Cartoon: Seeing Global Warming

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This is what distresses me about global warming: As long as powerful people benefit from not seeing it, they won’t see it. I don’t know if global warming is a solvable problem, but it seems like it’s a mitigatable problem. But mitigation won’t begin if powerful people – and to be clear, I mean the Republican party – are choosing not to see what inconveniences them.

Artwise, this cartoon is up and down for me. The up: I really like how the colors came out. The cool-colored figures and water standing out from the reddish world really work, at least for my tastes. Normally I’m happy if my colors just reach the level of “pleasant looking,” but I think the colors here actually add to the impact of the cartoon.

The down: That car. I keep on trying to learn how to draw cartoons of cars, and it’s slow going. I have an upcoming cartoon with a better-drawn car, but this one looks “wrong” to me.

I said “cartoons of cars,” by the way, because I can draw realistic cars. That’s not hard, exactly; it just takes finding reference and taking time to do the work. Here’s a VW Bug I drew in the second “Hereville” graphic novel, for example:

But just because I can (with reference) draw a realistic car doesn’t mean I can draw a satisfying cartoon of a car. But I’m going to keep trying until I get the hang of it.


Transcript of Cartoon

This is a single-panel cartoon (although there’s a mini “kicker” panel in the bottom right corner). The main panel shows a comfortable-looking white man, standing on top of a cliff, facing away from the cliff’s edge. He has a huge SUV parked nearby, and in the background a factory is spewing huge clouds of smoke from smokestacks. The sky is red. Behind him, way at the bottom of the cliff, standing in five feet of water, stand four people, all looking up angrily at him. All four are non-white.

MAN: Is global warming real? I just don’t see it!

Kicker panel shows a woman who was in the water in the main panel; she’s now in front of the white man and speaking to him, with a frustrated expression. Facing her, the man folds his arm and replies cheerfully.
WOMAN: Just turn around!
MAN: I’d rather not.

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4 Responses to Cartoon: Seeing Global Warming

  1. 1
    nobody.really says:

    This is what distresses me about global warming: As long as powerful people benefit from not seeing it, they won’t see it.

    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935).

    Kudos to Amp for extending the concept up the social ladder.

  2. 2
    Jeff says:

    But mitigation won’t begin if powerful people – and to be clear, I mean the Republican party – are choosing not to see what inconveniences them.

    I generally agree that we should endeavor to mitigate global warming, which is a real thing, and for the most part a man made problem… I just really think that Americans have to get over themselves. And don’t get me wrong! Canadians do too! Nothing annoys me more than Justin Trudeau getting up on a pulpit and telling Canadians that we are one of the biggest problems on Earth when it comes to climate change, when Canada contributes less than 2% of global emissions. Nothing, literally nothing Canada does, and very little that America could do, will make a lick of difference if China, India and Pakistan continue to belch carbon into the atmosphere out of decades old coal fired power plants.

    While I do think that developed nations could (and should) do more, the idea that this is something that white people are doing to brown people, or even that rich people are doing to poor people, is flawed, China is neither particularly white nor particularly rich. And I don’t blame them either…. How do we as people living in countries that developed as a result of burning carbon, go to the developing world and say: “Yeah, we did this, and it worked out well for us, but you shouldn’t do it, because it’s bad.”?

  3. 3
    Jake Squid says:

    My opinion of the car:

    1) It’s a perfectly fine cartoon car.
    2) You’ve put the hood and grill of a large pickup or a vintage luxury car (Rolls Royce, for example) on the front of a Kia Soul.
    3) The doors are way too small.
    4) The rear door is too far forward (as a result of point 3)
    5) The 3rd window back (rearmost) is way too big.
    6) I’m less sure about this, but I think the tires are a little too small.

  4. 4
    nobody.really says:

    Tastes differ, but my opinion of any car is heavily influenced by Consumer Reports.