"Do not expect a linear narrative in Arid Lands and today's other best environmental films. Indeed, be highly suspicious if someone tries to feed you one, because ecological discourse demands detecting and understanding connections, networks, and implications. The films take you far afield. Enjoy the hike."
The narrative, if any, essentially is still forming. Maybe with enough ingenuity we'll turn things around. Maybe it's too late. But any piece that tried to build an assumption in either direction would be grossly presumptuous.
What I have liked thinking though about in the past few days, and particularly after talking to Kim all afternoon on Saturday (with video camera in hand) is, in fact, going in one direction - assuming we're stuck with the situation we've gotten ourselves into - and seeing what that landscape looks like. Whether it be seeing it artistically or seeing it in terms of highly imaginative social planning or in the loosest sense in terms of any radical response/activity. But even then, even after making a pretty weighty and presumptuous prediction, there's still room and time for hiking. And I think there's something very worthwhile about that kind of speculation. Let's not wait till the house is on fire to figure out where the hose is.
When I saw my friend Jenty a few months ago, she was telling me about the work she is doing at the UN. She's working with a committee that is creating projections of the social crises that will result from global warming and how to deal with them. Drastic scenarios like "Let's imagine there's no water on such-and-such continent in such-and-such number of years: how many people are going to be displaced, where are they going to go, and how will we deal with that hypothetical humanitarian crisis?" I'll have to write to her to get some more details and post about them here if I can.
