'The Great Derangement' author GhoshAmitav on just how totally we’ve failed to face up to the unfolding climate crisis
Amitav Ghosh. Illustration: Intelligencer. Photo: Rosdiana Ciaravolo/Getty Images On September 23, the United Nations opened its Climate Action Summit here in New York, three days after the Global Climate Strike, led by Greta Thunberg, swept through thousands of cities worldwide.
So what did change? Is it because the public has learned to think of this as a front-and-center story, rather than a fringe concern? In The Great Derangement, you seem to want to see fiction that treats nature as a protagonist — that tells the story not just of a single character but of how the natural world is an active force in the lives of those characters.
They’re producing, on the one hand, all these horror movies, but at the same time I think they have always produced very interesting work about human agency. You must know that great book about cats. The speaking cat. You know, I think it’s not that simple. And that’s really the point. When you wake, let’s say, a sleeping tiger, you’ve woken him. You haven’t created him.The tiger has its agency and it’s going to come after you. That’s what you have to recognize. That you have no control over it. And that’s what’s so interesting even about the science. The science is always one step short. It’s almost a meme: Scientists are surprised. Scientists are puzzled. Models didn’t predict.
Can you imagine? It’s almost impossible for us to imagine today a poet calling for the extinction of tigers and apes.Exactly. And in a sense, what is this whole idea of Kurzweil’s, escaping into the singularity? Essentially that idea. You escape the bonds of earth. I can both see the total inadequacy of our existing elite in addressing and reckoning with this problem, and also just have a really hard time seeing that elite being toppled at the same time.
There was a point a couple of years ago when this huge megadrought gripped Central India. When it was really at its worst, there’s this region called Bundelkhand, a very water-stressed region, where close to a million people were leaving every week. The Indian parliament was in session. They held only one debate on the drought. Not even a tenth of the MPs showed up.
Let’s talk about your novel, Gun Island. Is it possibly true that you didn’t begin writing this until after The Great Derangement?
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