04-mitl15.gessert.1.ps - 4/12/2007 10:22 AM ARTIST’S ARTICLE Gathered from Coincidence: Reflections on Art in a Time of Global Warming George Gessert ABSTRACT How will global warming affect art? The author proposes that the effects will be continuous with other human-caused threats to civilization such as nuclear weapons. Such threats have hen I was a child, I knew no more about na- ited. The famous passage in which already contributed to devalua- W tion of the human figure. In ture than a squirrel. If someone had asked me what nature he describes the fierce green fire was, I would probably have said that it was my family’s farm, passing from a dying wolf’s eyes is many different times and places, the primary focus of art, with the woods especially and the creek that flooded every spring. representative [1]. It is an elegy, but the notable exception of West- Nature was space and the wild things in it, like the geese that not for something absolutely lost. ern art, has been on nonhuman flew overhead. He considered industrial society’s imagery. Global warming will I sensed that humans are part of nature, but exactly how, I uses of the wild tragically mistaken, give this new significance. Questions of permanence and was not sure. My parents did not discuss the matter with me, as damaging to ourselves as to the impermanence in art are also although my mother loved plants and animals. Evenings, she land. And yet he thought that our likely to become more relevant. often read aloud to my brothers and sisters and me, and once mistakes could still be remedied. she read from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. This Exactly how he was not sure. Near was in the late summer of 1952, when I had just turned 8. the end of A Sand County Almanac Leopold’s farm was perhaps two hours from ours, so the plants he acknowledged that entire ecosystems were threatened, but and animals that he described were familiar. But I found A even in his reflections on the extinction of passenger pigeons, Sand County Almanac boring. Only a grownup writing for he saw their disappearance as continuous with evolutionary grownups would describe wild geese and say nothing about processes that preceded humankind. wanting to fly away with them. Nature was magic, real magic, Leopold envisions lost species of birds passing into a great and good books were magic, too. My brothers and sisters must prairie in the sky, where they pursue their symphonic migra- have felt the same as I did, because the next evening my tory cycles in eternity. Did he actually believe in an alternate mother switched to Alice in Wonderland. universe? A Sand County Almanac provides no clues, but his My siblings and I were naive because we were children, but musings turn the light of his own fierce green fire away from my mother was naive because of the times. She and my father the threat of extinction. had moved to the country for quiet, fresh air, the presence of It was the times. He was innocent of mass extinction. What- wildness with something of the sacred about it, and a good ever hints of it we may glean from the dying wolf passage re- place to raise children. In those days country life was still un- flects our ecological consciousness, not his. Nor does Leopold complicated by news of peak oil or global warming. consider that the economic, social and technological systems Apocalypse, however, was already in the air. About the time of which he was part might pass away along with whooping my mother tried reading Leopold aloud, I heard a report on cranes. A Sand County Almanac is rich in insights. One, his best the radio about the Red Menace and hydrogen bombs. I asked known, should be inscribed on the walls of courthouses, uni- my mother if we would be killed. She said that the bombs would versity buildings and places of worship: “A thing is right when be dropped on cities, not farms. it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the bi- But what would we eat? I asked. I was old enough to know otic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” [2]. And that in spite of our vegetable garden and marathon canning yet, to read Leopold today is also to read of a lost world. sessions, most of our food came from town. ♦♦♦ We could grind our own corn, she said. That same afternoon my sister Beth and I ground field corn A Sand County Almanac was published in 1949. Around this between bricks. My mother helped us bake the golden meal time a few scientists were beginning to issue warnings that our into muffins. They were too gritty to eat, but comforting nev- civilization might not survive. These warnings, and the em- ertheless: she was right, somehow we could make do. blem that came to be associated with them, the doomsday clock ♦♦♦ of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, initially focused on nu- clear war. The clock, with its hands perpetually poised near Rereading A Sand County Almanac, I am moved by Leopold’s midnight, was a premonition of other countdowns to come. struggle to understand what was happening to the wildness he The Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth (1972) [3], for ex- loved. By today’s standards his knowledge of ecology was lim- ample, is a countdown for the economic promise of industrial civilization. According to the authors, economic and scientific George Gessert (artist, writer), 86070 Cougar Lane, Eugene, OR 97402, U.S.A. data indicate that if humankind does A, B or C, we are likely E-mail: <[email protected]>. to get X, Y or Z. The outcomes range from continued abun- ©2007 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 231–236, 2007 231 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.3.231 by guest on 28 September 2021 04-mitl15.gessert.1.ps - 4/12/2007 10:22 AM dance to severe economic contraction. bare beginnings of the revolutionary The authors were not all-seeing prophets, social and economic changes that will but their fundamental premise has come be necessary to halt cataclysmic global to be generally accepted: The world’s re- heating. sources are finite, and some may be ex- ♦♦♦ hausted in this century or the next. When crucial resources are exhausted, eco- Under these circumstances, Wilson’s nomic and political catastrophes may re- faith that concern for grandchildren can sult. Today this seems obvious, but only a significantly affect policy seems mis- generation ago it was not. placed. In Collapse (2005), evolutionary Underlying the Club of Rome report, biologist Jared Diamond offers more and many similar analyses, one may sense convincing projections. The future, he lingering optimism. Before us lies a menu writes, could bring worldwide ecological of options, and informed people will collapse, but even if this does not hap- choose well. We, or rather the policy pen, we may still face difficult times, for makers to whom much of this literature example, “spread of Rwanda-like or Haiti- is directed, will determine the course like conditions” to many more countries, of history. History is firmly in human with the First World “beset by . chronic hands. terrorism, wars, and disease outbreaks” E.O. Wilson voiced a similar optimism [4]. Even at his most hopeful, Diamond when he predicted, in The Diversity of Life suggests that the expanding material (1992), that our species will soon mitigate promise we have long taken for granted the activities that are causing mass ex- may be lost for most of our grandchil- tinction. Although he characterized what dren, real or figurative (many of us will we face as potentially worse than nuclear not have biological descendants). Amid war—-the fossil record indicates that full the shocks and dislocations to come we recovery from each of the five previous may also lose some of our fundamental mass extinctions took up to 10,000,000 values. years—-he offered hope. Human beings, I am in no position to evaluate Dia- Wilson said, do not ordinarily think in ge- mond as a scientist or a historian, but I ological or even historical time, which respect his writing. He uses clear, unas- makes large-scale, long-term planning suming language and is a good story- impossible. However, because most peo- teller. He builds his case by marshalling ple are concerned about the well-being facts and by revealing his own character, of their grandchildren, planning 25 to 50 which is neither misanthropic nor de- Fig. 1. Tawaraya So¯tatsu and Hon’ami years ahead is politically feasible. Wilson spairing. He characterizes himself as Ko¯etsu, Calligraphy of a Poem over a Design of Chrysanthemums, ink, silver and gold on believed that ecological catastrophe was something of an optimist, and his prose 3 11 paper, 7 ⁄8 × 6 ⁄16 in, circa 1615–1637, Edo close enough to soon arouse policy mak- suggests that he is a compassionate man. period (1615–1868). The chrysanthemums ers and the public from their collective He does not think that human beings are are by So¯tatsu, the calligraphy by Ko¯etsu. trance. inherently evil or given to delusion. We Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased In the 15 years since the publication of are simply creatures trying to survive as with the W.P. Wiltstach Fund, 1970. Photo by Graydon Wood for the Philadelphia The Diversity of Life, there have been some best we can under social and environ- Museum of Art.