On his and Michael Mann’s book The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy
Cover Interview of March 30, 2017
Different Backgrounds, Joint Take
As co-authors, each of us two has experience on the front lines of the battle to communicate the risks
of climate change to the public.
I am an editorial cartoonist and I have been exposing the hypocrisy of climate change denying politicians and fossil fuel industry front groups and advocates for years on the pages of the Washington Post.
I have felt that the media in general has done a poor job in explaining the subject and its critical nature of its importance. My response has been to keep the subject front and center for readers, and to point out in my artwork both the challenge and the obstacles.
My co-author Michael Mann is a climate scientist who has been on the front lines of the battle. In the late 1990s, Michael published the iconic “Hockey Stick curve which has now become both a symbol of the reality and threat of climate change and an object of attack by climate change deniers.
The Madhouse Effect represents an effort by both of us to draw upon our very different backgrounds and perspectives and to jointly provide readers with a unique take on the issue of climate change.
[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?Iftikhar Dadi, Interview of March 26, 2012
The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.Richard Ned Lebow, Interview of October 4, 2010
Different Backgrounds, Joint Take
As co-authors, each of us two has experience on the front lines of the battle to communicate the risks of climate change to the public.
I am an editorial cartoonist and I have been exposing the hypocrisy of climate change denying politicians and fossil fuel industry front groups and advocates for years on the pages of the Washington Post.
I have felt that the media in general has done a poor job in explaining the subject and its critical nature of its importance. My response has been to keep the subject front and center for readers, and to point out in my artwork both the challenge and the obstacles.
My co-author Michael Mann is a climate scientist who has been on the front lines of the battle. In the late 1990s, Michael published the iconic “Hockey Stick curve which has now become both a symbol of the reality and threat of climate change and an object of attack by climate change deniers.
The Madhouse Effect represents an effort by both of us to draw upon our very different backgrounds and perspectives and to jointly provide readers with a unique take on the issue of climate change.