This review was presented at the physical launch of the Climate Action Almanac organized by the Centre for Science and the Imagination (Arizona State University), in collaboration with the Association of Nigerian Authors, Bayelsa State Chapter. The event was held on the 27th of July, 2024, at Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
THE CLIMATE ACTION ALMANAC
Emmanuel Frank-Opigo
PROLOGUE
“The showers of April become in June slit arteries of the sacrificial bull.”
This is one of my favourite lines from Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s prose. It is from his second novel, Season of Anomy.In beautiful metaphor it talks about how, year after year, the rains that begin with a slight drizzle in April become torrential in June. We are gathered here to examine how this cyclic beauty of nature is being threatened by the activities of man. Enter July, the month of germination. Not only of flora, but also of Wole Soyinka himself, who was born on the 9th of July, ninety years ago. Felicitations to our inimitable nonagenarian.
And what better prologue to discussing Climate Change than parodying another work of Wole Soyinka’s – his prison memoir, The Man Died. I am yet to encounter a more dramatic and poetic beginning to a book. Permit me to quote the first paragraph of the prologue to that memoir:
A letter to Compatriots…
… prompted by two items on my table at this moment. One is the latest copy of the journal Transition which has recently been resurrected in Accra: the other a cablegram from home. The message on the latter is a simple one: The Man Died.
I find a curious parallel between this and the review I am about to give, and so I parody Soyinka in these words:
A letter to Clime Patriots…
… prompted by two items in my thoughts at this moment. One is the positive transition of our youth from docility to action, from debauchery to poetry, to Ink Potters and Seaview Poetry Club: the other, a compendium of essays and stories compiled as the Climate Action Almanacwith hope for every home. The message on the latter is a simple one: The Climate Will Not Die.
THE CLIMATE ACTION ALMANAC
Overview and Undertow
Emmanuel Frank-Opigo
Before I place on the table the definitions of the theme that has gathered us here today, let me first, to make us appreciate the definitions better, take us back to the beginning of human life.While that period of life was very simple and elemental, I will deconstruct the backward journey with the seemingly complex mathematical concept of Calculus – Integration.
Integration, as the name implies, is simply the concept of gradual but steady accumulation of numbers. The old saying that “little drops of water make a mighty ocean” simply affirms Integration.On the flip side of Calculus is Differentiation – which I will loosely explain here with the Economics term of “diminishing returns”.
So, at the beginning of human existence, there were just a few humans occupying 510 million square kilometres of land and water and all the resources therein. This surface area has remained constant. The human beings have gradually but steadily increased, while the resources have gradually but steadily reduced. Without knowing it for most of his existence, Man and his environment have been subject to the boundary conditions of Calculus: Man to Integration and the Environment to Differentiation.
Why Man did not realise this for most of his existence is understandable – the resources were vast indeed. He did not even need to plant; he merely gathered what was growing around him and hunted wild animals for meat. He merely inherited the earth, and subdued it – without realising that subjugation comes with responsibility. That little smoke from that little fire would evaporate into the atmosphere and literally disappear. That tree cut down was insignificant compared to the vast forests that stretched for miles.
There is always a point where forces of progression and regression meet, where supply and demand intersect in the graph. That point was reached about half a century ago, in the 1970s. Realization came slowly but surely. There was pushback from industry and governments, institutions that had emerged to regulate humans. But pockets of resistance also emerged – Greenpeace, Green Political Parties and, of course,the young Greta Thunberg – to mention but a few. And that Green movement has brought us together into this room to consider THE CLIMATE ACTION ALMANAC.
We can now proceed to define these very important words:
CLIMATE – the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period.
CHANGE – make or become different
ALMANAC –an annual calendar containing important dates and statistical information.
These definitions are all self-explanatory, but emphasis will be made of the term “statistical information” which underlines ALMANAC. With the advancement in data collection and analysis, experts have been able to determine the deleterious effects of unchecked human activity on planet Earth, and worked out a “doomsday timetable” that must be aborted at all costs. Greenpeace growled, Green parties sprouted, Greta Thunberg thundered. Their reactions are geared towards arresting the undertow current at the beach, a dangerous unseen enemy that can draw unsuspecting beachgoers out into the sea – and certain death.
Enter Literature.
The Centre for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, in partnership with the MIT Press and supported by a grant from ClimateWorks Foundation, has compiled THE CLIMATE ACTION ALMANAC as its contribution to helping reverse the dangerous trend. The website states:
“This (anthology) brings together top science fiction authors with researchers, artists, scientists and advocates from around the world to share visions of positive climate futures. These works of fiction, nonfiction, and art chart pathways toward a vibrant, decarbonized future. They are grounded in real science and honour local particularities, insisting upon equity and justice and imagining efforts that could be scaled out for coordinated global change.”
Mr. Jason Anderson, the driver of the scheme, goes further to say in his intro AFTERWORD: PRUNINING THE DYSTOPIARY:
“If you want to get involved in climate change diplomacy, it’s helpful to be content with delayed gratification…. The whole system operates on the principle of limited victory…”
I will paraphrase “limited” here to mean “incremental.”
And so, Enter Literature, with the purpose of adding its own impulse to the gathering momentum. We can never over-emphasize the power of Literature. In a talk I gave to a select audience at the Book Section of Port Harcourt Club in 2020 titled WHAT CAN BOOKS DO?, I underscored this point. Karl Marx wrote a book in 1848 titled THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO and foisted communism on the world at the turn of the 20th Century. George Orwell wrote a book in 1945 titled ANIMAL FARM which made a caricature of communism. Surely but steadily, this and other actions nibbled at the behemoth, leading to its collapse in 1990.
And that is why the anthology, THE CLIMATE ACTION ALMANAC, is a timely addition to the concerted effort at bringing attention to – and taking action on – Climate Change.
This anthology is a motley of stories and essays presented in 4 Sections:
Section 1: Insisting on Hope
Section 2: Reimagining Sustainable Cities
Section 3: From Climate Trauma to Climate Action
Section 4: Navigating Transitions, Building Communities
In line with modern trends, the anthology is found online atwww.climatealmanac.org. I invite all of us to take time out to visit this site and read these excellent and motivating pieces. I will review a couple of the short stories and allow you to taste the rest of the pudding yourself.
The Chinese short story, THE MOTHERSHIP COMES TO THE HEART OF THE OCEAN by Gu Shi tells of a city in the future located in the ocean. Houses and facilities are produced by 3D printers. It is at once exciting and chilling, otherworldly. The view is summarized through the eyes of a child:
“Here, Xiaoming suddenly had a vision of the city itself as a life form, a giant monster lying prostrate over the surface of the ocean, endowed with countless tentacles and suckers – maybe the twin towers at the city center were its eyes!”
Literature is awash with instances where science fiction has become reality. H. G. Wells wrote The First Men in the Moon in 1901. By 1968, there were indeed first men in the moon. Mary Shelley wrote the novel Frankenstein in 1818, fantasizing on the creation of an ( albeit flawed) human. Test tube babies came to be in 1978 (Louise Brown) – thankfully, not flawed.
While the story from China is about a city on the ocean shaped as a fishbone, the 33-page DEATH IS NOT AN ORNAMENT by Hannah Onoguwe is a long short story that is a complex web also structured as a fishbone – with the environment as spine and a multiplicity of sub-themes attached: politics, religion, family, the fourth dimension. Unlike the Chinese story which is 100 percent fictional, the Nigerian story is, in a sense, “factional”, as actual names are named. A second Civil War has happened, and this time the rebel state succeeds and is called the BRACED Republic, with the capital at Asaba. Bold plotting, and we hope the authorities are not reading this. In 1966, Chinua Achebe predicted a coup in A MAN OF THE PEOPLE, and a coup happened the same year, making him a person of interest.
But away from intrigues and the environment and climate change, literature is, first and foremost, literature. The pieces in THE CLIMATE ACTION ALMANAC are all of superlative quality, and I give kudos to the writers and editors. I here select one of many samples of the superlative use of language from Hannah Onoguwe’s DEATH IS NOT AN ORNAMENT:
“One young woman snagged Youngman’s eye immediately when she came in. Her hair was cut close to her head and her simple dress was all the more lethal for the figure it encased. She winged him a small smile. He nodded in acknowledgement and glanced away. There was subtle temptation there, but he wouldn’t be biting. Not now, maybe not ever. One near-adult son with one volatile woman was enough, and those hips looked like they were one wet dream away from conception.”
If you read this paragraph from the traditional left to right, you will see ribaldry and mischief. If you read it elliptically from the right to the left, you will encounter a rib-cracker and metaphor. Humans have been enticed by immediate gain from the beginning of time and have accumulated problems for mother Earth. It is time to resist and glance away from gratification, and look in the direction of more sustainable solutions. Indeed, one near-dead soil and a volatile climate is enough. Whether it is easy or not, it is time to take bold steps to fix our weather. And, ironically, our climate is under the weather. It is time to harness Science (through positive integration) and Art (through sustained advocacy)to restore our besieged climate– and 510 million square kilometres of our beloved planet Earth. (27th July, 2024)