McEwan skewers artists’ response to climate change

Ian McEwan has skewered the responses of some of his fellow artists to climate change in his new novel, Solar, to be published later this month.

While the novel has been well-received by reviewers for its irreverent approach to the earnest issue of global warming, the Sunday Times has latched onto a set piece in Solar based upon a real-life expedition of scientists and artists, including Rachel Whiteread, Antony Gormley and McEwan, to the Arctic Circle in 2005.

The week-long excursion, during which the team stayed on an ice-bound ship near Spitsbergen, was organised by Cape Farewell, which "pioneers the cultural response to climate change". Long walks in the snow and 'challenging' works of art were the order of the day, and judging by the blog of the expedition, McEwan was not short of material.

Choreographer Siobhan Davies and artist Max Eastley "attempted to make a series of footsteps that could be recorded by sound and camera. Both of [us] thought how important the act of walking is in this immense landscape…"

Gormley, meanwhile, made an ice sculpture of himself by filling a snow cast of himself with water and allowing it to freeze (you can see photographs here).  He also made an igloo, which he called Shelter (2005).

For McEwan, the week was to give him the inspiration to write the book about climate change he had been planning since the 1990s, but had until then been unable to find a way into.

In Solar, Antony Gormley appears to be depicted as a Spanish artist called Jesus who makes ice sculptures of penguins, while Siobhan Davies is a French dancer who choreographs "a geometric dance she had planned to take place on ice".

McEwen, who studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia – the home of the Climatic Research Unit, which is embroiled in the 'Climategate' scandal – also describes the environmental cost of the expedition.

"The guilty discharge of carbon dioxide from 20 return flights and snowmobile rides and 60 hot meals a day served in polar conditions would be offset by planting 3,000 trees in Venezuela as soon as a site could be identified and local officials bribed," he writes.

Despite his cynical take on the junket to the Arctic Circle – which he freely admits he enjoyed – McEwan describes himself as what climate change sceptics mockingly call a "warmer".

Clearly aware of the risk of being called a hypocrite after finally releasing his own artistic response to climate change, he does emphasise that Solar is only a novel. "The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction," he tells the Guardian.
He also has a very prosaic solution to the problem of global warming: nuclear power. "We just don't have anything else that can run our cities on a windless night in February," he says.

Solar is published by Jonathan Cape on March 18. ·