Open Access

Kirsten Twelbeck

• Philippe Squarzoni’s graphic novel Climate Changed (2014) explores the experiential and emotional dimensions of human-caused global warming by combining a broad spectrum of personal and scientific responses. The book interweaves, rather than juxtaposes, scientific climate communications and the psychological barriers of doom and denial, thereby recognizing temporal simultaneity and cognitive dissonance as intrinsic elements of humanness. By actively embracing emotional and behavioral ambivalence as a companion, rather than the enemy, of modern existence, it creates a pathway toward paradoxical forms of hope, cognitive intervention, and “queer” climate activism. Focusing on the interplay between the visual and textual on which the graphic novel relies as a genre, and on other narrative choices, this chapter explains and analyzes how the book replaces the established Western narrative of development and salvation through a meandering, disruptive “anti-quest” (Zygmunt Bauman) that placesPhilippe Squarzoni’s graphic novel Climate Changed (2014) explores the experiential and emotional dimensions of human-caused global warming by combining a broad spectrum of personal and scientific responses. The book interweaves, rather than juxtaposes, scientific climate communications and the psychological barriers of doom and denial, thereby recognizing temporal simultaneity and cognitive dissonance as intrinsic elements of humanness. By actively embracing emotional and behavioral ambivalence as a companion, rather than the enemy, of modern existence, it creates a pathway toward paradoxical forms of hope, cognitive intervention, and “queer” climate activism. Focusing on the interplay between the visual and textual on which the graphic novel relies as a genre, and on other narrative choices, this chapter explains and analyzes how the book replaces the established Western narrative of development and salvation through a meandering, disruptive “anti-quest” (Zygmunt Bauman) that places ambivalence, incompatibility, and tension at its center. Ignoring the temptation of an unrealistically happy ending, and skeptical of fast and presumably clear-cut technological solutions to end human-made global warming, Climate Changed creates emotional and spatialized “pockets of possibility” that allow for the cultivation of hope and agency against all odds.…