Climate change, despite being one of the greatest environmental phenomena for over 15 years, has not been equally recognized or even taken action against efficiently. Climate change, however, is not just an environmental problem but also an emotional one. It is an ambivalent and uncomfortable issue that we live with everyday but cannot face. Approaching climate change from an affective point means taking an in depth look at the stagnation behind climate change.
Contemporary novelists, such as Ian Mcewan, have also taken an interest towards lack of action and awareness on climate change and included it into their narratives as a visible yet unheard and unseen issue. Mcewan's Solar (2010) tackles climate change issues with irony and sarcasm through the perspective of a hedonistic scientist who is supposed to create solutions for climate change but ends up commercializing and capitalizing science to fill his own pockets under the appearance of helping with the climate change crisis.
This study looks at Ian McEwan's Solar in relation to emotive case studies on climate change crisis in order to understand the reason behind emotive unresponsiveness and numbness behind climate change. Climate change narratives could function as mirrors to our own inaction and reaction in the face of an ongoing and worsening crisis. Then, what is the effect of climate change narratives to the actual problem? Does looking at these texts help realizing our own state of inaction and help to provide a more positive and less terrifying change for activity?
Hopefully, I can provide some working answers to these questions.
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“Canonically pursuing then overtaking disappointment was alarm. The gulf stream would vanish, Europeans would freeze to death in their beds, the Amazon would be a desert, some continents would catch fire, others would drown, and by 2085 the Arctic summer ice would be gone and the polar bears with it. Beard had heard these predictions before and believed none of them.And if he had, he would not have been alarmed”