By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — He’s the author of academic books about law and justice, he’s very concerned about climate change, and he’s Jewish. Brooklyn born, he lives now in Nashville. Meet Edward L. Rubin, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School and a former dean of the Law School.
The author of several important academic books, among them Soul, Self, and Society: The New Morality and the Modern State, published by Oxford University Press, Rubin has boundless energy and loves to teach, and to write.
I met the professor online the other day, and after a few email exchanges when I read a recent climate-themed oped he wrote for Salon, we became friends since we both share of deep concern for where the world is headed.
“As the California drought enters its fourth year, it is threatening to strangle the splendid irrigation system that transformed the previously desolate Central Valley into some of the world’s most productive farmland and the scruffy Los Angeles Basin into one of the world’s great cities,” Rubin wrote in his Salon piece. “Faced with potential disasters of this magnitude, one would think that responsible public officials would want to take action to moderate the effects of human-induced [global warming (AGW)].”
But no, there are not that many public officials anywhere on this planet who want to take strong, dedicated actions to try to moderate the effects of AGW. And with the upcoming climate talks set for Paris in the fall, humankind finds itself again at a critical crossroad.
So Professor Rubin, the author of nonfiction books about law and justice and the writer of a such Salon opeds as ”Our end-of-the-world obsession is killing us: Climate denial and the apocalypse, GOP-style,” is temporarily exchanging his academic cap for the novelist’s hat and trying his hand at a cli-fi novel set in the near future.
“Why are so many people prepared to jump on the denial bandwagon?” Rubin asked his Salon readers. “One answer might be that both officials and citizens cannot face the possibility of nationwide or worldwide disaster. Proponents of global warming, it could be argued, have predicted a future that is just too grim to contemplate.”
Rubin is also aware that novels and movies can help us contemplate the future.
He knows that “Mad Max,” “The Hunger Games,” “Waterworld,” “The Postman,” “I Am Legend,” “The Walking Dead,” and innumerable other books, movies and television series attract large audiences by portraying a future where society has been devastated by war, disease, environmental calamity or supernatural disaster. Such post-apocalyptic tales constitute an important and widely-popular genre.
Rubin told me he remembers memorizing in grade school one of the poet Longfellow’s famous lines: “Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.”
Now, Edward L. Rubinwants to place his own cli-fi footprint in the sands of time and hopes that his novel will serve as a kind of warning flare for readers now and in the future
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I’ve read the book in manuscript, and I can say with certainty that it’s part of a new genre that is changing the way we see things in this, the Anthropocene Age.
When I asked Rubin for his thoughts about the power of cli-fi to wake up Americans to what we and future generations are facing in terms of climate issues, he said: “I think the pro-environmental message in movies (from Disney, James Cameron, etc.) has had a huge impact on the present generation. Hopefully, there will be a cli-fi literature with similar results.”
Next year, Rubin plans on teaching a combined literature and political science course at Vanderbilt titled “Visions of the Future
in Cli-Fi.”
The novel was in germinating in the back of his mind for a long time, he said.
“I’ve kept the book short — it’s about 85,000 words — because I wanted it to be easily readable,” Rubin said. “I hope it can add to the debate, and at least get some people thinking.”
I asked why he wanted to go down this road, writing and releasing a paperback cli-fi novel in print and on Kindle, when he had an academic career that keeps him busy enough.
He told me: “It is important to communicate with a broader audience, and in an immediate and vivid way. I’m hoping to bring home to people the reality of climate change; its main effects may be in the future, but they will actually happen unless we take decisive action now.”
Rubin grew up in Brooklyn, has always been interested, passsionately, in issues such as social justice and human rights, as well as the enviroment and law. At this point in his life, he wants to explore the cultural role of novels and movies in reframing the debate over climate change. So I asked him what in his Jewish background tipped him this way.
“The prophetic tradition, I think,” he told San Diego Jewish World. “I remember being impressed with the enormous courage that Nathan shows when he accuses King David of murder, and that Jeremiah shows when he tells the people that disaster is coming and that it is their own fault. The main character of my book is named Daniel, and is loosely based on the Biblical figure, who is wise, loyal to his friends, and true to his principles.”
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Bloom, based in Taiwan, is a freelance writer and inveterate web surfer. You may comment to dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com, or post your comment on this website, per the rules below.
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