Earthworks: The geopolitical visions of climate change cartoons

Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Political Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

Earthworks: The geopolitical visions of climate change cartoons Kate Manzo* School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Geopolitics and visuality Climate change communication Political cartoons

This paper asks how climate change cartoons work to communicate geopolitical visions of time, space and power. I make the argument that visuality is integral to climate change communication in ways that are frequently paradoxical. Dominant visual forms of evidence and iconic images help to make climate change real while simultaneously impeding full understanding of the debates and issues around climate change. In this context, at a time when visuality and climate change discourse have become coconstitutive, the paper explores the capacity of political cartoons to effectively represent the geopolitics of climate change. The empirical focus is the data set of cartoons submitted in 2008 to an international political cartoon competition called Earthworks. The entries collectively represent different geopolitical visions of climate change. They also suggest a critical role for cartoons in climate change communication e not as purveyors of visual evidence of climate change but as effective forms of visual commentary on the relations of power and knowledge within which climate change communication and debates are located. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction This paper is about geopolitics and visuality e specifically, about the geopolitical visions that are communicated in climate change cartoons. The geopolitical significance of cartoons is already recognised in political studies and popular geopolitics. As visual forms of geopolitical texts, cartoons are “powerful sites and sources of popular geopolitical representations” (Dodds, 2010, p. 2). This paper aims to link to a broader literature on geopolitics and visual culture by showing, firstly, how visuals are integral to climate change communication. Secondly, I explore more broadly the meaning and status of visuality in relation to climate change communication and debates. My central argument is that, when it comes to climate change “our increasing dependence on the visual to comprehend and represent the world around us” (Macdonald, Hughes, & Dodds, 2010, p. 2) is frequently paradoxical. That is because the dominant forms of visual evidence used to make climate change real simultaneously impede our ability to fully understand it as an invisible, temporally complex and contested concept that is often caught up with geopolitical narratives. At a time when climate change discourse and visuality have become co-constitutive e like geopolitics and visual culture more generally e the complexities of climate change make its visualisation

* Tel.: þ44 (0)1912226454. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0962-6298/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2012.09.001

not only challenging but also necessary. The issue here is not whether visuals can accurately represent the reality of climate change but whether they can effectively represent the geopolitics of climate change. This issue, plus the paradoxes associated with dominant visual forms such as photographs, prompted the question of how political cartoons work to communicate geopolitical visions of climate change. Prior studies have examined climate change communication in fiction films (Leiserowitz, 2004) and art exhibitions (Doyle, 2011; Miles, 2010), so cartoons are clearly not the only option. However, cartoons arguably remain “an under-utilised focus for research in terms of exploring and interrogating representations of politics” (Dodds, 2010, p. 3). The fact that cartoons (such as the one in Fig. 1, below) often express serious concerns through “humour and parody” makes them no less worthy of “reflection and scholarly engagement” (Dodds, 2010, p. 15). My later analysis shows nonetheless that cartoons do not have to be funny to be effective. The paper’s empirical basis comprises cartoons submitted in 2008 to an international political cartoon competition called Earthworks. This focus not only provides a large data set of cartoons with which to work; it also follows recent suggestions to broaden the focus of cartoon research away from historically conventional sites of publication (i.e. from newspapers and magazines to other media sources) and to move beyond “the world of Euro-American cartoonists and performers” (Dodds, 2010, p. 16). Cartoonists from Europe and the Americas are certainly included in the data set, but so too are cartoonists from a large number of countries on other continents.

482

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

Fig. 1. Untitled. Bethseba Ayu, Indonesia.

The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. Part one reviews a body of literature on geopolitics, visuality and political cartoons, with particular emphasis on “the communicative power of cartoons” (Kleeman, 2006, p. 145). This is necessary to help structure the analytical framework and interpretation of the primary data presented in part three. I show here that although political cartoons are still often published in popular print media, substantive content is more important than the original source in defining a political cartoon. Part two aims to show, firstly, how visuality works in relation to the multiple discourses that frame climate change as “a reality, an agenda, a problem and a context” (Brace & Geoghegan, 2010, p. 285). A further aim is to demonstrate the fundamentally geopolitical character of climate change by showing how debates about climate change discourse and visuality sit within a nexus of broader questions about power and knowledge. The Earthworks cartoons are analysed in part three through quantitative content analysis and visual discourse analysis. Consideration is given to both the subject matter of the images and to the cartoon codes and visual languages through which geopolitical visions are communicated. The findings suggest that cartoons can indeed play a significant role in climate change communication, by facilitating understanding (the educative role), raising awareness, representing different perspectives, and providing political exposure, commentary and critique. This raises questions about how to incorporate cartoons into climate change communication at a time of increasing (often paradoxical) dependence on other visual forms. In conclusion, I suggest (following El Refaie, 2009; Kleeman, 2006) that a useful first step would be to introduce climate change cartoons into the classroom, to engage young people with the issues they raise. As well as addressing debates within climate change communication, this would answer broader calls in popular geopolitics for further research into audience reception of images, thus contributing to an ongoing project on “the relationships between power, representation and audiences” (Dodds, 2010, p. 4).

Geopolitics, visuality and political cartoons Critical geopolitics has been described as a project that conceives of geopolitics “as a discourse located within a nexus of power and knowledge” (Dodds, 2010, p. 2). This paper sits within two overlapping and complementary sub-fields of that broader project. One is geopolitics and visuality, which explores the relationship between visual culture and contemporary geopolitical practice (Campbell, 2007; Macdonald et al., 2010). The other is popular geopolitics, which focuses on “the expression of geopolitical power through popular culture and everyday life rather than through channels of ruling elites” (Macdonald et al., 2010, p. 13). The scholarship on geopolitics and visuality argues that visuals are important because “contemporary geopolitical reasoning often relies on a presentation of visual evidence” (Macdonald et al., 2010, p. 4). Furthermore, this literature raises questions about how visuality works, to what end, and with what consequences. As expressed by Campbell (2007, p. 379), for example, the key issue with images is “not one of accuracy and appropriateness. It is a question of what they do, how they function, and the impact of this operation”. This paper extends these insights and questions into the realm of climate change communication and visualisation, beginning here with an overview of how cartoons work theoretically as a visual form. Cartoons may be read through popular geopolitics (Dodds, 2010; O’Tuathail & Dalby, 1998) and as forms of geopolitical iconography (Dodds, 1998). They have been defined as: a type of symbol (Diamond, 2002; El Refaie, 2009); a form of visual news (Greenberg, 2002); a kind of visual communication (Harrison, 1982, pp. 1e3; Ridanpaa, 2009); a sort of cultural history (Clough, 1982, pp. 1e3); a form of political satire and social commentary (Kleeman, 2006) and a mode of expression (El Refaie, 2003). Despite the definitional differences, there is a general sense that cartoons are a form of visual expression and communication. The description of cartoons as a “distinctive form of artistic expression” (Kleeman, 2006, p. 144) begs the question of what

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

makes them different from other artistic visual forms such as paintings. A classic study of “the cartoon code” by Harrison (1982, pp. 1e3) highlights three processes of communication, namely levelling (or simplification), sharpening (of personal features) and exaggeration. Dodds (2010, p. 6) mentions “condensation, repetition, dramatisation, exaggeration and the caricature of leading personalities”. Other cartoon processes are personification (of objects) or anthropomorphism (e.g. the planets as people in Fig. 1), objectification, analogy, and domestication or familiarisation. Cartoons also use symbols or visual metaphors. The term ‘geopolitical iconography’ refers to those designed “to represent international political events” (Dodds, 1998, p. 171). Metaphors are used more generally to represent invisible concepts (El Refaie, 2010). Take for example smoothness, a concept discussed by cartoonist Steve Bell (in Slattery, 2010, p. 1) to explain some notable drawings of David Cameron, the current UK Prime Minister: “When I first drew David Cameron at a party conference I saw smoothness and a distinct air of plausibility. He was going to cut the deficit, not the NHS [National Health Service]. Total moral opportunism combined with a complete, engorged and erectile sense of his own responsibility. Thus it was that the condom unrolled over his smooth head. It seemed so perfect and so apt, to me at least, and so after some initial opposition, I elected to run with it”. Imaginative symbols and metaphors thus enable the cartoon visualisation of concepts that e like climate change e are invisible. Furthermore, cartoons can construct fantasy scenarios and imaginary worlds through the “metaphorical combination of the real and the imaginary” (El Refaie, 2009, p. 186). This means that cartoons have rich potential as geopolitical texts even if they fail to provide visual evidence of climate change. Cartoonists sometimes rely on written text to get their messages across. Harrison (1982, p. 2) describes “the thought balloon or the speech balloon” as “the stars of cartoon symbolism”. Kleeman (2006, p. 150) further notes that cartoonists might use captions to support “the cartoon’s non-verbal elements”. As shown in part three, however, cartoons can convey geopolitical messages without any words at all (not even a title in some cases). So while writing can be useful it does not define the cartoon form in the same way as symbols, metaphors, and the cartoon code. Nor does writing define the cartoon as a text, i.e. as a form of discourse as opposed to simply an amusing or entertaining form of artistic expression. Cartoons, put simply, can be storytellers without words. Concerning political cartoons in particular, there is a general association of these with both location in print media and political content. Kleeman (2006, p. 144) notes that the term ‘cartoon’ has been used historically “to denote a humorous or satirical illustration published in newspapers and magazines”. Similarly El Refaie (2009, pp. 184e185) defines a political cartoon as “an illustration, usually in a single panel, published on the editorial or comments pages of a newspaper”. These are cartoons that “address a current political issue or event, a social trend, or a famous personality, in a way that takes a stand or presents a particular point of view”. Studies of the cartoons published originally in print media reflect that association between political content and location. For some, the type of newspaper is central (Diamond, 2002) whereas for others it is particular cartoonists. Englishman Steve Bell has been discussed by Plumb (2004), Dodds (1996, 1998, 2007) and Engelen, Hendrikse, Mamadouh, and Sidaway (2011); the Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali by Najjar (2007); and South African Jonathan Shapiro (pen-name Zapiro) by Bal, Pitt, Berthon, and DesAutels (2009), Daniels (2010), Dodds (2010), Hammett (2010), Hart (2006) and Koelble and Robins (2007).

483

I would argue, however, that location does not define a political cartoon (any more than a speech balloon defines a cartoon per se). Popular newspapers can make cartoons widely accessible, but so too can other media and cyberspace. Studies of the global furore generated by twelve cartoon depictions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad that were first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten demonstrate the potency of the Internet as a vehicle for dissemination (Muller, Ozcan, & Seizov, 2009; Ridanpaa, 2009). Those Danish cartoons further attest to the “global conflict potential of visuals” (Muller et al., 2009, p. 28) and the destructive potential of ‘black’ humour (Ridanpaa, 2009). Other controversial images, such as Zapiro’s series of cartoons of South African President Jacob Zuma as a rapist,1 further illustrate the potential to cause outrage and offence. However, the same is true of commercial ‘shockvertizing’ images (see for example Ash, 2008) which use shock-value in advertisements but are not inherently political. So while some degree of humour (through parody, satire or caricature) can raise awareness and draw attention to “politically serious matters” (Ridanpaa, 2009, pp. 729e733), cartoons are not necessarily funny. As ways to raise awareness and/or move viewers to action, political cartoons can run the gamut from deliberate provocation or shock to gentle persuasion. The content is thus of greatest significance in identifying political cartoons. As El Refaie (2009) suggests, political cartoons are those that address a political issue in a particular way e by sending a message, taking a stand or presenting a viewpoint. Cartoons can lampoon politicians and highlight their hypocrisy (Ridanpaa, 2009); they can provide political commentary and critique (Dodds, 1996, 1998, 2007, 2010; El Refaie, 2009); and they can offer “resistance to the abuses and excesses of power” (Hammett, 2010, p. 89). Key political themes are therefore exposure, commentary and critique. To qualify as geopolitical as well, political cartoons must also contain a spatial or scalar dimension. The Apollo space image of an earthly globe or sphere is an obvious example. It is such an iconic representation of global space (as shown by Cosgrove, 1994, 2001) that it often either features in, or is used to promote, documentary films about the global environment such as An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and The 11th Hour (2007).2 Spatial scales can also be represented through absence as well as presence (i.e. the absence of national or cultural symbols to connote global space) and through metaphors or analogies. For example Dodds (1998) shows how an image of fenced-in domestic gardens has been used by Steve Bell to signify nation-states in international space. In sum, political cartoons are a form of visual discourse and communication. They are not defined by either location in newspapers or the unity of image and text. All cartoons work through their own communicative codes as well as imaginative symbols and visual metaphors. Political cartoons are those that suggest a particular perspective, point of view or commentary on a topical issue, event or trend. While they do not necessarily have to appear in popular newspapers, they do emerge in particular contexts. Context inevitably shapes not only the subject matter of cartoons but also the capacity of viewers or ‘readers’ to understand their content and interpret their messages. In the third part I draw on these insights to structure the analysis of Earthworks cartoons. Before then, it is important to note the analytical challenges posed by engagement with cartoons e the very strengths of which can also be weaknesses. A virtue of cartoons is their ability “to present often complex issues, events and social trends in a simplified and accessible form” (Kleeman, 2006, p. 145). At the same time, the cartoon code risks oversimplification in addition to unfair caricature and racist or sexist stereotyping (Harrison, 1982, pp. 1e3). Cartoons’ visual languages, furthermore, can be ambiguous or culturally opaque.

484

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

Understanding of meaning requires familiarity with the cartoon genre as well as the cartoonist’s subject matter and cultural symbols. Some experience of analytical thinking is also a bonus. Interpreting cartoons is thus “a complex process that requires people to draw on a whole range of different literacies” (El Refaie, 2009, p. 181). In order to meet that interpretive challenge, I draw in the third part on the cartoons literature reviewed here (which provides the required familiarity with the cartoon genre) and on a variety of writings about climate change reviewed in what follows (which provide the necessary subject-specific knowledge). I also draw, where relevant, on associated media coverage to highlight the context in which the cartoons (and my own interpretation of their messages) have emerged.

Geopolitics and visuality in climate change communication Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree about Climate Change argues that climate change communication frames the subject in particular ways. He identifies six different framings of climate change, each of which has appeal for particular audiences (Hulme, 2009; see also Boykoff, 2008). Julie Doyle’s Mediating Climate Change highlights three key frames, namely environmental, neo-liberal consumerist, and humanitarian (Doyle, 2011). Other authors concentrate on a couple of narrative frames. Dittmer, Moisio, Ingram, and Dodds (2011) argue that climate change debates are dominated by neo-realist and liberal discourses, while Manzo (2010a, 2010b) contrasts a so-called whole earth discourse of global unity, fragility and vulnerability to a development/humanitarian frame.

Academics have thus identified a number of discursive frames around climate change, which are summarised in a typology below. Seemingly duplicate or overlapping discourses have been grouped together (e.g. liberalism, neo-liberal consumerism, money) leaving six frames of reference in total. Table 1 demonstrates why climate change is so contested and political e even among those who accept it is a reality and a problem. Differences in the ways in which climate change is envisioned help to explain disagreements and debates. Equally apparent is the indebtedness of all climate change frames to visuality. They are reliant not only on particular images; they are also dependent on dominant visual forms (such as maps and photographs) to convey a message that climate change is real because it is visible. This truth claim owes a debt to both the “positivist origins of photography” (Macdonald et al., 2010, p. 2) and to modern Western scientific knowledge, which helps construct climate change as real and lends authority to climate science. Invisibility and latency (i.e. time lags between causes and effects) mean that climate change cannot be deduced from a solitary photograph. As the photojournalist and artist, Nick Cobbing has argued, “from looking at a single image you don’t know if a glacier is melting or receding, or even that there is a problem. You can’t show the catastrophe without comparative images and text to bring it into context” (Cobbing, quoted in Smyth, 2007, p. 32). Comparative visualisation and text (for example two photographs of the same glacier side-by-side, with accompanying dates to indicate different time periods) is thus more effective than a single image as evidence that climate change is a reality and a problem. Such comparative images are also conducive to the catastrophe frame, as the quote from Cobbing suggests. However, like other

Table 1 A typology of climate change frames. Climate change frame

Key themes and core values

Visual forms and iconic images

Key audiences

Scientific Science/scientific uncertainty (Boykoff, 2008; Doyle, 2011; Hulme, 2009; Nerlich, 2010) Neo-realist Neo-realism (Dittmer et al., 2011) National security (Hulme, 2009) Political action/policy (Boykoff, 2008) Neo-liberal Liberalism (Dittmer et al., 2011) Neo-liberal consumerism (Doyle, 2011) Money (Hulme, 2009) Environmentalist Environmentalism (Doyle, 2011) The polar bear (Hulme, 2009) Whole earth (Manzo, 2010a, 2010b) Humanitarian Development/humanitarian (Doyle, 2011; Manzo, 2010a, 2010b) Justice and equity (Hulme, 2009) Catastrophe Catastrophe (Hulme, 2009) Fear and disaster (Boykoff, 2008)

Global warming, anthropogenic climate change, nature; truth, prediction, rationality, control of nature

Charts, tables, graphs, computer-simulated maps e of world temperatures, global greenhouse gas emissions

Scientists, the media/sceptics, denialists, those adverse to change

Threat, conflict, danger, risk, anarchy, resource competition; security, national control, sovereignty

Maps, surveys, videos, photographs e of melting glaciers/polar regions, carbon emissions

Politicians, tabloid journalists

Consumption, markets, opportunity, promise; multilateralism, individualism, free market capitalism, consumerism

Videos and photographs e of renewable and non-carbon energy sources (wind farms, solar panels, nuclear power, bio-fuels), recycling, energy-efficient products (lightbulbs, boilers)

Politicians, the private sector, consumers open to small changes in habits and lifestyles

Threat, danger, risk, vulnerability, fragility, unity; nature conservation and protection, sustainability, interdependence, global cooperation

Maps, globes, surveys, videos, photographs e of melting glaciers/polar regions, Arctic animals (polar bears, penguins), plant species (trees, flowers), Earth from space, people (in floodwater, on parched land, on glaciers)

Environmentalists, wildlife lovers, those who perceive climate change as a universal/equal threat

Vulnerability, inequality, human suffering; justice, equity, fairness, rights, solidarity

Photographs and videos e of people (refugees, women, as above but mainly in the global south, climate action campaigners)

NGOs and their supporters, those with strong ethical leanings, citizens

Disaster, apocalypse, death, depletion, loss, self-destruction, urgency; salvation

Photographs and videos e of extreme weather (floods, droughts, hurricanes), damage to buildings, dead plants and animals, pollution, Polar regions, Earth from space

“Those who are worried about the future” (Hulme, 2009, p.: 229), readers of UK tabloids

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

common visualisations of catastrophe (such as pictures of floods or drought) such images are not actually of climate change itself. They are metaphorical representations of its symptoms and purported effects. Textual identification of the probable causes of climate change also conventionally relies on visual imagery. For example, a banner newspaper headline: “Worst ever CO2 emissions leave climate on the brink”, was accompanied by a photograph of smoking factory chimneys and a caption linking economic recession to rising emissions and unsafe levels of global warming (Harvey, 2011, p. 1). Last but not least, climate change visualisation embraces “possible cures” such as solar panels and energy-efficient light bulbs, the invisible concepts here being renewable energy and (more broadly) climate change mitigation (Schmidt & Wolfe, 2009, p. 211; Slocum, 2004). Further illustrations are “designed to give an indication of what adaptation solutions might look like”, such as the UK government’s computer-generated “future worlds images” of urban and rural environments circa 2030 (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs [Defra], 2011, p. 1). This brief overview illustrates the reliance of all six climate change discourses on visual technologies and practices, in ways that are frequently paradoxical. Firstly, research by Whitmarsh (2009) in the UK suggests that the most common sources of information about climate change/global warming are visual mass media, i.e. television and newspapers. Whilst recognition of abstract terms is found to be widespread, the study detects generally “low levels of both understanding and engagement among the public” in respect of climate change issues (Whitmarsh, 2009, p. 417). Although that paper’s findings are based on only a limited survey in one English city (i.e. Portsmouth), it is important here for two reasons. Firstly, it draws a distinction between ‘understanding’ in the restrictive or limited sense of factual knowledge of physical processes and a fuller understanding of climate change that recognises its integration “with other environmental issues (notably ozone depletion and air pollution) as part of a moral and cultural discourse involving issues of responsibility, trust and social justice” (Whitmarsh, 2009, p. 415). It is that fuller sense of understanding with which this paper is also concerned. Secondly, restricted public understanding is attributed to the media itself e its limited capacity “to effectively communicate complex information to diverse audiences” e and also to public mistrust of the media (Whitmarsh, 2009, p. 417). Around half of the respondents in the study agreed that popular media are “often too alarmist about issues like climate change/global warming” and therefore less trustworthy sources than scientists (Whitmarsh, 2009, p. 411). This shows that alarmist images of threat, danger, and so on are paradoxical in simultaneously raising awareness and mistrust, concern about and superficial understanding of climate change. Cobbing’s observation that “climate change is a very complex problem and in a sense is not photographic” (quoted in Smyth, 2007, p. 32) suggests that photographs themselves (and not just alarmist images) are not the best communicators of complex messages about climate change. It is therefore paradoxical that photography is the dominant visual form of climate change communication. Photographs often accompany or promote other visual forms, such as climate change art (Miles, 2010) and documentary films. They also help to picture climate science, along with graphic visuals such as maps and charts (see for example Schmidt & Wolfe, 2009). While the camera lens can certainly make climate change seem real, as already indicated, its capacity to visualise temporal complexity (for example, the relationship between present behaviour and future climate change) has also been open to question. Nicholson-Cole (2005, p. 259), for instance, prefers

485

computer simulations as they “enable people to think about climate change futures in relation to present activities of many kinds”. A fitting illustration of this would be Defra’s aforementioned computer-generated images of wholesome English landscapes, which contrast starkly to the catastrophe images so prevalent in popular media. The third paradox is the one identified by Doyle (2011). She argues that it has been difficult for scientists and environmentalists to communicate the reality of present and future climate change without supporting visual evidence. And yet “the very concept of visual ‘evidence’ supports scientific knowledge systems which have figured the environment as a visible nature, making it difficult to communicate the inherent invisibility of climate change, or the temporal disjuncture between its causes and effects” (Doyle, 2011, p. 31). Of particular relevance to this paper is the fourth paradox, which is that certain visualisations can make climate change real and visible while leaving the geopolitics of climate change invisible. Concerns about the lack of a particular kind of visibility are suggested by the growing calls to envision climate change as a pressing “global justice problem” (Barnett, 2007, p. 1363) and to “acknowledge the power relations underpinning the various framings and actions on climate change” (Doyle, 2011, p. 78; see also Boykoff, 2008). These calls extend to campaigns run by development/ humanitarian NGOs such as Oxfam and Christian Aid, which have both adopted the slogan ‘people not polar bears’ in the UK (Manzo, 2010a). Their intention is to link climate change to current uneven development and injustice and to challenge four other frames, i.e. neo-realism (with its emphasis on national security), environmentalism (the iconography of the polar bear to symbolise global warming), the catastrophe frame’s preoccupation with the future, and the neo-liberal frame that appeals to private sector forces such as “carbon entrepreneurs seeking to make money through new commodity markets” (Hulme, 2009, p. 229). A number of related academic studies address the geopolitical consequences of prevalent images and forms. Critical questions have been raised about a broad range of issues, notably the appropriateness of iconic images in specific contexts (Bravo, 2009; Slocum, 2004), their impact on different viewers (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009), the geopolitical interventions they enable (Dittmer et al., 2011), the colonial visions they can unwittingly reproduce (Manzo, 2010a) and the range of possible visualisations they foreclose (Doyle, 2011). Doyle (2011) exemplifies all these types of critique. An academic and one-time Greenpeace campaigner, she embraces the core values of the humanitarian frame (as well as a vegan lifestyle) in opposition to neo-liberal consumerism and environmentalism. She also critiques the diffusion from Western science into popular media and environmental movements of enlightenment conceptions of nature, vision and time. In her words, conceptions of the environment as a “non-human” world problematically separate nature from culture, envisioning the former “as a series of externalised objects, separate from humans and their social values/ structures” (Doyle, 2011, p. 21). The dualisms of nature/culture, subject/object, human/animal and person/property are integral to “the rationalising and objective logic of scientific knowledge [that] represents nature, the body and emotion as feminised spaces, to be controlled through the ‘mastery’ of science and technology” (Doyle, 2011, p. 22). These dualisms have thus contributed to climate change by facilitating modern conceptions of nature as an economic commodity. Concerning time, a sense of urgency is pervasive in media coverage of climate change. Google alone provided “about 74,400,000 results” when the phrase ‘time is running out on climate change’ was entered into the search engine in May 2012.

486

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

The conception of time itself as a finite commodity is also indicative of enlightenment thought. Doyle (2011, p. 25) notes how often urgent appeals for action before it is too late make reference “to time frames, including clock/calendar time, historical time (such as era/epoch) and past, present and future time”. Her analysis recalls the philosophy of Ricoeur (1988, p. 44), who links so-called ordinary time to a modern, dialectical relation between subjectivity and objectivity. He contrasts the subjective “phenomenology of internal time-consciousness” to the “structure of objective time” associated with clocks. In Doyle’s analysis, by contrast, the main distinction is between “clock/machine time” and “organic environmental time [that] is rhythmic, cyclical and interconnected” (Doyle, 2011, p. 25). The link to Ricoeur is the concept of objectivity. Doyle (2011, p. 25) faults clock time’s dependence upon linear perspective, which turns time into a decontextualised, objective, singular, quantifiable, finite and fixed commodity that is “isolated from the processes of life”. In sum, key issues in climate change communication link to a broader literature on geopolitics and visuality through two overarching concerns. One is the question of how visuality works in relation to climate change frames. Of particular concern is the issue of efficacy e the extent to which visuals can facilitate understanding of climate change without shoring up objectionable ways of seeing and thinking. The other concern is that of effect, i.e. the consequences that follow from envisioning climate change in particular ways. Using the insights gained from secondary reading, part three takes up these concerns in exploring the possible contributions of political cartoons. Recalling the earlier quote from Campbell (2007), the key issue explored below is not whether cartoons are accurate depictions of the reality of climate change but rather how they function as visual commentaries on the geopolitics of climate change, and with what consequence.

Earthworks: visual methods and climate change cartoons “The jury had a near-impossible task choosing the three winners but made their choice, ultimately, on the basis of the clarity and shock-value of the message.The judges felt the winning cartoons sent a message that could be understood internationally, across cultural, religious or political barriers and boundaries” (Ken Sprague Fund, 2008, p. 1) Print media is a source of many political cartoons. A keyword search of the British Cartoon Archive (BCA) online, which catalogues all cartoons first published in UK newspapers since 1904, uncovered few under the search term ‘climate change’. However, dozens appeared when the tagline was changed to ‘global warming’, demonstrating an interest in the issue (since the mid-1990s in particular) among UK-based professional cartoonists.3 Global warming has also been of interest to the London-based Ken Sprague Fund (KSF), which was established in memory of the late Ken Sprague after his death in 2004. The KSF is dedicated to the artistic furtherance of Ken Sprague’s political commitments, which included social justice and environmental protection. An ongoing initiative is a biennial international political cartoon competition, which attracts worldwide entries thanks to publicity by many national cartoon associations. Under the title Earthworks, the 2008 competition invited submissions “on the theme of global warming and our threatened environment” (Ken Sprague Fund, 2008, p. 1). It attracted more than three hundred entrants from fifty-five countries e the majority of whom were reportedly “from less developed countries e those most likely to be affected by climate change” (Geographical Magazine, 2008).

The decision to analyse the entries to Earthworks (and not the cartoons in the BCA) was taken for three reasons. Firstly, the competition garnered international coverage and interest due in part to initial media attention in the UK. One of its promoters was the New Internationalist (NE), a co-operatively run magazine that “campaigns for social and environmental justice worldwide” (New Internationalist, 2012). The NE featured the results of the Earthworks competition (New Internationalist, 2008, pp. 30e31) as did two of Britain’s national daily newspapers, namely the Independent (Green, 2008) and the Guardian (Adam, 2008). The competition was further mentioned on Internet blogs and websites (Caricaturque, 2007; Forbidden Planet, 2007; Geographical Magazine, 2008; Nature, 2008) and by multi-national alliances such as International Climate Challenge (undated). A year later the British Council (2009a, 2009b) teamed up with the KSF and ran two more cartoon contests on climate change e one in India and one in Sri Lanka. Publicity for these was generated by One World South Asia (2009) and the Sri Lanka-based Window to Nature (2010). Earthworks thus highlights another role for newspapers in regards to cartoons; they can offer publicity for as well as publication within. Secondly, the spatial (global) dimension of the competition is of interest considering recent discussions of climate change spatialities. Brace and Geoghegan (2010, p. 292) suggest that futureoriented climate change discourse might “benefit from being grounded locally rather than spatially orientated towards distant places and faraway lands”. This is supported by aforementioned research in the UK that suggests “concern about local environmental issues is generally higher than concern about global issues” (Whitmarsh, 2009, p. 413, emphasis in the original). By contrast, Devine-Wright (2012) argues that “place attachment in a climate changed world” requires “polyscalar attachments” that are global as well as local. He recommends asking what scalar terms like ‘global’ mean to people in relation to climate change e which is essentially what the Earthworks competition asked of contestants. The cartoons thus provide an opportunity to explore how a familiar concept like ‘global warming’ is imagined and given meaning in different national contexts. Finally, the paper expects representational variability because six different framings of climate change were identified earlier. Capturing diversity and difference (as well as commonalities and overlaps) requires a reasonably large data set. This third consideration motivated quantitative analysis of the sum total of entries submitted to Earthworks.4 On request, the KSF provided a memory stick containing over 340 cartoons, which are discussed in detail in the remainder of the paper. The volume of available cartoons, as well as relevant writings on geopolitics and visuality (Campbell, 2007) and visual methods (Rose, 2001) suggested visual content analysis as a suitable method. As explained by Gillian Rose, “the meanings of an image or set of images are made at three sites: the site of production, the image itself, and its audiencing” (Rose, 2001, p. 32). Although my focus in this part is at the site of the image, it is based on interactions with students in the UK and Malaysia (as noted in the acknowledgements) as well as my own insights. I address the ‘audiencing’ issue more fully in the conclusion. Once a large collection of visuals has been assembled, “the next stage is to devise a set of categories for coding the images” (Rose, 2001, p. 59). Such categories can be either “descriptive or interpretive”, i.e. they record “only what is ‘really’ there in the text or image” (Rose, 2001, p. 59), or else they classify in accordance with theoretical concerns and subject-specific concepts (see for example Lutz & Collins, 1993). This paper combines both approaches to categorisation. An initial coding scheme was devised based on competition themes and on key concepts in the literature reviewed

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

in part two. A number of sub-themes suggested by visual discourse analysis of the cartoons themselves5 were then added. Once a coding category has been devised “each image must be carefully examined and all the relevant codes attached to it” (Rose, 2001, p. 63). The word all is important because although coding categories must be mutually exclusive and not overlap, images themselves are often inclusive and multi-faceted. This is certainly to be expected with climate change cartoons, given the complexity of the subject matter and the various ways in which it has been framed. Many of the Earthworks cartoons were indeed the recipients of multiple codes, as demonstrated in the sections to follow. The paper now turns to the cartoons. Each section includes a tabular overview of the content analysis; a selection of exemplary cartoons; and a visual discourse analysis in light of the research question and aims. Apollo’s eye? Global space, future worlds “As the Earth warms the snow and ice that make the Arctic bright will melt.The Arctic, north of the Arctic circle at 66 degrees North, represents only 4 percent of the Earth’s surface, but it carries with it the significance of acting as the Earth’s air conditioner, keeping the planet cool” (Pfirman, 2009, pp. 45e 46) A number of audience studies show that although the two terms are often used interchangeably in the media, ‘global warming’ has greater emotional resonance with focus groups than ‘climate change’ (PIRC, 2010: 10). According to Whitmarsh (2009, p. 416) there is a greater association of ‘global warming’ with human activity and ‘climate change’ with natural variation. Warming raises greater concerns because it is attributed to anthropogenic causes and also “because it suggests a clear direction of change towards increasing temperatures while the implications of ‘climate change’ are more ambiguous” (emphasis in the original). The term ‘global warming’ is not a synonym for ‘climate change’ though but a symptom, along with Arctic melt, sea level rise, extreme weather, and biodiversity loss (Schmidt & Wolfe, 2009). Although analytically distinguishable these symptoms typically intersect, as demonstrated in the quote above. A single code was therefore devised to cover all these phenomena, namely ‘global warming and other symptoms of climate change’. As shown in

487

Table 2, almost a third of the 343 Earthworks cartoons qualified for this particular code. Regardless of its emotional credentials, global warming is a spatial concept in a way that climate change is not. Typical representations of global space are world maps and spherical globes, although these are not the only options. Cosgrove (2008, p. 1862) argues that the “globalisation of environmental concerns and images” has “shifted nature’s icons from landscape towards living species and from a temperate to a tropical and polar geography”. This means that while polar Arctic regions have specific meaning for their indigenous Inuit and Cree peoples (Bravo, 2009), for others they are also key signifiers of “a global geography of apocalypse” along with “Whole Earth images” that denote “the planet as a vulnerable living organism” (Cosgrove, 2008, pp. 1873e1874). ‘Whole earth’ and ‘future apocalypse’ are therefore the other sub-themes used to code the Earthworks cartoons. Since temporal concepts such as ‘impending’ and ‘approaching’ often attach to the apocalyptic catastrophe frame (Hulme, 2009) the qualifier future is possibly redundant. Its inclusion is in recognition of the aforementioned ‘people not polar bears’ campaigns, which challenge the “futurity” of apocalyptic scenarios (Brace & Geoghegan, 2010, p. 290). A glance down the columns in Table 2 that are headed ‘indicative categories’ and ‘evocative images’ recalls the standard repertoire of iconic images of climate change presented in Table 1. These two columns summarise the subject-specific content of Earthworks cartoons while the one headed ‘icons, symbols and metaphors’ relates to the cartoon codes discussed in part one. The following examples demonstrate how archetypical cartoon processes such as personification, objectification and metaphor can produce diverse geopolitical visions. Like other exemplars of the environmentalist frame, Fig. 2 denotes a vulnerable living organism. The presence of a stork with an empty sling suggests frustrated motherhood or infertility and, more broadly, the feminisation of nature. The replacement of smooth skin with the cracked earth symbolism of extreme weather (itself a common signifier of global warming) further implies a now barren Mother Earth. Cartoons can be ambiguous, as already mentioned, and Fig. 2 is so in at least two ways. Firstly, the absence of a familiar signifier like a globe makes spatial scale harder to determine. My reading of Fig. 2 as global space relates to context, conventional usage, and

Table 2 Global visions, global warming. Sub-themes

Indicative categories

Evocative images

Icons, symbols and metaphors

Whole earth (102)

Planet earth

Globes and spheres, maps

Global warming and other symptoms of climate change (112)

Melting polar ice caps

Ice cap islands, arctic animals, igloos

Extreme weather (floods, drought, tornadoes)

Submerged vehicles and buildings, boats; desert sand, cracked earth, dry river beds, dead fish; swirling clouds Hot maps, hot planet earth

Personification (of the earth, of buildings), objectification (of the earth), Christian iconography (Adam and Eve) Stranded arctic animals, igloos and palm trees, melting snowmen and ice-cubes Christian iconography (Noah’s ark, arks), personification (of cracked earth), the earth squeezed, fish without water, droplets

Heat

Future apocalypse (58)

Rising sea levels Impending disaster and death

The sea Planetary death/destruction Human and species death and extinction

Suicide/murder Time running out

Egg timers, bombs

Personification (of the earth), objectification (of the earth), coloured maps, sunny skies Pushing back the tide, tidal waves Objectification (of the earth, the ozone layer), help signs, Christian iconography (angels, crosses) Christian iconography (crucifixion, crosses, the grim reaper), skulls, skeletons, graves; aestheticisation (of nature), animal carcasses, lone flowers/trees/birds, protected trees, a brick scarecrow Personification (of the earth, of nature), thought or speech balloons Sands of time, time bombs

488

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

Fig. 2. Untitled. Serpilkar Nemrut, Turkey. Fig. 3. “Ampulheta”. Sidnei Marques, Brazil.

absence. The cartoon was produced within the context of the competition guidelines, which make the global scale explicit. Mother Earth is also a common allegory for global space, as in the draft text produced at the UN’s international climate talks held in Durban, South Africa in December 2011. This asked for recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth.6 Finally, there are no signs of any other scale in Fig. 2. These three factors suggest reading this cartoon as an unusual rendition of a ‘whole earth’ discourse of global fragility and vulnerability. The second ambiguity concerns gender. The Mother Earth image recalls critiques of how Western enlightenment science has represented nature as a feminised space for the purposes of mastery and control (Doyle, 2011). That critical element cannot easily be read into Fig. 2, however, in the absence of signifiers of science and technology, mastery and control. Overall then, the cartoon seems to sit within the environmentalist frame without offering either a temporal element or a clear critique of other frames. Planet earth reappears in Fig. 3, but this time as a disposable object. Ampulheta is Portuguese for an hour glass-shaped sand timer (which also featured in seven other Earthworks cartoons) so there is an explicit referent in the title to time. Metaphorically, the placement of the human being atop the sand timer implies that the subject is (or perceives himself to be) outside of time. This is apparently because he is both inattentive to global change and as yet unscathed by it e the global South having hit the garbage can before the North. The financial symbols could be read as either representations of global currencies or as attributes of western societies (like the man’s clothing). Either way, the message of “Ampulheta” is that time is running out to save the planet from the destruction caused by human blindness, inaction, greed and

consumerist lifestyles. “Ampulheta” thus offers a clear critique of the neo-liberal ‘money’ frame, suggesting it is part of the problem and not a solution to global warming. Although Fig. 3 can be read as political critique, it does not effectively challenge enlightenment conceptions of time, space and power. Temporality is imagined as ordinary time, i.e. as an objective phenomenon or finite commodity that can ‘run out’ (Doyle, 2011; Ricoeur, 1988). Furthermore, the clearly drawn boundary between the human figure and the planet (i.e. the top of the sand timer) is paradoxical. While it could be read as a critique of enlightenment visions of nature as a disposable commodity spatially separate from humans, it also seems to re-inscribe a problematic boundary between nature and culture. This highlights again how cartoon analysis can produce different interpretations; the distinction between presentation and critique of a particular perspective is not always clear to the viewer. The final cartoon highlighted here is in Fig. 4 below. “Futuro” brings both global warming (the sun) and extreme weather (drought, symbolised again as cracked earth) into its apocalyptic vision of the future. Another contrast to Figs. 2 and 3 is in the use of numbers to signify time as a combination of both ordinary time and organic environmental time. Consistent with the former, time is both binary/historical (present/future) and linear (with three imagined stages in this case). Consistent with the latter is the message that humanity e although last onto the podium e is an integral part of an earthly biosphere and thus inextricably linked to species death and extinction. The cartoon recalls the argument that: “the effects of climate change are first felt by species more sensitive to biosphere changes than are humans.and those effects

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

Fig. 4. “Futuro”. Omar Zevallos, Peru.

are currently invisible to most people” (Slocum, 2004, pp. 420e 421). “Futuro” therefore offers a way to imagine not only future catastrophe but also species interconnectedness and an ultimately common (if sequential) fate.

Anthropocentrism: attributing blame, envisioning threat “Charting carbon dioxide is now fundamental to plotting climate narratives, whereas blaming shorter term agents like George W. Bush is not” (Daniels & Endfield, 2009, p. 217) “The blame for anthropogenic climate change and greenhouse gas emissions has been variously assigned to the global collective, to nation states, to economic sectors and to individuals” (Liverman, 2009, p. 288) The quotes above indicate how blame is an important concept often related to the competition theme of environmental threat.

489

This section therefore explores various geopolitical visions of blame and threat in Earthworks cartoons. Carbon and emissions are frequently intertwined in anthropogenic climate change narratives. The first sub-themes included in Table 3 were therefore ‘carbon emissions and contamination’ and ‘carbon transport systems’. ‘Carbon alternatives’ relates to “the latest development discourse as entrepreneurs and environmental groups approach local communities with projects for carbon sequestration and energy alternatives” (Liverman, 2009, p. 293). This trend suggests a synthesis of the neo-liberal ‘money’ frame and the humanitarian ‘justice and equity’ frame. The first three columns of Table 3 show how so-called “high carbon systems” (Dennis & Urry, 2009, p. 6) are envisioned in relation to threat. Sixty of the Earthworks cartoons qualify for that code. Industrialisation, air travel and car ownership are global threats in the sense that these processes are worldwide in scope and produce global effects. The development of high carbon systems is still spatially uneven, however, and the sorts of “‘luxury’ emissions” generated by products like “large cars” are not universal (Liverman, 2009, p. 289). The second biggest sub-theme is natural resource depletion. Fig. 5 below was one of the thirty-four entries devoted to deforestation. The majority of these used axes and tree stumps to signify destruction of nature and the invisible concept of disappearance. They also reflected to some extent “the country of origin and its climatic issues”, with Brazilian cartoonists, for example, depicting “the loss of the Amazonian forest” (Alter, 2008, p. 1). National context therefore does shape geopolitical visions and the production of meaning about climate change. What “Adam-Eva” shows, however, is how cartoons can convey meaning across national boundaries using internationally recognised visual languages and metaphors. As one of eighteen cartoons that put Christian iconography to work, “Adam-Eva” recalls arguments about the prevalence of religious metaphors in wider debates about climate change. Beyond the concept of Apocalypse itself (with its implicit gestures towards the biblical Book of Revelation), “providential narratives of the Bible” had “a strong currency” in eighteenth-century discourses on

Table 3 Anthropogenic visions of danger and threat. Sub-themes

Indicative categories

Evocative images

Icons, symbols and metaphors

Carbon emissions and contamination (41)

Industrial pollution

Factories and chimneys, air pollution/acid rain

Ocean/river pollution and contamination

Fish, shorelines, factories and pipelines, an oil-soaked mermaid

Carbon transport systems (11) Carbon alternatives (8)

Vehicular travel and infrastructure; air travel Nuclear power, bio-fuel cultivation/bio energy

Consumption and human waste (14) Militarism and space travel (6) Natural resource depletion (34)

Consumer waste, disposability, waste matter Infantry, air forces, nuclear weapons; moon travel Deforestation

Car/cars against nature; petrol stations; civilian aircraft; roads Power plants, dark clouds; agro-fuel or bio-fuel pumps, deforested land for bio-fuel cultivation Garbage bins, disposed-of objects, squashed objects, lavatories Soldiers, military aircraft/rockets/helmets; USA on the moon Tree stumps, axes and chainsaws, heavy machinery and vehicles, forest fire, scissors

Personification (of industry), objectification (of the earth), gas masks, smog, a building as a sword, carbon footprints, Christian iconography (Adam and Eve, an angel), thought or speech balloons Personification (of fish), disposable items as fish food, a solid river, Christian iconography (Jesus Christ) Cars as humans or dogs, a car in a flood

Nation-states (9)

Particular countries

National symbols Identifiable politicians

Human failing/ self-destruction (10)

Stupidity, indifference, imprudence, craziness, greed, violence against nature

Self-inflicted amputations, a sinking lifeboat, cockroaches

Personification (of a mushroom cloud), the nuclear power plant symbol, thought or speech balloons Objectification (of the earth, of nature), Christian iconography (angels) Personification (of the earth), objectification (of the earth) Personification (of the earth, of trees), objectification (of trees), Christian iconography (Adam and Eve), thought balloons The US dollar, the US flag, Uncle Sam Personification (of states), caricature (of politicians), thought or speech balloons Personification (of man, of nature), objectification (of man, of nature), thought or speech balloons

490

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

Fig. 5. “Adam-Eva”. Musagumus, Turkey.

Fig. 6. “Stask [sic] up against”. Zhang Bin, China.

climate and weather (Daniels & Endfield, 2009, p. 220). More recently the “Genesis myth of Babel” has been linked to ideas of god-like climate control through geo-engineering and conquest (Hulme, 2009, pp. 348e349). Amongst climate change sceptics as well, Brigitte Nerlich found a politically paralysing “paradoxical mixture of religious metaphors and demands for ‘better science’” (Nerlich, 2010, p. 419). A clear message of “Adam-Eva” is that humanity’s earthly paradise has been ruined and stripped of its bounty. Where the cartoon is ambiguous is in its attribution of blame e suggesting either human failing (as in the original Genesis story about banishment from the Garden of Eden) or unseen forces at work. “Stask [sic] up against” (which I take to mean ‘stacked up against’) in Fig. 6 uses the cartoon device of personification but this time (unlike in Figs. 1 and 2) to represent an adversarial relationship between industrial man and the animal world. The differential sizing of the figures connotes an unequal fight between culture/ nature and self/other, while the globe underneath signifies a worldwide spatiality. Although the suggestion of species relations echoes Fig. 4, the “Futuro” vision of sequential death and eventual Apocalypse is no longer present. This message is about technological mastery and control. The odds seem to be stacked firmly against nature, because in a zero-sum battle between industrial development and animal conservation, the latter is destined to lose. The cartoonist’s perspective is thus consistent with Henri Lefebvre’s conception of natural space under capitalism, when he argues that nature e although “resistant” and “infinite in its depth” e has become nothing more than a raw material or input into production. This is what Lefebvre (1991, p. 31) means when he says that nature “has been defeated, and now waits only for its ultimate voidance and destruction”.

Uneven development: global power relations and inequality “Understanding the relations of power in the political, economic, and cultural aspects of climate change must occur alongside getting the facts” (Slocum, 2004, p. 429) “Liquid fuels made from plants e such as bioethanol e are hailed by some as environmentally-friendly replacements for fossil fuels. Because they compete for land with crop plants, biofuels have also been linked to record food prices and rising hunger. There are also fears they can increase greenhouse gas emissions” (Carrington & Valentino, 2011, p. 1) The explicit themes of the Earthworks competition, i.e. ‘global warming’ and ‘environmental threat’ have now been analysed through content analysis and visual discourse analysis. This final section highlights cartoons that explicitly tackle relations of power while fitting the Earthworks judging criteria. Geopolitical themes in the cartoon studies reviewed in part one are war and conflict, national identity, government policies, popular resistance, international diplomacy, religion, and migration. Such themes also feature in the climate change studies concerned with power relations in international climate policy and conventions; with questions of climate justice and uneven development; and with the implications of market-based responses to climate change (Slocum, 2004; see also Barnett, 2007; Liverman, 2009). Table 4 shows that five of the cartoons were coded as ‘global divisions and unequal relations of power’. The concept of ‘displacement’, which was similarly derived from secondary

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

491

Table 4 Interconnected worlds and global inequality. Sub-themes

Indicative categories

Evocative images

Icons, symbols and metaphors

Global divisions and unequal relations of power (5)

Climate change conventions

Countries around a conference table

Secession by the economic north The uneven benefits of bio-fuel energy Water privatisation Migration and refuge

Planetary breakaway by the economic north Different peoples at a bio-fuel station

Countries personified; nuclear powers as animals; chairs as nuclear waste Planet earth as a time bomb; the economic north as astronauts in a spaceship Global north and global south personified

Species unity Transnational unity

Animal conferencing, animal peace talks, a demonstration against global warming Different peoples together

Planets/the galaxy

The earth among other planets

Displacement (4)

Solidarity, blocs and exclusions (4)

The universe (9)

Payment for water Climate change refugees

sources, reflects growing calls for a new international convention addressed to “the climate change displacement problem” (Hodgkinson, Burton, Young, & Anderson, 2009, p. 155). Although the other sub-themes in the table emerged descriptively from the cartoons, they recall academic challenges to positivist conceptions of nature (or the earth itself) as simply raw materials separate from humans (Doyle, 2011). If “humans and nonhumans cofabricate” a world that sits within a larger universe (Cosgrove, 2008, p. 1863) then global power relations can be imagined as inter-species and universal as well as international. Fig. 7 below provides a lucid illustration of a classic political cartoon. Caricatured politicians sit behind the mainly country names and flags7 that serve as indicators of national identity and sovereignty in a multilateral setting. Nonetheless, this cartoon is neither neo-realist nor neo-liberal in its framing of climate change. Despite their differences, both those frames envision activist states e either responding to heightened threats to national security or else pushing for multilateral agreements (Dittmer et al., 2011). Here, by contrast, the powerful group watch passively as the tiny globe labelled ‘Others’ destructs in front of their eyes. As planes explode upwards, water pours down and minute figures flee from the devastation towards the edge of an abyss. The clear message of

Water guards/the US dollar Arctic animals as climate change refugees, a ‘refugee camp’ for birds, extra-terrestrial humans A ‘no person’ sign beside animals, personification (of snowmen) A ‘black’ man, a ‘white’ man and an Eskimo together Personification (of the earth)

this cartoon is thus twofold. Firstly, climate change conventions are manifestations of unequal relations of power. The ‘Others’ may be there but they are effectively invisible. Secondly, the visibly large and knowing political forces are dooming the planet to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. The theme of inaction is reminiscent of “Ampulheta”, but there the figure atop the sand timer was preoccupied with money and not actually looking in at the world. Here the mighty politicians see what is happening globally and still do nothing to stop it. The cartoon in Fig. 8, by contrast, uses the symbolism of a petrol hose to metaphorically link carbon transport systems to carbon alternatives. The hose, furthermore, is a spatial metaphor for global interconnectedness and a symbolic challenge to enlightenment distinctions between nature and culture, self and other. The small brown naked figure beside the ‘bio-energy’ tanks, with his distended belly and hand-to-mouth gesture, recalls the iconic visuals of the humanitarian frame. Generic “images of suffering related to African famine” are frequently used there “to convey the human impacts of climate change” (Doyle, 2011, p. 43). Media reports of “British firms leading the rush to buy up Africa in biofuels boom” (Carrington & Valentino, 2011, p. 1) also suggest reading the brown figure as an allegory for Africa. The vehicle, meanwhile, signifies

Fig. 7. “Climate change convention”. Jean Claude Alphen, Brazil.

492

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

(purportedly to offset carbon emissions) on global food prices threatens to create much greater poverty and inequality for the urban poor than the direct impacts of a changing climate” (Bravo, 2009, p. 263). The cartoon that actually won the competition is different again. Indicative of the relatively small number of Earthworks entries displaying a universal (rather than global) imagination, “Coat star” is like Fig. 1 in its personification of the earth. However this time the planet is not a woman but a man in a shabby oversized coat. The judges were reportedly impressed by the symbolic portrayal “of humanity’s indecency in ruining our world” (New Internationalist, 2008, p. 30). The satirical use of phallic, bawdy and/or obscene symbolism recalls Zapiro’s ‘rape’ and Bell’s ‘condom’ cartoons but also has a much longer pedigree, arguably dating back to ancient Greece (Bal et al., 2009). In this case, the representation of anthropogenic climate change as a metaphorical ‘dirty old man’ in Fig. 9 was judged to be a winning competitive strategy.

Fig. 8. Untitled. Timar, France.

wealth and ‘luxury’ emissions. As for the car owner standing directly below the giant corporate call to “make the world a better place” by switching to biofuels and further commodifying nature, he appears startled to realise that fuel consumption and food deprivation are interconnected. This cartoon is thus a geopolitical critique of neo-liberal faith in market-based solutions to climate change mitigation. It echoes the argument that “the impact of the growing demand for biofuels

Fig. 9. “Coat star”. Mikhail Zlatkovsky, Russia (1st prize).

Conclusion There is more to climate change communication than simple declarations. The various discourses that frame climate change are moral, cultural and political, involving as they do issues such as trust, responsibility and justice. These discourses also depend in various ways on the production of visual evidence, thus providing further indication of modern associations “between visuality and truth-telling” (Macdonald et al., 2010, p. 4). Climate change discourses are also fundamentally geopolitical. They not only sit within, and are shaped by, broader relations of power and knowledge; they also produce geopolitical consequences (such as the human impact of biofuel production on global food prices). In this context, the paper aimed to show how the coconstitution of climate change discourse and visuality has become paradoxical in numerous ways. The catastrophe frame’s alarmist images, which are prevalent in popular media, have been blamed in the UK for low levels of public understanding of, and engagement with, climate change. Such images paradoxically raise awareness and concern about climate change while fostering mistrust of the media itself as a reliable source of information and knowledge. Other paradoxes concern the dominant role of photography in climate change communication in general and the reliance of climate science in particular on visual evidence. As much as conventional visual technologies, practices and iconic images can make climate change seem real, they cannot fully capture the invisible, temporally complex, fundamentally contested and geopolitical character of climate change. The question, then, was how political cartoons might function as representations of the geopolitics of climate change (including its geopolitical consequences) and their capacity to enable a fuller understanding of climate change issues and debates than other visual forms. Cartoons’ theoretical potential was suggested by a multi-disciplinary literature in popular geopolitics and political studies, which was further used to help structure analysis of the Earthworks data set presented in part three. Although cartoons can be funny it is not a requirement. They can also be ambiguous and complex. Differences of interpretation are possible, even among those with the multiliteracy skills required to decode visual discourse. Cartoons deploy cultural symbols and metaphors, the meanings of which are not necessarily universal. Cartoons therefore entail analytical challenges for audiences as well as tensions between clarity and creativity at their sites of production. In attempting to win a UK-based, international competition like Earthworks, the paper showed that many entrants deployed a range of iconic images (such as a spherical earth to denote global

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

space) and familiar visual metaphors (such as biblical iconography) to get their meanings across. In addition to the similarities, however, the paper highlighted significant differences among the cartoons. When taken together, the Earthworks cartoons provide numerous illustrations of the various climate change frames identified in Table 1 as well as broader perspectives on time, space and power. The data set did not offer a singular perspective on climate change issues. However that very diversity, along with the ability of the cartoon form to present complex issues in simplified and accessible forms, is what gives cartoons such as these a useful role to play in climate change communication e not as visual evidence of climate change but as vehicles for education, awareness and debate. The requirements of multiliteracy, as well as the complexity of the subject matter itself, suggest classrooms as a fruitful (but by no means only) site of audience engagement with climate change cartoons. They can also be exhibited for public display, along with other forms of visual art.8 It might seem paradoxical, at a time of reportedly “widespread scepticism about the reality or human causes of climate change/ global warming” (Whitmarsh, 2009, p. 416) to propose greater use of a visual form that is both unscientific and demanding of ‘readers’. There are two very good reasons to do so. Firstly, the term ‘knowledge paradox’ is used in climate change communication to refer to the fact that some people care less about climate change the more they know about climate science. For “these sceptical groups, more information is not the solution to engaging them in the issue of climate change/global warming”; the challenge is to effectively show how climate change connects to their existing concerns, experiences and moral values (Whitmarsh, 2009, p. 417). Cartoons have the potential for such visual engagement even if they do not inform in the narrow sense of imparting scientific knowledge about physical processes. Secondly, the call for further research into audience reception of cartoons echoes broader calls for more studies of how images are received and understood (Dodds, 2010). Questions about how particular audiences interpret climate change cartoons would thus contribute to a broader project in political geography on relations between audiences, power and visual representation.

Acknowledgements All cartoons are reprinted here by kind permission of the Ken Sprague Fund (KSF). I am indebted to John Green, Secretary of the KSF, for supplying the Earthworks cartoons and answering many questions in the course of this research. I am appreciative of the four anonymous referees and Professor James Sidaway for their valuable comments. I want to thank university students in England and Malaysia for their analysis of a select number of Earthworks cartoons. Discussions with undergraduate students in the Geopolitical Thought and Practice module (University of Newcastle, March 2011 and 2012) and the Introduction to Sustainable Development module (University of Technology Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, October 2011) are greatly appreciated. Thanks also go to colleagues in the Visualities group and the Politics, Space and Power research cluster at the University of Newcastle for helpful comments on work in progress. Endnotes 1

President Zuma’s decision to sue Zapiro for defamation over the cartoons was subsequently satirised as well. All can be seen at http://www.zapiro.com Accessed 22.06.11. 2 Overviews of both films and associated photographs are available on the Internet Movie Database at http://imdb.com Accessed 24.11.11. 3 To access these cartoons go to: http://www.cartoons.ac.uk Accessed 14.08.12.

493

4

For the winners go to http://www.kenspraguefund.org/conpetition_2008.html; the shortlisted entries are available at http://www.kenspraguefund.org/ competition/competition_2008/competition_shortlist.html Accessed 25.11.10. 5 The term ‘visual discourse analysis’ refers here to my own reading of the Earthworks cartoons. For a fuller discussion of different forms of discourse analysis, see Rose (2001). 6 The draft text e and a trenchant critique of its contents e can be found at http:// www.climatedepot.com Accessed 16.04.12. 7 The one labelled ‘Europa’ seems to represent the European Union rather than a single nation-state. The others in full view are USA, India, China, and Russia. The identity of the half-figure on the extreme left of the cartoon is unknown, as the writing on the card is illegible and a search of flag databases on the Internet failed to find a match to the flag. 8 A selection of Earthworks cartoons were exhibited most recently in February 2012, at a “major national [UK] gathering of those concerned with the interface between the arts and culture on one hand, and environmental issues, particularly climate change, on the other”. See Tipping Point Newcastle, at http://www.tippingpoint.org. uk/tippingpoint-newcastle/ Accessed 14.08.12.

References Adam, D. (2008). Drawing blood. SocietyGuardian/Environment, The Guardian, 23 July, 09. Alter, B. (2008). Cartoonists find climate change not so funny. TreeHugger. http:// www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/cartoonists-depict-climate-change.php Accessed 26.11.10. Ash, S. (2008). ‘Heroin baby’: Barnardo’s, benevolence, and shame. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 32, 179e200. Bal, A., Pitt, L., Berthon, P., & DesAutels, P. (2009). Caricatures, cartoons, spoofs and satires: political brands as butts. Journal of Public Affairs, 9, 229e237. Barnett, J. (2007). The geopolitics of climate change. Geography Compass, 1(6), 1361e1375. Boykoff, M. T. (2008). The cultural politics of climate change discourse in UK tabloids. Political Geography, 27, 549e569. Brace, C., & Geoghegan, H. (2010). Human geographies of climate change: landscape, temporality, and lay knowledges. Progress in Human Geography, 35, 284e302. Bravo, M. (2009). Voices from the sea: the reception of climate impact narratives. Journal of Historical Geography, 35, 256e278. British Council. (2009a). Cartoon contest on climate change: Are you seriously funny?. http://www.britishcouncil.org/srilanka-projects-cartoon-contest.htm Accessed 26.11.10. British Council. (2009b). British Council India cartoon contest 2009. http://parinama. org/2009/11/british-council-india-cartoon-contest-2009 Accessed 26.11.10. Campbell, D. (2007). Geopolitics and visuality: sighting the Darfur conflict. Political Geography, 26, 357e382. Caricaturque. (2007). Ken Sprague Fund competition 2008. http://caricaturque. blogspot.com/2007/10/ken-sprague-fund-cartoon-competition.html Accessed 07.10.10. Carrington, D., & Valentino, S. (01 June 2011). British firms leading the rush to buy up Africa in biofuels boom. The Guardian, 1e2. Clough, J. (1982). Cartoons ’n comics: Communication to the quick. 20. Center for Media Literacy. Cosgrove, D. (1994). Contested global visions: one-world, whole-earth, and the Apollo space photographs. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 84, 270e294. Cosgrove, D. (2001). Apollo’s eye: A cartographic genealogy of the earth in the western imagination. London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cosgrove, D. (2008). Images and imagination in 20th-century environmentalism: from the Sierras to the Poles. Environment and Planning A, 40, 1862e1880. Daniels, G. (2010). A fight for democracy internal to democracy itself: the ANC and the media in South Africa. In N. Bechter, & G. Angelis (Eds.), Problems of democracy: Probing the boundaries (pp. 109e118). Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press. Daniels, S., & Endfield, G. (2009). Narratives of climate change: introduction. Journal of Historical Geography, 35, 215e222. Defra (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs). (2011). Future worlds images: How do we prepare for a changing climate?. http://archive.defra. gov.uk/environment/climate/documents/interim2/future-worlds.pdf Accessed 14.05.11. Dennis, K., & Urry, J. (2009). After the car. Cambridge: Polity Press. Devine-Wright, P. (2012). Think global, act local? Place attachment in a climatechanged world. Paper presented at the conference on conceptual and methodological approaches for researching climate change at different societal scales, organised by the British Sociological Association (BSA) climate change study group, University of Southampton, March 30th. Diamond, M. (2002). No laughing matter: post-September 11 political cartoons in Arab/Muslim newspapers. Political Communication, 19, 251e272. Dittmer, J., Moisio, S., Ingram, A., & Dodds, K. (2011). Have you heard the one about the disappearing ice? Recasting Arctic geopolitics. Political Geography, 30, 202e214. Dodds, K. (1996). The Falklands war and a critical geopolitical eye: steve Bell and the If.cartoons. Political Geography, 15, 571e592. Dodds, K. (1998). Enframing Bosnia: the geopolitical iconography of Steve Bell. In G. O’Tuathail, & S. Dalby (Eds.), Rethinking geopolitics (pp. 170e197). London: Routledge.

494

K. Manzo / Political Geography 31 (2012) 481e494

Dodds, K. (2007). Steve Bell’s eye: cartoons, geopolitics and the visualization of the ‘war on terror’. Security Dialogue, 38, 157e177. Dodds, K. (2010). Popular geopolitics and cartoons: representing power relations, repetition and resistance. Critical African Studies, 4, 1e19. Doyle, J. (2011). Mediating climate change. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. El Refaie, E. (2003). Understanding visual metaphor: the example of newspaper cartoons. Visual Communication, 2, 75e95. El Refaie, E. (2009). Multiliteracies: how readers interpret political cartoons. Visual Communication, 8, 181e205. El Refaie, E. (2010). Visual modality versus authenticity: the example of autobiographical comics. Visual Studies, 25, 162e174. Engelen, E., Hendrikse, R., Mamadouh, V., & Sidaway, J. D. (2011). Turmoil in Euroland: the geopolitics of a suboptimal currency area? Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29, 571e583. Forbidden Planet. (2007). International political cartoon competition 2008. http:// forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2007/international-political-cartoon-competition2008.html Accessed 25.02.10. Geographical Magazine. (2008). Laughter in the face of adversity. http://www. geographical.co.uk/Magazine/Cartoons_-_Oct_08.html Accessed 12.04.12. Green, S. (2008). No words necessary: The cartoonists tackle climate change (online). The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/ no-words-necessary-the-cartoonists-tackle-climate-change-859017.html Accessed 07.10.10. Greenberg, J. (2002). Framing and temporality in political cartoons: a critical analysis of visual news discourse. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 39, 181e198. Hammett, D. (2010). Zapiro and Zuma: a symptom of an emerging constitutional crisis in South Africa? Political Geography, 29, 88e96. Harrison, R. (1982). How cartoons work: The cartoon code. 20. Centre for Media Literacy. http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article154.html Accessed 06.08.10. Hart, G. (2006). Denaturalising dispossession: critical ethnography in the age of resurgent imperialism. Antipode, 38, 977e1004. Harvey, F. (30 May 2011). Worst ever CO2 emissions leave climate on the brink. The Guardian, 1e2. Hodgkinson, D., Burton, T., Young, L., & Anderson, H. (2009). Copenhagen, climate change ‘refugees’ and the need for a global agreement. Public Policy, 4, 155e174. Hulme, M. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change: Understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. International Climate Challenge. (undated). Climate change in art. http://www. interclimate.org/challenge/index.php?option¼com_ content&view¼article&id¼203&Itemid¼221 Accessed 22.02.12. Ken Sprague Fund (KSF). (2008). International political cartoon competition: Earthworks 2008. http://www.kenspraguefund.org/competition_2008 Accessed 25.11.10. Kleeman, G. (2006). Not just for fun: using cartoons to investigate geographical issues. New Zealand Geographer, 62, 144e151. Koelble, T., & Robins, S. (2007). Zapiro: the work of a political cartoonist in South Africa e caricature, complexity, and comedy in a climate of contestation. PS: Political Science and Politics, 40, 315e318. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Leiserowitz, A. A. (2004). Day after tomorrow: study of climate change risk perception. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 46, 22e39. Liverman, D. (2009). Conventions of climate change: constructions of danger and the dispossession of the atmosphere. Journal of Historical Geography, 35, 279e296. Lutz, C., & Collins, J. (1993). Reading national geographic. London: University of Chicago Press. Macdonald, F., Hughes, R., & Dodds, K. (2010). Introduction: envisioning geopolitics. In F. Macdonald, R. Hughes, & K. Dodds (Eds.), Observant states: Geopolitics and visual culture (pp. 1e19). London: I.B. Tauris.

Manzo, K. (2010a). Imaging vulnerability: the iconography of climate change. Area, 42, 96e107. Manzo, K. (2010b). Beyond polar bears? re-envisioning climate change. Meteorological Applications, 17, 196e208. Miles, M. (2010). Representing nature: art and climate change. Cultural Geographies, 17, 19e35. Muller, M., Ozcan, E., & Seizov, O. (2009). Dangerous depictions: a visual case study of contemporary cartoon controversies. Popular Communication, 7, 28e39. Najjar, O. (2007). Cartoons as a site for the construction of Palestinian refugee identity: an exploratory study of cartoonist Naji al-Ali. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 31, 255e285. Nature. (2008). Climate change cartoon competition. Nature News Blog. http://blogs. nature.com/news/2008/07/climate_change_cartoon_competi.html Accessed 24.04.12. Nerlich, B. (2010). ‘Climategate’: paradoxical metaphors and political paralysis. Environmental Values, 19, 419e442. New Internationalist. (2008). Earthworks 2008 cartoon competition. 415. http:// www.newint.org/columns/exposure/special/2008/09/01/earthworks/ Accessed 07.10.10. New Internationalist. (2012). Mission statement. http://www.newnt.org/about/ mission/ Accessed 13.08.12. Nicholson-Cole, S. (2005). Representing climate change futures: a critique on the uses of images for visual communication. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29, 255e273. One World South Asia. (2009). Cartoon contest on climate change. http://southasia. oneworld.net/event/cartoon-contest-on-climate-change Accessed 14.08.12. O’Neill, S., & Nicholson-Cole, S. (2009). ‘Fear won’t do it’: promoting positive engagement with climate change through visual and iconic representations. Science Communication, 30, 355e379. O’Tuathail, G., & Dalby, S. (1998). Introduction: rethinking geopolitics, towards a critical geopolitics. In G. O’Tuathail, & S. Dalby (Eds.), Rethinking geopolitics (pp. 1e15). London: Routledge. Pfirman, S. (2009). Changes in the north. In G. Schmidt, & J. Wolfe (Eds.), Climate change: Picturing the science (pp. 45e69). London: W.W. Norton. PIRC (Public Interest Research Centre). (2010). Communicating climate change to mass public audiences. Working document of the Climate Change Communication Advisory Group. http://pirc.info/downloads/communicating_climate_ mass_audiences.pdf Accessed 22.06.11. Plumb, S. (2004). Politicians as superheroes: the subversion of political authority using a pop cultural icon in the cartoons of Steve Bell. Media, Culture and Society, 26, 432e439. Ricoeur, P. (1988). Time and narrative, Vol. 3. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Ridanpaa, J. (2009). Geopolitics of humour: the Muhammed cartoon crisis and the Kaltio comic strip episode in Finland. Geopolitics, 14, 729e749. Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies. London: Sage. Schmidt, G., & Wolfe, J. (2009). Climate change: Picturing the science. London: W.W. Norton. Slattery, J. (2010). Steve Bell: ‘Why I put Cameron in a condom’. http://jonslattery. blogspot.com/2010/11/steve-bell-why-i-put-cameron-in-condom.html Accessed 16.11.11. Slocum, R. (2004). Polar bears and energy-efficient lightbulbs: strategies to bring climate change home. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22, 413e438. Smyth, D. (2007). Special report: global warming. British Journal of Photography, 15, 29e32. Whitmarsh, L. (2009). What’s in a name? commonalities and differences in public understanding of “climate change” and “global warming”. Public Understanding of Science, 18, 401e420. Window to Nature. (2010). Changing climate of cartooning. http://window2nature. net/2010/03/23/changing-climate-of-cartooning/ Accessed 14.08.12.