We’re happy to continue our interview series with creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic — in this case, stories about “humanity’s closest brushes with extinction.”
On April 6, Meera Subramanian and Katy Doughty, along with WBUR environmental correspondent Barbara Moran, will discuss what it takes to keep the world alive, given the current climate crisis and, well … (motions at everything). The event is hosted by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books and the Boston Figurative Arts Center.
Meera Subramanian is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes narrative nonfiction about home in the personal and planetary sense, in a time of climate crisis. Her work has appeared in publications such as Nature, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Orion, where she is a contributing editor. Her first book was A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, which was short-listed for the 2016 Orion Book Award. A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis, a graphic novel she did with artist Danica Novgorodoff, arrived in March.
Katy Doughty is a California-born, Texas-bred, New England—educated illustrator who holds a bachelor of fine arts in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design and a master of public health from Boston University School of Public Health. Her unique background fuels her interest in the intersection of visual communication, research, and health care. She lives in Boston with her husband.
How did you get interested in climate change?
Meera Subramanian: Honestly, I couldn’t really avoid it. I became interested in the environment and protecting it when I was still in college, once I realized that the nature I loved as a kid was threatened. I ended up doing nonprofit work in my twenties, mostly as a hard-working hippie in the Oregon woods! I lived in a community that grew our own food, built structures from the trees in our forest, and taught others how to, also. We lived intimately connected to our natural resources even as I learned more about how the warming climate was putting the natural world, along with humans and all life, at risk. In my thirties, I moved to New York City to pursue journalism, hoping to write stories about the environment for a much wider audience than our nonprofit newsletters. But I kept covering issues the same issues, increasingly focusing on climate change, and trying to find answers for how humans can live rich lives in balance with what the earth can provide.
Katy Doughty: I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool naturalist, I have to admit. I mean, I appreciate nature and loved Ferngully as much as the next 90s kid, but my interest is mainly in people. Maybe this is species-ist of me, but it was harm to people that brought climate change to my attention. I came at this interest sideways, through my background in public health. Climate change causes a ton of health issues. It makes childhood asthma worse, it increases the risks of pandemics, it affects mental health. And of course, it causes natural disasters. The more digging I did, the more it became clear that climate change is intertwined with all sorts of social injustices.
Why did you start making comics about environmental issues?
Katy Doughty: For me, it was impossible not to! Making comics is how I research and process a lot of issues. Especially for my new book How To Survive The End of the World. In this book I dive into existential threats to humanity–anything from plagues to asteroids to AI. It probably won’t surprise you to know that climate change is the longest chapter. On a personal level, writing and drawing about environmental issues deepened my knowledge. The act of drawing nature became an exercise in admiration as I was forced to slow down and really see it.
Meera Subramanian: Here’s where imposter syndrome flares up in all its glory. 🙂 It was the illustrator Danica Novgorodoff who had the idea for this book and brought me into the project to help her write it. But once she approached me, I was so entranced. How could I take all of that super serious science journalism stuff I’ve been steeped in and make it accessible to a totally new audience? We spent the last six years working collaboratively to make A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis. I wrote most of the manuscript and Danica brought it to life with her drawings and watercolors.
How are global concerns integrated into your work?
Meera Subramanian: The climate crisis is truly affecting the entire planet, so if you happen to live on earth, you’re going to experience the effects. Probably already have. As a storyteller, I try to find the people and places that make that great big story specific and particular. “Climate change” can seem like this big amorphous thing, so let me tell you a story, for example, about a girl name Xiye whose Mexican hometown was ravaged by a flood, and what she learned from it.
Katy Doughty: Telling stories about climate change is an exercise in zooming in and out. Zoom in to a single story: a person who lost their home in a fire, for instance. Zoom out and contextualize that story with the global rise in temperatures, and with other wildfires across the world. I try to keep climate justice at the forefront when telling these stories. Climate justice is the idea that the groups that least contribute to the climate crisis are the ones that feel its effects the most. I make a point of highlighting who’s the most vulnerable to climate change–which is often young people, Indigenous people, and people in the Global South.
What’s your favorite thing about environmental activism?
Meera Subramanian: There have been times in my life when I’ve been an activist and other times when I’ve steered clear of it to do the work of a journalist. But there is always power in people gathering, coming together to share their voices and make clear what they want to see different in the world that they live in. In our book, we explore how activism is often seen as the one big protest march, but it’s not! So much goes into the work of making the world a better place. A lot of it is really tedious and boring and makes for terrible Insta posts but is also deeply necessary. My favorite thing is that activism helps connect you with other people who care like you do about an issue and are willing to do the work to make change happen.
Katy Doughty: There are so many ways to go about it! Protests may be the most visible form of activism, but they’re the tip of the iceberg. Not really a protest person but you love gardening? Turn your yard into a pollinator garden or a place to grow your own veggies. Have a black thumb but skills in storytelling? Write a story that unlocks people’s imagination about what a green future could look like. Not much of a writer but knowledgeable about local politics? Advocate for more transit and less urban sprawl in your community. There’s room for everyone in this movement.
What’s your least favorite thing about environmental activism?
Meera Subramanian: How easily it can get twisted around. Media and algorithms can focus on fringe elements and there’s so much disinformation. The number of people alarmed by climate change has doubled in the last twenty years, yet often their voices are painted as extreme, even though they are reasonably asking for a planet that are our grandchildren can inhabit.
Katy Doughty: I tend to side-eye corporate environmental activism, especially if it shifts responsibility from the corporation to individuals. One example that grinds my gears is how the oil company BP popularized the idea of the carbon footprint. They had a whole campaign telling people to shrink their carbon footprint. Meanwhile they’re cutting back on green energy investments.
What misconceptions have you found people have about the future of the planet?
Katy Doughty: Among some tech-minded people, there’s a sentiment that some new invention will come along and fix all these problems. I don’t agree. Don’t get me wrong: there’s room for all sorts of innovation to mitigate effects of climate change and to protect the natural world. But the key thing–reducing carbon emissions–isn’t something we can invent our way out of. Fortunately, the tools we need already exist. Green energy exists, the ability to regulate extraction exists. The challenge is just implementing them.
Meera Subramanian: Way too often, living more sustainably on the planet is painted as a life of sacrifice and drudgery. But think about it. Would you rather be stuck in a god-awful traffic jam, surrounded by cars with a single person in each one, inching down a highway, filled with road rage? Or would you prefer to step onto an electric tram that runs regularly, stops a couple blocks from your house and whisks you to work while you read a good graphic novel?
Are there other media about nature or the environment that have inspired your work?
Katy Doughty: There are so many! For a meditative take, I’m in awe of Madeleine Jubilee Saito’s work. She’s an illustrator who makes what she calls “visual poems” about life during a climate crisis. When I’m looking for masterworks of journalism and memoir, I reach for Joe Sacco’s Paying The Land and Kate Beaton’s Ducks, both graphic novels about the exploitation of people and the land in Canada’s oil boom. Finally, for engaging nonfiction about nature (and a bunch of other topics) for younger readers, I’m always inspired by MacMillan’s Science Comics series.
Meera Subramanian: So many. Every form of media can offer inspiration to my work as a nonfiction writer. The novel The Overstory by Richard Powers inspired the structure of our graphic novel. The poetry of Nickole Brown has helped me write about animals and loss. And I always find gems in the writings of old-school nature writers like Wendell Berry and Henry David Thoreau, along with the many phenomenal new climate/nature writers such as Emily Raboteau, Elizabeth Rush, and Lacy M. Johnson.
If you could recommend one other graphic novel about climate change, what would it be and why?
Meera Subramanian: Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance, by Denali Sai Nalamalapu, features six real-life changemakers fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline. I love how she brought together reporting and intimate interviews into a graphic novel format.
Katy Doughty: A Better World Is Possible by Meera Subramanian and Danica Novgorodoff. It beautifully intertwines the personal stories of the creators with interviews from young activists and top-notch research. Plus the watercolor art blows me away.