Cartoons, catastrophe and the “long” view (even a generation seems as much as we can cope with)

Jotting a note to self for future possible work.

I love old cartoons that talk about the ecological crisis – back to Pogo in 1971 “we have met the enemy and he is us” but also others from the same period. They remind me that the stakes have been known since the time I was born, that “we” (rich, white, educated people living in societies with at least the formal trappings of democracy (elections, freedom of speech/information/assembly) have been – how shall I put this – FAILING IN EVER MORE COMIC AND COMI-TRAGIC AND DOWNRIGHT TRAGIC WAYS AT AN ACCELERATING PACE FOR OVER HALF A CENTURY.

There, said it. Here are three cartoons that try, in their way, to get this across to the particularly dim/tortured-by-its-own-wilful-blindness murder ape that presumptuously calls it self ‘sapiens’.

and this 2013 work of genius from Aussie cartoonist Jon Kudelka about the science reports

and most recently this (the dates are problematic, actually, but also, IT IS A CARTOON, not a Masters Thesis (1)

Common themes here? We are not very smart – not NEARLY as smart as we like to tell ourselves – and the horrors have a way of creeping up on you while you’re very carefully not watching.

As per the astonishingly brilliant Australian cartoonist David Pope, on Twitter

Mental note to self – dig out the Far Side cartoon with the stegosaurus and the tree. Ah, by the power of Google…

Footnote

(1) There’s a bunch of Masters’ theses I have to start marking. This post is my reward to myself for having made a start.