Time & Water - Perhaps Mankind’s Most Important Words At Our Moment in History
CLIMATE CHANGE / INTERVIEW
Writer: Vilborg Einarsdottir
Photographs: Hans Vera
December 2021
He could have named it The Book About Climate Change. Or anything Climate Change, really. Even something like The Great Water Shift or The Great Melt. Any such title would have been a perfect fit. But noticing that people’s eyes lazed when hearing that he was writing about climate change, he switched to saying he was writing about time and water. The response switched to - that is interesting! Thus, the title: On Time and Water. And, reading the book, one comes to realize that within these two simple and seemingly common, lightweight words lies a deep value-laden truth, rooted in common sense, science, and human reality - making the two words, Time and Water, quite possibly mankind’s most important at our moment in history.
Andri Snær Magnason is a celebrated Icelandic writer, poet, playwright, and director, published, and performed in over 40 countries. Among his multi-awarded books and best-sellers are Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation, Casket of Time, LoveStar, and The Story of the Blue Planet. On Time and Water has joined that list, with two literary awards and a nomination to the Nordic Council Literary Prize. Magnason has written and co-directed three documentaries, The Hero’s Journey to the Third Pole - a Bipolar Musical Documentary with Elephants, Dreamland, and Apausalypse. A master storyteller and popular speaker, he regularly addresses audiences in sold-out theatres, does TED talks, speaks at global conferences, and holds talks for students and professors at prestigious universities like Harvard and Columbia.
Vilborg Einarsdottir, JONAA’s editor spoke with Andri Snær Magnason about his latest book, already published in over 20 countries, publication rights sold to 30+ language regions and described as unique, mind-blowing and even a masterpiece.
In Magnason’s own words, it is a story about glaciers, grandmothers and holy cows!
“When the Eyjafjallajökull eruption began in 2010, putting a stop to European air traffic for six days, the volcano’s emissions constituted about forty percent of daily European air traffic emissions—about 150,000 tons per day. By halting all air traffic, it prevented 300,000 tons per day of emissions, and so became the first environmentally responsible eruption in history. ”
An issue so big that no word can say what it is
It is safe to say that this book has taken the world by storm in a short span of time and in preparation for our talk, reading multiple articles and reviews from critics and readers alike, I came to notice a reoccurring sentence: This is a book like no other! A statement leading to the obvious first question for Magnason. Was that the mission - to write a book like no other?
“I think so. Yes. I think I felt like climate change needed to be somehow challenged in a different way of writing and approach than it has. It had to be made understandable and relatable and, well, just not boring. The whole climate change issue can easily become stagnated and I came to realize that I could read a few books on the subject and not really notice a difference between this book and the other, or all the climate information I could read in the media. So, I found out that climate change needed a different approach and that was the big challenge.”
“But,” he continues, “how do you talk about something bigger than language? How do you weave into a book, scientific facts that are bigger than all stories? Facts that are right in front of us, facts that we are living, and yet they don’t seem to stir emotion, action, political change, or urgency? So,” he adds with a smile, “ you have to make the issue interesting. Which in itself is very strange, considering how big and urgent it is and that every living individual is affected.”
Thus the glaciers, grandmothers, interviews with the Dalai Lama, and ancient legends of holy cows, combined with personal stories, recounts of historical milestones, volcanic eruptions, and facts of science. You seem to weave all these issues into pathways to provide a comprehensible understanding of the future that climate science has placed before us
“Well, how do you get the grip on something that is so huge, so enormous that there are no words that can say what it is? I can’t upscale language like I can scale up numbers. I can’t say that global warming is enormous to the 10th or 12th degree. Our language just collapses when you say the words global warming or ocean acidification. As if they are somehow not fully loaded.”
“In contrast, if I say a word like holocaust. That word is fully loaded because we know the consequences, the millions of lives lost. But as we talk about global warming or ocean acidification the worst has not happened, these words are not fully loaded. That is why we are not reacting to them as we should be doing. We are not really understanding what they mean.”
“Opposite something this big my challenge was to try to bring it all into some understandable perspective. To find a way for people to understand the future by connecting to the past, to understand science by using mythology as a mirror and to understand a global issue by understanding what it means locally and personally. The issue involves everything and everyone we know and love. It is the ultimate challenge of this century and a race where everyone wins or everyone loses”, says Andri Snær. “Baba Dioum the environmentalist from Senegal said: 'In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.’ There is much truth in that.”
Helping people understand why they don’t understand
Do you think that your unconventional approach in explaining what global warming truly means, is the key to how well Time and Water has been received in different parts of the world? Statistically, it seems that people connect or relate to it, despite different languages, cultures, religions, social structures or environment.
“I choose to do this by using unusual approaches to climate science and providing my readers with metaphors to help grasp just how big this all is. So in the book, instead of talking about C02 emissions, I talk about fire. Instead of talking about emissions in gigatons, I calculate how many volcanic eruptions, how big and for how long, would emit the equivalent. I blend mythology and poetry to help pave a path of understanding and instead of talking about the future, I talk about my grandmother.”
“I have spoken about this issue several times in the past, even given talks on climate change without ever saying the words climate change! Many such talks have been in front of scientists and in a way, it was scientists who gave me permission to go on and challenged me to write the book. To take their science and integrate it into other fields, finding the touching points of science by using mythology, family stories, personal memories, history of words and language. I am very thankful for that permission.”
“So in the book, like my talks, I am using this kind of approach of taking personal, scientific, even lightly spiritual paths to the issue. Just taking a really huge story and concentrating that into an arch that can help people understand. There is no point in presenting facts with words people don't relate to or in scolding people for not understanding. So, I focused on writing more in ways that would help people understand why they don’t understand.”
“Like ocean acidification, a word that washed up on our shores in 2006. It’s the biggest word in the world, but how long does it take for that word to set into society, for leading people to understand it? Or for the algorithms of society to capture it? We cannot place the responsibility on scientists alone of translating its true enormity so that everyone else understands. Yes, we can say that the science world might do well by rethinking its ways of expressing reality and communicating science, but I am not scolding scientists in the book,” he says laughingly. ”Being raised in a family of doctors and nurses where there was nothing less tolerated than amateurs talking about medicine, it is kind of in my blood to respect science and respect facts. By writing the book I was more sort of taking on the call of scientists.”
One of the biggest crimes against humanity
Maybe an impossible question to answer. But with climate change being so - for a lack of a better word - big on any scale, affecting everything in the world’s environment, in human existence, and carving out a future that we cannot predict or define. Because well, we don’t know when we stand on ground zero so to speak and worst has happened - is it because we humans don’t see it as an invisible common enemy of the worst kind, to unite against and fight? Of course, fighting global warming means fighting a human-created enemy, but what will it take?
“In the book and in my talks, I avoid the enemy-rhetoric. I don’t see global warming as a common enemy for us to fight, but a common threat we all face and need to react to. It calls for the biggest actions and the biggest decisions the world has yet to see. Also, I don’t go much into climate denial, although I do believe deliberately sponsoring and spreading misinformation and climate denial will eventually be considered one of the biggest crimes against humanity,” says Magnason.
“I’ve been an environmental activist since I was young. I’ve read so much climate information, listened to and spoken with so many experts in science, environment, engineering, and other relevant fields; explaining the issue from opposite sides. Why it was happening or if it was even happening. There were times in the past when I found myself easily distracted in either direction. Even when writing On Time and Water, I might stumble upon well-presented information by someone with a respectable background in science that had me questioning if I was getting the right information and advice from the scientists. Then, a little research on the specialists behind such well-presented information would show that they were funded by oil companies, using the same methods as the tobacco companies did back in the day. It didn’t make me angry, I just felt so sad that this was happening and sorry for the people who were doing this for a living.”
I actually have a theory that we, my generation, don’t belong to this century. JONAA©Hans Vera
“Your time is the time of the people you know and love, the time that moulds you. And your time is also the time of the people you will know and love. The time that you will shape. You can touch two hundred and sixty-two years with your bare hands.”
We have just not done really anything
When you wrote On Time and Water few of us had heard of Wuhan. But for nearly two years the virus has dominated life on earth and changed the way we live. In your view, has the Covid-19 era changed us, or will it change us, when it comes to climate change?
“I see many people talk about COP26 as a failure, but you can see small signs of the paradigm shift happening. That they are actually understanding that we have to close down all coal-fired factories before 2050. That is a step in the right direction. Only I fear that they actually think 2050 is 50 years from now.”
“I actually have a theory that we, my generation, don’t belong to this century, Because we who were like almost thirty at the turn of the century, we had developed almost all our values in the last decade of the last century,” He laughs. “Many of my friends still feel that 1970 was 30 years ago! Culturally we were tattooed with the year 2000 as some kind of a roof over our heads. That is how we sense time. We have just not been able to think beyond the year 2000.”
“If you believe that we are moulded in our thinking when we’re young, well, my generation was moulded by living through neo-liberalism. I was just told that things can’t be stopped, things should not be banned and progress would just happen if we choose green products!”
“This ideology has ruled our response to global warming. We have not imposed any taxes, any regulations, any limits, any quotas. Governments in this growing neoliberalism ever since the ’90s have not wanted to put limits or regulations on nearly anything. Even the most progressive left has not wanted to place any real restrictions on people. Despite what people may think, feel or would like to believe, we have just not done really anything. There is no real limit to what an individual or an industry can emit. If the money is there, you can burn as much oil as you want.”
Just around the corner is a generation, different to all before
“But being realistic, I believe that we will see fundamental changes happen very soon. Not because existing governments of the world will collectively decide one day to do the work and make the rules that are needed, but because just around the corner is a generation different to ours and different to all others before.”
“A generation with training in activism and politics and with knowledge of how to spread a message and mobilise millions. A generation that has sacrificed the years when they should have been young and wild and having the time of their lives to the lockdown and restrictions of the coronavirus. We cannot underestimate how differently these young people see the world. They are directly connected to this century and their anxiety, caused by our denial and lack of reaction, is very deep and very real. And, this is a generation just about to come to power. They will be a staggering difference in response to the two scenarios, Corona and Climate change. Corona, that would not have affected them in any great way, where everything was changed. Then climate change, threatening the basis of their lives, where almost no real sacrifices were made by the current generations of power, at most an upgrade to a Tesla.”
“It did not take Covid-19 for this generation to see the reality, their fight began long before. But it demonstrated that it is possible to make big changes. I think that translates easily into the fight against fossil fuels or deforestation. I think that our lame reaction to global warming compared to our forceful reaction to Covid-19 will be seen in the future as totally absurd.”
In 2019 Magnason wrote the Letter to the future. A eulogy to the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change. The plague was installed by scientists and the Icelandic Hiking society at the former Okglacier site, in a ceremony addressed by the Prime Minister. The event caught international attention and was widely shared and covered by the world’s mainstream media.
Accepting restrictions for a higher cause
“When we walked in August 2019 to the OK glacier in Iceland to put up a memorial plaque, a young teenager in the group held a sign: Pull the Emergency Break!. It was a cry, a metaphor for something that needed to be done according to the information we have and have had; that certain things - in this case, a whole glacier - would be removed from our world.”
“And, six months later the absurd just happened. Things just stopped. I thought capitalism was so strong that industries e.g. mass tourism could not be stopped. That as long as things were allowed and legal, they could not be stopped. But everything changed. Where placing regulations or limiting freedom, activities had been a thing to avoid at all costs, overnight we had restrictions imposed on everything that was a part of our normal lives. Gatherings, travel, work, studies, entertainment, even hugging. All the rules of how we interact changed and we accepted, for it was done for a higher cause.”
“This next generation in power, the 18, 19, 20 year-olds, witnessed and lived through the biggest collective experience that mankind has simultaneously endured. Received a huge metaphor for pulling the emergency brake and saw that it can be done. For them, there is no higher cause than saving the planet and they are aware of how time is running out because they are just in their 70s in 2070. They have seen that restrictions and rules can fundamentally change societies and they have seen the role of the governments central in fighting the virus. I think they will use these governments on a greater scale to fund projects, probably imposing more drastic measures than we have seen.”
Andri Snær Magnason reads the chapter on time, telling a story of his daughter and his grandmother to cleverly portray that the time when an individual and his actions matter and make a difference, is way beyond one lifespan.
I think their message will be simple; you did not plan the future for us, so we cannot plan the future for you! Author Andri Snær Magnason. JONAA©Hans Vera
“A cow made from rime is the perfect metaphor for a glacier. A glacial river contains no ordinary water at all: it flows milky white with dissolved minerals because over millennia the glacier has ground the rock face beneath itself. ”
No tolerance for the “lowest hanging fruits”
“I think their message will be simple; you did not plan the future for us, so we cannot plan the future for you! And follow through with actions that will change our societies dramatically towards a carbon-zero world. I believe there will not be much tolerance for investments made with oil money or anyone who is financially aligned with what I call “the lowest hanging fruits” in modern society. I don't think that our future, ruled by the next generation, will be one of just recycling, eliminating plastic straws and driving electric cars. I think the decisions taken will change most of our structures and industries, energy, construction, food production, transport, just all of it,” says Andri Snær, and adds, “and it can be done very fast once it is decided.”
“And, of course, I, myself as a 20th-century product will feel outdated and uncomfortable. But so be it. For what ideas from the past have we not used yet? Does it cost a lot? The UK used 40% of the GDP for the war effort in 1942.”
“Can people be drafted? Is that unthinkable while being drafted for war is not? Would it be terrible to be drafted for two years of your life, to install solar panels on buildings, design something, make a city CO2 neutral, build bicycle lanes, heat pumps, recycle batteries, rewild an area, plant trees, reduce food waste or fix things? I don't know. But why not if everything is at stake? Can we revisit the values of service, community, sacrifice, maybe just until 2050. Then, we can discuss if we miss Thatcher and Reagan again.”
“Just look at infrastructure and history. Europe was rebuilt in some 5 years, Africa skipped the whole development of landline telephone grids and went straight to cellphones. We have seen forests regrown in 30 years. There is so much that can be done, but it calls for very different solutions. I think this upcoming generation will find it tasteless to not be working in the direction of avoiding the climate catastrophe whatever the work is. That, the only real use for money will be towards carbon-negative lifestyles. So no, I don’t think that climate change will bring about the end of mankind but I think it will bring about a very changed world.”
We have no other choice than to succeed
As we finish up on our talk, I recall that September morning in 2010 when I - like most of my fellow Icelanders - got an unforgettable wake-up call from Magnason in the form of a newspaper Op-ed, headlined: In the Land of the Mad Men. Probably the most discussed and debated article ever to be published in Icelandic media; written as a stark reality check for a small nation that had lost itself in megalomania and uncontrollable desire of politicians, bankers, business people, and other figures of influence and power to be bigger, do bigger, expand and multiply every number on every plan, every budget, every debt sheet - sacrificing economy and nature in the process. Sacrificing the future of the many for the greed of the few. Now, 11 years later, that theme feels somewhat like it could have been written yesterday - maybe with one change in the headline: In the World of the Mad Men.
“Well, that article was written after Dreamland, when almost every single river and geothermal area in Iceland was under attack, to be harnessed and plundered to produce cheap energy for aluminium smelters. In the aftermath of the economic crash, many saw that as a way to get us out of the crisis, with a mass attack on nature again. The disrespect for nature and those who wanted to protect it was total.”
“I am not using that language now, but still you see the same things happening like in Brazil, you see this madness in the rise of energy used for Bitcoin, you see it in how we have not put any restrictions on cars, traffic or consumption. But the anger at the time of Dreamland was damaging for my health, mentally and physically and my fear when I started On Time and Water was that if flooding a single valley made me sleepless, how could I take in all the climate information?”
“And that is where I visit my grandmother to understand the challenges of previous generations and write in the light of the challenges of the last 100 years, that we, in the end, are not crazy, we can do amazing things, and this challenge will define us. We have no other choice than to succeed. ▢
Andri Snær Magnason, photographed earlier this year at the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland. Two hours and two kilometres from where the earth would open and a volcanic eruption begin. JONAA©Hans Vera
Vilborg Einarsdottir is the Editor-in-Chief of JONAA, the Journal of the North Atlantic & Arctic and a JONAA partner & founder. Formally a journalist for 12 years at Morgunblaðið in Iceland, she has worked since 1996 as a specialised producer of film, photography and media productions on extreme locations in Arctic Greenland and as a cultural producer in the Nordic-Arctic region. She is an awarded film and documentary scriptwriter, experienced speaker and editor of photography books from the Arctic.
Hans Vera is one of JONAA’s key photographers. Born in Waregem, Belgium, educated in visual arts and specialised in pencil drawing, he travelled to Iceland some two decades ago and has not returned home to Belgium since, except as a visitor. His archive of captivating photographs of Icelandic nature is extensive and the country’s different forces of nature hold a special interest. Vera has also documented the jazz music scene in Iceland for years. He is a member of the JONAA founding team.
