got to admit it.’136

Tolstoy agrees, and several days later, Nathan is murdered. Max, a Hollywood actor, and Rosalie, a member of Mother Earth, slowly discover that Nathan’s idea for a film is in fact reality. Claustrosphere is funding the Green Movement. Together, they confront Jurgen Thor with this. ‘Think about it, Rosalie. Why do people buy Claustrospheres?’ […] ‘Because they fear that the Earth is dying, of course. And who is it that tells them every single day that they are right? That the Earth is dying! Why, us, of course! It is Natura and Mother Earth whom people look to for the truth, and my God, do we give it to them. […] The truth is that the planet is getting dangerously close to being incapable of supporting human life. We tell them this in the hope that people will wake up! That they will start to nurture their planet. That they will adjust their lifestyles. […] But what do most people actually do when confronted with the unanswerable evidence that we hurl before them every day? ‘Buy a Claustrosphere’, said Max, ‘I know I did.’137

With the help of Judy, a nerdy FBI-agent who has also discovered the truth, Max and Rosalie come up with a plan. Max goes into Tolstoy’s office wearing a wire, and with the help of a truth drug, he tries to get a confession out of him. Tolstoy finds out what Max is up to, but Max discreetly phones his answering machine and puts his portable phone(with camera) on Tolstoy’s desk. Tolstoy proudly explains his ‘marketing strategy’. Other than funding the Green Movement, he has also deliberately caused several environmental disasters in order to sell more Claustrospheres.

‘The breakthrough was to get the news to fit my commercials, in fact, to make the news itself the commercial, and the actual commercial just the pack-shot.’ […] ’I’m thinking, if my science guys say that two tankers will sink in the Panama Canal in the next three months, then why don’t I sink ‘em? It’s the same damage and there are huge national and international benefits to be achieved. The common good is well served.’ […] ‘What actually happened was that four tankers sank, our two and the two that were going to, anyway’.138

136 This Other Eden, p.228-229 137 This Other Eden, p.317 138 This Other Eden p.408-409

69 Rosalie takes the tape with Tolstoy’s confession to Jurgen Thor. Meanwhile, Judy discovers that Thor and Tolstoy are in fact long-time partners in crime, and sets out to rescue Rosalie. Thor is killed and all is well. A week later, the Rat Run starts. Global panic spreads via the media and mankind gets into their Claustrospheres for a period of forty years. Few people know that the Rat Run was orchestrated by Plastic Tolstoy. Judy has sent a copy of the tape to the FBI, one to the LAPD, one to the US president and one to Tolstoy himself. Faced with the certainty of ending his life in jail, Tolstoy orchestrates the ‘Rat Run’ and chooses to serve out his sentence in his enormous Claustrosphere.

Free from the exploitative, parasitic human virus that had infected it for so long, the planet was able to cleanse itself. […] Only a strange little group of people of aged, weather-beaten people in the west of Ireland knew the truth and they would never tell. It was better that the people who emerged from the Claustrospheres believed that the lonely exile of the human race had been a necessary punishment for its sins, that they had survived the flood and it was time to start afresh, resolving never again to practice the selfish planetary vandalism that had led their forefathers and mothers to the day of the Rat Run.139

5.3 Commodification and consumption in the Postnatural Novel

This Other Eden is an example of what Cynthia Deitering calls ‘the postnatural novel’, because it is the product of a new generation of writers who focus on waste and pollution. During the late eighties (cfr. chapter two), a new wave of environmental awareness emerged, especially concerned with toxic pollution.

These texts […] mirror a shift in our cultural identity – a shift from a culture defined by its production to a culture defined by its waste. […] the toxic landscape functions in these novels as a metaphor for the pollution of the natural world.140

Among oil spills and lethal UV-rays, toxic waste is one of the most prominent environmental disasters in This Other Eden. In Gasping, the commodification of air was the main theme. In Stark, the whole of nature is seen as a resource, which is there for man to use.(cf. 4.4) Elton

139 This Other Eden, p. 472 140 Cynthia Deitering, The Postnatural Novel. Toxic Consciousness in fiction of the 1980s. edited by Cheryll Burgess Glotfelty in: The Ecocriticism Reader, Landmarks in literary ecology, Georgia, 1996, p.196

70 takes commodification into the absurd in this novel. In This Other Eden, absolutely everything is commodified. Even pollution itself. The richest cities have a municipal Eco- defense system. This ensures clean air by a simple system of huge fans that blow the smog away. The dangerous sunlight UV-filtered by a solar screen is placed in orbit over the city141. There is one important problem, however. Unwanted visitors such as tourists and homeless criminals roam the streets, profiting from the system.

The world’s first pollution-based security system was installed. The orbital sun-shield was sent spinning away to join the ever growing slicks of debris caught in the gravitational pull of other planets and the giant fans were silenced. […] Parking lots were connected to buildings via BioTube, so that the legitimate citizen could step from the safety of his or her car directly into a sealed environment. The effect was dramatic. Signs went up on the freeways entering the district: ’WARNING. This area is Environmentally Protected!! Even short-term exposure to the Century City environment will result in serious illness leading to death!’ By this simple method, unfiltered sunlight and industrial smog were transformed from problems into solutions. Pollution became a saleable commodity.142

In this excerpt, Elton puns on the phrase ‘Environmentally Protected’. The environment is so horribly poisoned that it can be used as a weapon. Pollution itself has become saleable. This symbolises the ultimate horror scenario for environmentalists, as it completes the unholy marriage between pollution and money. Elton reverses their relationship. Normally, pollution is a side-effect of production. It is not used or created for a purpose. But in This Other Eden, pollution is so ubiquitous, that it can actually have a purpose. The main cause for commodification is the increasing power of money. To ensure the constant flow of money, people are practically forced to consume as much as possible.

Consumer confidence is actually considered a measure of a country’s relative economic strength. When a load of poor deluded sad-acts are down at the shops running up debts on their credit cards, finance ministers claim that the economy is ‘growing’ and start celebrating. Recessions are deemed to be over when people start spending money which they don’t have on things they don’t need. Consumption is synonymous with ‘growth’ and growth is always good.[…] Judged by the logic of world economics, the death of the planet will be the zenith of

141 The possibility of an orbital shading shield has (seriously) been researched: Pearson, Oldson, Levin, “Earth rings for planetary environment control.” Acta Astronautica, 58 (2006) 44 ff. www.sciencedirect.com 142 This Other Eden, p. 27

71 human achievement, because if consumption is always good, then to consume a whole planet must be the best thing of all.143

Elton is painfully right in this excerpt. To be a good citizen, one must consume. Other than science and money, now consumption also opposes nature. The planet is ‘growing’ to death because of it. We are consuming the planet, and large corporations are often the scapegoats, because they ‘consume’ our resources on a much larger scale. In the previous chapter, Sly Moorcock’s mining sites have scarred the earth, but this does not matter, as ‘land is there to be used.’(cf. 4.4.)

5.4 The Irish

In Stark, it were Aboriginals. In Gasping, it was an Indian letter. In This Other Eden, it’s the Irish who represent ‘the old ways’. All three peoples embody a similar ideal. Rosalie, her parents, and her grandparents are all eco-terrorists. Of course, there are tons of similarities to the IRA. ‘Natura’ is the political wing, while ‘Mother Earth’ is the military wing.

Sean and Ruth, Rosalie’s grandparents, are two Irish stereotypes. They live in an old rural cottage, they are probably among the only people in the world who have not had any plastic surgery done, and they still grow their own vegetables. Max feels as if he has entered another world. What sort of horrible affliction could cause such deformity? Was the woman a leper?[…] The woman was peeling a pile of strange brown lumpy things, stranger even than she was. They looked like tumours hacked from the body of a fourth world nuclear power worker. Beside the tumours, spread out on a bit of newspaper were some weird, bent, orangy long things with hairs growing out of them and knobbly bits sprouting out at various angles.[…] Perhaps it was eating the tumours and lumps that had made the old lady look the way she did.144

The ‘horrible affliction’ is merely age, and the ‘tumours’ and ‘orangy things’ are potatoes and carrots, respectively. Max and Nathan have trouble believing this.

143 This Other Eden, p.125 144 This Other Eden, p.181

72 But the old lady was right. Generations ago, before the great visual food joke had been perpetrated upon the public by supermarket owners, potatoes had eyes and carrots had hairs. Unfortunately, real food is notoriously volatile.[…] This is a bugger for accountants trying to use shelf-space cost-effectively. What the food suppliers needed was to get the public to accept vegetables and meat which were entirely anaesthetised and uniform. Anaemic, tasteless crap of a constant shape and size that would be easy to grow and transport and would last a long time. The joke was that it turned out that the public actually preferred their food this way because it looked nice. People were attracted to small, hard pale red tomatoes and small, hard pale yellow potatoes, they looked clean and fresh, with no horrid bits to have to cut out.145

It turns out that the nasty-looking potatoes and carrots taste incredible. The unrecognisable food symbolises how modern man has lost touch with nature. The odd-looking food has a metaphoric function. The old people that prepare it look strange, because they are uncorrupted by modern life. They provide contrast. In a rural, timeless Irish cottage, far away from the modern, polluted cities, man is able to re-establish the lost connection with nature.

In the next scene, the Garda surrounds the cottage, the old people quickly take out rifles, even give one to Max, and they prepare to die while defending their granddaughter. In this scene, Elton is implicitly referring to Irish mythology. In the above excerpt, Rosalie’s grandmother Ruth is very much described in mythic terms, almost as a witch. She is constantly referred to as ‘the old lady’, Elton is possibly referring to the so-called Shan Van Vocht or the Old Woman of Beare, which are both early versions of the Irish Cathleen Ni Houlihan-figure. Cathleen Ni Houlihan is an Irish folk figure. In the Irish literary tradition, she is either portrayed as an old woman, or as a young maiden. If Ruth represents the old version of Cathleen, then her granddaughter Rosalie is the incarnation of the young and beautiful maiden. Cathleen Ni Houlihan as a mythic personification of Ireland was made especially popular by Yeats and Lady Gregory’s play Kathleen Ni Houlihan (1901):

[…] troughout Yeats’s play she appears as a hag, and her promiscuity is now completely replaced by virginity. She neither aspires to physical unity like the sovereignty goddess did nor to marriage like the spéir bhean, but she asks for blood sacrifice, turning into a young maiden as young patriots go to battle and die for her sake.146

145 This Other Eden p. 182 146 Michaela Schrage-Früh, Emerging Identities, Trier 2004, p.8

73 Elton tells us that Rosalie’s parents have both been shot, which tightens her relationship with her grandparents by eliminating a generation. Grandmother and granddaughter can be said to echo the puella senilis-motif147. Rosalie is the rejuvenated version of her grandmother, and Rosalie is granted new life because of young men’s (blood) sacrifice. Indeed, in the scene where the Garda has surrounded the cottage, Max dresses up as Rosalie and gives himself up in her stead, thus sacrificing himself and temporarily rescuing her. Max is the young man whom Kathleen/Rosalie seduces. He leaves his own enclosed, decadent world behind and joins Rosalie in her fight for the green cause.

Ireland is the perfect symbol for international green terrorism. It has a history of violence and exploitation. It is a ‘feminine’ nation148 with a national literary tradition “in which concepts of the national and the feminine have been fused in a manner making them interchangeable.”149 A feminine metaphor for Earth is necessary to stress the helplessness of the planet, and to gain reader sympathy for it. Elton stresses this point further by making one of the protagonists a young Irish girl. ‘Mother Ireland’ is a pars pro toto for ‘Mother Earth’. Ireland is associated with the role of the victim on the one hand, but also with resistance and violence. The planet has been raped by mankind, and the only option left is terrorism. Elton links stereotypical Irish values and ideals to environmental protection.

147 puella-senilis: the old woman is restored to a young girl ‘with the walk of a queen’, when a) she is reunited with her lost lover, or b) when young men agree to sacrifice their lives for her. (in the nationalist tradition) 148 cf. Ernest Renan, ‘The Poetry of the Celtic Races’, 1859, in: Mark Story (editor), Poetry and Ireland since 1800: A source book. London and New York 1988, p.58 149 Schrage-Früh, p.4

74 5.5 Conclusions

Now, we can further refine the diagram from paragraph 4.6 by adding the Irish. This finally completes the diagram. It reflects the (psychological) structure of Elton’s early works.

CATASTROPHISTS

Antagonist(s) =instigator of the ecological destruction β (Lockheart, Stark, Plastic Tolstoy) | money =motivation | Anthropocentric and ethnocentric discourse Environment as object or resource | ------Environmental Degradation (ecological Armageddon)------| Ecocentric discourse Nature as Spirit | conscience/guilt/ideals =motivation | Protagonist(s) =hero(es) taking action (Philip, EcoAction, Max & Rosalie) | Ideals inspired by Indians, Aboriginals, Irish culture. α (Chief Seattle) (Culboons) (Rosalie’s grandparents)

CATASTROPHISTS Fig.4: A model illustrating the fictional representation of the environmental debate in Gasping, Stark and This Other Eden.

This results in a very peculiar situation on the α-side of the debate, because of the added ingredient of Irish nationalism. Both ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘Natura’ are international organisations, but Elton chooses to associate Ireland with these organisations. He invokes the IRA past, the traditional rural Irish values, and he even implicitly refers to Irish mythology. In doing so, Elton transfers Irish nationalism to environmentalism. This sets This Other Eden apart from Stark and Gasping. Irishness clearly takes up the same position as the Indian chief Seattle and the Aboriginal couple did, i.e. they provide contrast, but it has different implications. In This Other Eden, the α-side is not the underdog. The eco-terrorists have massive resources and weaponry at their disposal, because they are, paradoxically enough, being funded by the very businessman whom they are trying to kill.

75 VI CONCLUSIONS

A continent ages quickly once we come. The natives live in harmony with it. But the foreigner destroys, cuts down the trees, drains the water, so that the water supply is altered and in a short time the soil, once the sod is turned under, is cropped out and, next, it starts to blow away as it has blown away in every old country and as I had seen it start to blow in Canada. The earth gets tired of being exploited. A country wears out quickly unless man puts back in it all his residue and that of all his beasts. When he quits using beasts and uses machines, the earth defeats him quickly. The machine can’t reproduce, nor does it fertilise the soil, and it eats what he cannot raise. A country was made to be as we found it. We are the intruders and after we are dead we may have ruined it but it will still be there and we don’t know what the next changes are.150 Hemingway

The early works of Ben Elton are clear examples of eco-literature. More specifically, they are eco-apocalyptic narratives. This is a relatively new genre that is definitely coming into its own. Despite the futuristic atmosphere in Gasping, Stark, and This Other Eden (e.g enclosed ‘Breather tubes’ at street level, spaceships called Star Arks, and ‘Claustrospheres’), eco-literature is very much different from traditional science-fiction. It may have originated from science-fiction (cf. 2.1.2), but eco-literature has evolved towards something new over the past few decades. This new genre introduces an important new factor which sets it apart from science fiction, namely the natural environment. Industrialization, capitalism, and big business represent the side of science and technology which has gotten out of control, not on its own, as in science fiction, but because of the added ingredients of money and human greed. Technology, which originally was a good thing, has turned into ‘evil science’. In eco- literature, this is represented by the rich and ruthless antagonist. This is pitted against the exact opposite of science and technology, its anti-god, namely an idealistic, Rousseau-esque nature. This side of the debate is represented both by an idealistic protagonist and by ‘primitive’ peoples. The main difference with science-fiction is that eco-literature has immediate relevance, as it relates to people’s concerns.

Ecological concern and awareness is more widespread now than ever before in history. Americans now accept that the human race is in danger from itself, and are willing to consider

150 Hemingway, Green hills of Africa. quoted in Louise H. Westling, The Green breast of the new world: Landscape, gender, and American fiction. Athens & London 1996, p .99-100

76 work based on that understanding not as science-fiction, but as immediately relevant to their own concerns. In response to this, a new genre of fiction […] is now coming into being.151

The success of this new genre is rather difficult to explain, but it has something to do with what William H. Baarschers calls agnosophobia, which means ‘fear of the unknown’. In these uncertain, postmodern times, (cf. 2.2. Systemic uncertainty) fear sells. People are afraid and eco-literature appeals to and confirms these fears. Ever since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring(1962), environmental authors have attempted to scare the public with apocalyptic visions of doom.

In eco-literature, the actual environmental debate is ignored. In reality, there is too little evidence of climate change to take drastic measures, but there is enough evidence to be quite worried. Personally, I was quite surprised, especially after having read statistical data on climate change, that there are still so many grey areas and uncertainties concerning the state of the environment. My stance towards it has changed somewhat, and I have grown more sceptical. The matter is still unsettled, no matter what Al Gore claims. Ecological literature ignores critics. Instead, the debate is transformed, and big businesses are demonised as the instigators of the ecological destruction. Eco-literature has created an enemy, something that opposes the spirit of nature. This enemy is founded on agnosophobia, on the figure of the mad scientist, and on greed. All three of these aspects can be found in the large, multinational, faceless corporation.

That corporations, the ‘polluters’ cause the environmental problems is a common perception for many people. Scientists who work for these corporations have little credibility with the public. The fear of radiation and radioactivity inhibits the use of nuclear energy while the environmental impact of coal-fired power plants is ignored.152

The antagonists in Elton’s early works are all the same, i.e. a ruthless businessman, a completely inhumane bastard. They are superhumans without a conscience. Inverted logic is their trademark. Sir Chiffley Lockheart, Sly Moorcock and Plastic Tolstoy are three different representations of the same idea, which is man’s boundless egoistic greed. As the reader has been able to see on the diagram I proposed, the motivation/ideals of the protagonists are

151 Poyer, p.15 152 Baarschers, p.ix

77 embodied by a ‘primitive’ people. These people are respectively Indians, Aboriginals, and Irish. In each narrative, there is always a beautiful girl, too. In Gasping and Stark, Philip and CD, respectively, get dumped. In This Other Eden, Max marries Rosalie (in an idyllic Irish catholic church).

It is noteworthy that in all three narratives, there are no non-believers, and there is always a rather bleak pessimistic, even fatalistic atmosphere present, despite the witty tone. Mankind knows it is going to die. In Baarschers’ terminology, we can say that there are never any cornucopian optimists in Elton’s early works. Everybody is a catastrophist. Elton, as a defender of the green cause seeks to eliminate criticism. Elton eliminates the non-believers, he silences them by not mentioning them, especially in Stark and This Other Eden. As a result, in his novels, there is never any real debate, and readers’ fears are once again confirmed. He leads the reader to believe that there is a consensus, that everybody agrees that people are destroying the Earth, even the rich that profit from it. Unlike Elton, I am convinced that it is important to keep asking questions, and to always remain sceptical.

I have often heard the argument that, whether or not climate change is really occurring or not, it is ‘better to be safe than sound’. Less pollution cannot do much harm, can it? I agree to a certain extent. But how can we possibly change the world, and the future, if there are still so many grey areas in our knowledge about the environment? This uncertainty makes sure that investing in e.g. windmills and other green energy sources is still a risky business. If we are to overcome the environmental debate, then critics and non-believers must be proven wrong. Environmentalists must openly confront them, instead of either ignoring them or accusing them of being on a company’s payroll. Unfortunately, critical voices are disappearing, professionals haplessly adopt global warming. cf. the October 2006 issue of International Water association magazine with a dramatic cover photo of a parched Australian water basin, with the words ‘resource risks of climate change above it’. Science needs to keep asking critical questions.

Ecological literature needed an enemy to oppose nature, this is why the antagonist in these writings represents the side of science, technology and economics. But ecological fiction has done a lot more than provide big businesses with a bad image. It has made science, technology, and economics diametrically opposed to the natural environment. On the other hand, ecological literature has done, and is still doing, a good job in raising people’s concern

78 about the environment. But has this made any significant structural changes? The only results are mistrust towards big companies and a wider gap between the environmentalists and the big money, at a time when the two should be growing towards each other. The opposition between nature on one side, and science, technology, and economics on the other is a false one. If science and technology are part of the problem, then they are also an integral part of the solution. If we are to produce cleaner cars or electricity, it will be the multinational companies that have to provide it. Elton paints an extremely pessimistic and stereotypical portrait of the rich and powerful. I have every hope that major companies and green organisations will eventually come to a constructive dialogue via politics. Green political parties are essential in attaining this goal.

This new and rapidly growing field of literary ecology, in its crossing of the boundaries between the humanities and the sciences, has a bright future ahead of it. It will be interesting to see in what direction eco-literature will evolve. This new field has an enormous potential for future research. One could for instance attempt to track traces of ecological awareness in the works of several classic authors such as Faulkner or Hemingway(cf. epigraph). Or one could explore the romanticisation of nature in eco-literature. The three apocalyptic narratives by Ben Elton which I have taken as examples in this thesis are not exemplary of all environmental literature. Elton was a pioneer, the genre is constantly evolving. In his early works, he often tends to preach to the reader, especially in Stark. Recently, many works have incorporated ecological elements, but to what extent can these works be considered eco-literature?

Literature is a mirror of society. In the nearby future, the environmental debate will very likely be over. I believe that our world will evolve towards a more ecological state. Ecological literature has influenced this evolution and will continue to be a literary expression of human concern for the environment. There is no other genre that is so closely related to actual events occurring on our planet. It is a matter of time before reality will follow fiction and the non-believers will become marginalized as more people start thinking green. Let us hope for a cornucopian solution to the problem of environmental degradation, i.e. may science and technology become nature’s partners instead of its enemies. Solar power, wind mills, and hydrogen cars do not exist in the world of Stark, Gasping, or This Other Eden. They do in ours.

79 Bibliography

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Baarschers, William H. Eco-Facts and Eco-Fiction: Understanding the Environmental Debate. New York 1996.

Beckman, Karel. Het Broeikaseffect bestaat niet: De mythe van de ondergang van het milieu. Amsterdam 1992

Calder, Nigel The Manic Sun: Weather theories confounded, Pikington press, London 1997

Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring, Boston 1962

Claes, T. Cultuurfilosofie I, 6 Leven in de Moderniteit, Gent 2005-2006

Coolsaet, Rik, Macht en waarden in de wereldpolitiek: Actuele vraagstukken in de internationale politiek. Gent, Academia Press, ed. 2006-2007

Cooper, Marilyn M. Environmental Rhetoric in the Age of Hegemonic Politics. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996

Crichton, Michael, State Of Fear, New York 2004

Deitering, Cynthia, The Postnatural Novel. Toxic Consciousness in fiction of the 1980s. In The Ecocriticism Reader, Landmarks in literary ecology, edited by Cheryll Burgess Glotfelty Georgia, 1996

Drake, Frances. Global Warming: The Science of Climate Change. New York 2000

Duff, David. Modern Genre Theory. Harlow, Longman 2000

Ehrlich, Paul. The Population Bomb, New York 1968

Elton, Ben. Gasping, London 1990

Elton, Ben. Stark, London 1989

Elton, Ben. This Other Eden, London 1993

Glotfelty, Cheryll and Fromm, Harold. The Ecocriticism Reader, Landmarks in literary ecology, Georgia, 1996

Herndl, Carl G. and Brown, Stuart C. Introduction. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996

80 Killingsworth and Palmer, Millennial Ecology, The Apocalyptic Narrative from Silent Spring to Global Warming. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996

Lomborg, Bjorn, The skeptical environmentalist: Measuring the real state of the world, Cambridge 2001.

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford university press 2000

Renan, Ernest, The Poetry of the Celtic Races, 1859, in Poetry and Ireland since 1800: A source book. edited by Mark Story, London and New York 1988

Schrage-Früh, Michaela, Emerging Identities, Trier 2004

Shakespeare, W, Hamlet with sixteen lithographs by Eugene Delacroix. London 1976, p.71

Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800. New York 1983.

Ulman, Lewis H. Thinking Like a Mountain, Persona, Ethos, and Judgment in American Nature writing. In Green Culture: Environmental rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl Herdnl, Wisconsin 1996

Wallerstein, Immanuel, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham and London 2004

Weart, Spencer R. The Discovery of Global Warming. Cambridge, Massachusetts 2003

Westling, Louise H. The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape and gender in American fiction. Athens & London, Georgia press 1996.

Yeats, W.B, lady Gregory, Kathleen Ni Houlihan. In Lady Gregory: Selected writings, Penguin books 1995.

Articles

Athanasiou, Tom. “Too much of nothing”, Earth Island Journal, winter 2006. (http://www.Earthisland.com)

Bailey, R and Simon J., “Dialogue on environmental Apocalypse”, Futurist, 29 (1995) nr.3, 5 ff (http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=108&sid=686f6f72-fe55-44ea-983c- a15fd268f2a4%40sessionmgr109)

“Ben Elton’s Gasping” (http://www.theprogram.net.au/eventsSub.asp?id=3533)

Clark, Jerry L, Thus Spoke Chief Seattle: The Story of An Undocumented Speech, vol.18(1985) No.1 (http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1985/spring/chief- seattle.html)

81 Colwell et al. “Climate Change and Human Health”, Science, 279(1998) nr. 5353, 963 ff.

Crowley, Walt, Chief Seattle’s speech, 28 June 1999. (http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=1427)

Fintushel, Eliot,”Kim Stanley Robinson: Götterdämmerung on ice”, Publishers Weekly, 22 June, 1998.

‘Gasping review’ (http://www.abc.net.au/brisbane/stories/s1724502.htm)

Goldberg, Jonah, “Al Gore’s horror theatre”, The Examiner Online, 15 June, 2006. (http://www.examiner.com/a-150483~Jonah_Goldberg__Al_Gore_s_horror_theater.html)

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Hayward, Keith. “Creating a climate for change”, Water 21, October 2006,London

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Reijnders, Lucas. “Kakofonie van onenigheid”, Natuur & Techniek, 67(1999), nr. 6, 89 ff

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Schulze, Ernst-Detlef. “De Milieuramp 'Mens' Biogeochemie brengt invloed mens op aarde in kaart”, Natuur & Techniek, 69 (2001) nr. 1, 50 ff

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Wong, Andrew. British Comedy: The Ben Elton FAQ. (http://www.faqs/tv/british-comedy/ Ben-Elton/)

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(http://www.aldoleopold.org) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson) (http://www.ernestcallenbach.com) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Callenbach) (http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/)

Films

Algar, James. Fantasia, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Walt Disney Pictures 1942

Gore, Al. An Inconvenient Truth, Paramount 2006

Uys, Jamie, The Gods must be crazy, CAT films 1980

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