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1. Cartoon group - Flirting with Apocalypse • As Stanley Kubrick played upon in his 1964 work Dr. Strangelove, nuclear weapons were the foremost public symbol of apocalypse in the twentieth century. To some extent the prospect of nuclear apocalypse remains to this day, though this primacy is challenged, in many circles, by fears of global warming and devastating climatic change.Indeed scholars studying potential doomsday scenarios (such as Donald Worster and Bill McKibben) have tended for some time to see such less explosive factors as being of more pressing concern. Those exploring environmental paradigms have foregrounded a variety of topics as examples of humankind's flirtation with apocalypse, including: human nature and the seemingly irrepressible desire for expansion and greed (sections 1-2); man’s confidence in their collective power over nature; and the paradoxical belief that human activity could not change something as fundamental as nature (sections 3-4). This moral maze has caused much human deliberation, protest and rhetoric (section 5), yet ultimately, for all man's activities, a simple truth is evident – nature, altered by human activity or otherwise, can be monstrous and all-powerful (section 6). • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

2. Record code: VY1006 • The mushroom cloud is an iconic image of 20th century, a symbol of violence, fear, obliteration, tension and détente. • Time for a meeting at the summit • Vicky [Victor Weisz] : Daily Mirror(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

3. Record code: JL1252 • 1) Green, Green Grass of HomeGreen Line coaches started business on 09 July 1930, initially servicing a handful of towns within a 30 mile radius of Greater London. They quickly expanded, purchasing several independent coach companies in the home counties.Lee here makes light of British concerns for the so-called 'Green Belt' around London, as the new travel opportunities allowed Londoners to bring a piece of the country back to the city, thus eroding the natural beauty found therein. • London Laughs: Country Buses / "... and perhaps next time you visit the Green Belt, Lady, kindly lea... • Joseph Lee : Evening Standard(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

4. Record code: MC0061 • The 1951 Treaty of Paris established the European Coal and Steel Community, heralding a new wave of European supranationalism. A year later, debates surrounded expanding these principles to agriculture. Britain adopted a watching brief over proceedings, partly as a result of her focus on decolonisation and partly due to a lingering suspicion that such measures would circumvent her sovereignty. But the high population density of the British Isles also meant the pressures on British farming were somewhat different to those of her continental neighbours. Here Cummings palpably realises the particular fear of British farmers with regards to the expansion of urban space. • Agriculture debate - One delegate said that if building went on at its present rate, then in four ce... • Michael Cummings : Daily Express(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

5. Record code: 24258 • Here woodland animals (representative of the country population) voice disapproval at a Tory U-turn which allowed new homes to be built on previously protected Green Belt land."I told you all along that Green Belts were just a lot of eyewash!" says the squirrel, foregrounding a fear of Green Belt erosion still controversial today... • "I told you all along that Green Belts were just a lot of eyewash!" • Osbert Lancaster : Daily Express(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

6. Record code: PC4182 • Indeed, New Labour, and in particular Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, immediately set about dismantling the Green Belt upon their election to office. In this instance, political narratives won over environmental concerns. Labour’s policy sought to introduce new housing to the Green Belt in the hope of introducing Labour inclined voting communities into this traditional Conservative heartland. Unsurprisingly the British ‘right’ responded with indignation. More surprising, perhaps, was their appeal to environmental concerns; though a cynical commentator might suggest that ecological rhetoric disguised a fear of new homes threatening booming house prices in the Home Counties... • No caption • Richard Willson : The Times(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

7. Record code: 67520 • Conservative policy in the preceding years, however, reveals tensions (and contradictions) within the rhetoric of the English right surrounding green spaces. The free market capitalist optimism of the early 1990s (discussed at greater length in the sections that follow) demanded Britain build, at the expense of her forests. Yet in spite of this housing boom, cuts to welfare budgets forced the lowest paid into hardship. Newman here draws on both these narratives, observing the irony of homelessness in an age of home building through the lens of deforestation and the destruction of animal habit. • "I was made homeless by the Tory manifesto" • Nicholas Newman : Financial Times(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

8. Record code: 14339 • Alongside the Green Belt, the National Trust (est. 1894) is a prominent symbol of green grass and countryside. Waite here explores the pressures placed upon the Trust, and hence the countryside, by governments expansive motorway building plan. Between December 1958 and November 1968 a remarkable 606 miles of motorway had been opened in the UK, including significant sections of the M1 and M3.Today the National Trust continues to play a key role in conserving the English countryside, having under Tony Blair's Labour government (1997 – 2007) been granted a strong voice in environmental policy. Notably the National Trust manages 700 miles (nearly 10%) of the English coastline, thus ensuring the public and ecology-centric character of these spaces. • "You've failed" / "Phew! That's one crisis solved" • Keith Waite : The Sun(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

9. Record code: WH1277 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • How they "improve" our cities. [on reverse] • W.K. Haselden : Daily Mirror(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

10. Record code: WH1277 - annotation • Many years prior to these debates, W. K. Haselden explored the loss of green spaces through the civic environment. In a series of prints published between 1917 and 1931 Haselden mourned the loss of trees from urban spaces. For Haselden there is an evident decline in aesthetic appreciation of the natural picturesque. The achievements of nature (noble, tall, strong trees) are replaced with the achievements of man (noble, tall, strong statues). He observes a slippery slope, where the replacement of one tree – one of the 'greatest charms' of a park – leads inevitability to them being gradually considered a nuisance to modern, civilised order. Parks, he shows, are considered places to be improved upon by man. Disrespect for parks is then Haselden's chief concern. But he also invokes biblical plagues, by suggesting that, in abandoning a once proud (romantic) appreciation of nature and natural spaces, Englishmen and women are exposing them to the less civil aspects of nature.There is then an evident contradiction within Haselden's rhetoric. Nature is here not nature in all its forms, but (as mentioned above) in the sense of the 'natural picturesque', where nature is (re)created with reference to what is envisioned as most aesthetically pleasing by man (think the follies the Victorian built). Nonetheless, Haselden represents an early environmentalist voice within British cartooning, illustrating that ecological disaster is not merely a product of wilful destruction but often manifest indifference. • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

11. Record code: WH4275 • What is a park. [caption on reverse] • W.K. Haselden : Daily Mirror(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

12. Record code: WH4485 • Is it an improvement. [caption on reverse] • W.K. Haselden : Daily Mirror(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

13. Record code: WH4805 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • Will it come to this. [caption on reverse] • W.K. Haselden : Daily Mirror(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

14. Record code: WH4805 - annotation • Interpretation of this cartoon is by Emily Jane Roe, a third year undergraduate studying for a BA in English & American Literature and History at the University of Kent, Canterbury:“The main outline might be put thus. On the surface of the earth at the present time two groups - man and the insects - may be counted as the only animals which are definitely on the increase. It is a neck and neck race between them for the mastery of the world.” This account from entomologist A. H. Crook could indeed outline the nature of Hazelden’s lampooning in this cartoon. Consisting of two mirror images, Hazelden plays on the irony that human advancement was the cause for insect populations in England, and indeed all over the developed world, to dramatically spike in the form of ‘outbreaks’. Hazeldon thus depicts the idyllic life before human advancement - a life of youthful love, childish glee, and much civilised tea drinking - as the epitome of English domestic life, accentuated by garish Austenian overtones. The only insect to be seen is the tormented butterfly chased, with little adult concern, by an aristocratic child.In the second scene, depicting an imagined future, the once anguished insectoids have gotten their just deserts - they now dominate the entire garden scene to the extent that the tiny dots resembling swarms of flies are indiscernible from the outlines of the objects and garden features of the above image. It is as if the garden itself is now just a mass swarm of bugs, with human life nowhere to be seen except for the vague outline of the once majestic manor house (it is interesting to note the change in drawing technique by Hazeldon here from clear, organised, refined lines to the erratic, chaotic and suffocating clusters of dots in depiction of the delineation between light and shade). A spider hangs menacingly in the exact spot where the Austenian lady illustrative of the clear Austenian undertones once sat, calling to mind the traditional English nursery rhyme ‘Little Miss Muffet’. Indeed, like Little Miss Muffet the lady is frightened away by, not only one spider, but an entire throng of them.Thus the Arcadian ‘garden of England’ is now dilapidated, overrun with the menace of insects. The once immaculately kept lawn is now overgrown, in adherence to the requirements of its new inhabitants. Such as the garden was once an Englishman’s paradise, now by virtue of complacent neglect is it possessed by the other ‘master’ of the new advanced world - the dreaded insect." • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

15. Record code: 21034 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • 'It's all our fault' • Trog [Wally Fawkes] : Observer(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

16. Record code: 21034 - annotation • 2) ConsumerismEnvironmental historians have long theorised that over-consumption portends ecological disaster. George W Bush's belief that economic growth was dependant on US citizens performing a national duty of spending on commodities, demonstrated how individual/local/national interests can seem irreconcilable with global exigencies. The cartoons in this section detail the growth and critique of these ideologies.Workers queue outside a Labour Exchange, the 70s equivalent of the Jobcentre. Sporting dark suits and glum expressions, their postures exhibit permanence; a sense that the line rarely moves.This is hardly surprising. Since winning power from Labour's Harold Wilson in the 1970 General Election, Conservative PM Edward Heath had overseen a disastrous period of economy activity. His chosen Chancellor of the Exchequer, Iain McLeod, died just a month after the June election, and economic policy under his successor, Anthony Barber, lacked clarity and purpose. Having pledged full employment in their manifesto, the Conservatives saw unemployment double to just over 1 million by the start of 1972.The solution to this, as free-market orientated Heath claimed, was to spend. And this spending would not come from the public purse, but was to be encouraged upon individuals. A vigorous consumer orientated free-market was to be the panacea.Fawkes' identification of the obvious flaw in this logic (that without jobs people could not spend) demonstrates the inequalities of free-market economics. Moreover, by encouraging spending Heath's government made consumption seem more 'natural' than frugality and saving. This mentality of frivolous use has, as we have seen in the following decades, had a disastrous impact upon ecological equilibrium. • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

17. Record code: NG3784 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • "Which comes first?" • Nicholas Garland : The Independent(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

18. Record code: NG3784 - annotation • In 1988 Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had argued that although the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), pursued by the European Union, attempted to offer stability and security to farmers, the free-market was the preferable and most efficient means of securing such goals. Although successive budgets and anti-CAP rhetoric claimed to be aimed at helping farming, many farmers thought state subsidies were now required.These antagonisms provide the backdrop for the salmonella controversy of December 1988. On 03 December Edwina Currie, MP for South Derbyshire and Junior Health Minister since September 1988, claimed that “most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella”. Naturally, farmers and egg producers were outraged. The National Farmer's Union sought compensation, and under huge pressure Currie resigned from her cabinet post on 16 December.Garland pitches Thatcher as an observer on the controversy, left with a decision to either put consumers or farmers first. Ultimately, by declaring the novelty of the problem, denying Opposition claims that government lack of regulation was at fault, and establishing a 'Committee on the Microbiological Aspects of Food' Thatcher chose the consumer. This effectively undermined consumer confidence in British egg production for a decade and saw an increase in egg imports (a stamp on quality assured eggs, known as the British Lion mark, was reintroduced in 1998 in an attempt to restore this lost confidence).This case illustrates the neo-conservative ideology of Britain in the 1980s and early-1990s. Consumers were to have freedom and choice, and domestic production was not to be protected if it could not succeed in the free-market. As Thatcher stated in a letter to the Labour leader Neil Kinnock on 21 Feb 1989: “The Government has enabled the consumer to have a wider choice of food at all price ranges than ever before, and we have taken active steps to ensure that the consumer has the information to choose food to meet their personal preferences and life-style.” • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

19. Record code: 67575 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • ' I bought these South African oranges because I felt so guilty about the cricket' • Matt [Matthew Pritchett] : Daily Telegraph(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

20. Record code: 67575 - annotation • In November 1991 the South African cricket team toured India in what marked their first international series since their return to the sport (South Africa were banned from international cricket in 1970 as the Commenwealth attempted to distance themselves from the ruling apartheid regime). Although a tightly fought series, the Indian side - including a young Sachin Tendulkar and iconic veteran Kapil Dev - eventually beat their inexperienced opponents in two of the three one-day internationals.The first match, held in Calcutta on 10 November 1991, captured the British imagination, as sport became symbolic of a new wave of optimism surrounding South Africa (this trend was to continue: on 17 March 1992 white South Africans voted overwhelmingly in favour of constitutional reform; the 1994 general election saw Nelson Mandela and the ANC come to power; and on 24 June 1995 the victorious South African rugby captain Francois Pienaar held aloft the Webb Ellis cup).This sporting context is, of course, the primary referent of Matt's joke. Yet there is a secondary point which can be drawn from his cartoon. South African reforms brought about a swift resumption of trade relations with the UK. There may have been, as Matt's commentary suggest, a desire to support reform in South Africa through buying her produce, yet the appearance of that very produce is also indicative of the pervasiveness of the resurgent global capitalism, global trade, and global markets operating in the early 1990s. As the 1990s wore on, and supermarkets such as Tesco went about aggressively monopolising the markets – firstly in groceries and later consumables more generally - fresh produce increasingly became sourced from across the world and knowledge of seasonality declined. This mass commodification and globalisation of the food supply (both physically and mentally) has had clear ramifications on the environment by way of how food is conceptualised. • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

21. Record code: PC5102 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • No caption • Michael Heath : The Independent(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

22. Record code: PC5102 - annotation • Christmas is, despite its spiritual origins, the modern symbol of reckless and conspicuous consumption. Moreover, its centrality to annual trade cycles and its use to gauge such virtual signifiers as 'economic growth' and 'consumer confidence' demonstrate the exploitative mentality of big business.Heath's bold, brash style may make for an obvious critique of consumerism (notably how Christmas as greed subverts its selfless origins), but subtle witty commentaries remain present. Note, for example, the few figures picked out of this otherwise faceless parade. Towards the bottom right two middle-aged businessmen, frustrated and anxious, make their way from the busy high street. Nearby a well dressed female raises her voice to a crying child. Behind them small groups, including women sporting what resemble fine ushanka hats, browse the shop windows. These well-to-do types represent the chaos, the hysteria, the madness of the 'SPEND! SPEND! SPEND! SPEND! SPEND!' mentality, and they contrast starkly with the less orthodox figures who stand bemused, and speak for the cartoonist/left-leaning Independent reader in the bottom left-hand corner. This couple are not exempt from critique, they after all carry a gaudily wrapped gift, yet they cut through the masquerade and see Christmas as it really is. The signs reading 'BE GREEDY IT'S COOL' and 'GET LEGLESS THIS CHRISTMAS' are then what they project onto the scene - once the glitzy mask, under considerable strain, has cracked, this Christian festival is revealed to them as in reality a hyper-consumerist Vanity Fair. • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

23. Record code: 78558 • And what is the result of this toxic mix of free-market economics, conspicuous consumption and globalisation? For Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell it is clear to see - ministers who believe they can expand Heathrow airport without compromising Green principles; executives of 'bailed out' banks such as Sir Fred Goodwin receiving huge bonuses at, ultimately, the public's expense; police officers at the 2009 G-20 London summit defending the interests of finance over global environmental security; and the few creaming off what wealth remains. • Another madcap bid for popularity: • Steve Bell : The Guardian(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

24. Record code: 78767 • No caption • Steve Bell : The Guardian(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

25. Record code: 78943 • No caption • Steve Bell : The Guardian(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

26. Record code: 79111 • No caption • Steve Bell : The Guardian(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

27. Record code: 82312 • This capitalism individualism has been reflected in global climate policy. As a result national interests have taken precedence at successive United Nations Climate Change Conferences, notably Copenhagen 2009 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cartoon/2009/dec/19/copenhagen-glo...) and Cancún 2010, offering, Martin Rowson illustrates, little more than partial solutions and non-binding agreements on carbon reduction. • Well, that's the World saved then! Phew! • Martin Rowson : The Guardian(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

28. Record code: 10901 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • "PHEW!" • Nicholas Garland : Daily Telegraph(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

29. Record code: 10901 - annotation • 3) Oil SpillsOil spills mean different things to different people. To some they are an economic phenomena, damaging to global commodity and stock prices. Others see oil spills as events one responds to functionally by 'cleaning-up'. Yet increasingly they are categorised within the rhetoric of ‘disaster’; as bird and marine life is choked, and as micro-particles from seemingly long-ago spillages are traced in waters across the globe and in the food chain. Responses to the Deepwater Horizon accident of Spring/Summer 2010, which caused nearly 5 million barrels of oil to seep into the Gulf of Mexico (and beyond), exemplifies this new rhetoric. Although commentators were quick to catergorise the incident alongside traditional surface “oil spills”, as Monique Harden, founder and co-director of the Advocates for Environmental Human Rights notes, Deepwater Horizon was no “spill” but rather a “haemorrhaging” of the earth (http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jun/19/naomi-klein-gulf-oil-s...). This section will explore how the rhetoric of the oil spill is presented in British cartoons, and will suggest that they show a trend moving from local, functional, and economic concerns toward in the early twenty-first century a more global, ecological, and disaster orientated visual-verbal linguistics.On 18 March 1967 the supertanker Torrey Canyon struck rocks between the Scilly Isles and Cornwall in the first major commercial disaster of its kind. The British clean-up operation was widely ridiculed, as despite the efforts of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to first clean and then destroy the oil slick, a toxic combination of oil and cleaning agents wrecked the Cornish coastline. Yet, as Patrick Barkham writes, the spill is still with us today as ‘living proof that big oil spills plague ecosystems for decades. Forty-three years on, the crude from the Torrey Canyon is still killing wildlife on a daily basis’. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/24/torrey-canyon-oil-spil...). Here Garland mocks Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson for his initial inertia and inability to quantify the disaster as something on his doorstep. • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

30. Record code: 10910 • A remarkable sense that the Torrey Canyon slick can be merely cleaned-up is present in the cartoons that followed. Here, despite the jovial tone, the identification of the chemicals used to treat the spill with domestic cleaning products, and thus smaller scale domestic cleaning scenarios, is notable. Indeed, this was the government’s intention, as they branded such chemicals as mere ‘detergents’ in a cynical spin on the far less palatable reality of the solvent-emulsifiers used. • "This stuff may work wonders, but I wish he'd cut out the commercials!" • Jak [Raymond Jackson] : Evening Standard(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

31. Record code: 10964 • Once attempts to contain and disperse the spill had failed the British government, with permission from the owners of both ship and oil, set about burning off the oil. The Navy and Air Force began a synchronised bombing campaign, which, after some setbacks (such as missing the slick altogether, and the oil fire going out in high seas) seemed a success. After three days of bomb and napalm attacks the remaining oil in the half-sunken ship had been burnt out, and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins declared on 29 March that “it looks as though this is probably the end of the bombing operation”.Attention at home now turned to the onshore clean-up, yet as Cummings reveals the rhetoric of finality and completion remained. This was reflected in political processes with a very ‘post’ event feel – appeals to the U.N. for tighter shipping laws (The Times, 31 Mar 1967); and the presentation of a White Paper to the House of Commons saturated with statements in the past tense (a White Paper is traditionally a document used to set out future policy and proposed action). [HC Deb 04 April 1967 vol 744 cc38-54 - http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/apr/04/torrey-canyon]. • "Success at last! If you look very closely you should see a bit of the fish that didn't get away ..... • Michael Cummings : Daily Express(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

32. Record code: 20499 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • "As well as consuming the oils slick sir, this one also devours the offending ship." • Bernard Cookson : Evening Standard(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

33. Record code: 20499 - annotation • Cookson here responds the news that a team at Cardiff University, led by Professor David Hughes, were attempting to find a way of removing the problem of waste plastics, including crude oil. During the same year a General Electric employee, Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty, had applied for a US patent on a genetically engineered Pseudomonas bacteria. Such bacteria – what Cookson calls ‘oil eating germs’ – could break down crude oil into less harmful substances, and, it was hoped, would solve the problems associated with oil disasters. Intriguingly, the patent was initially rejected on the grounds that animate life forms were not patentable. However on 16 June 1980 the U.S. Supreme decided in the case “Diamond vs. Chakrabarty” that life forms could be patented when the outcome of “human ingenuity and research” and not “nature’s handiwork”.Absurdity aside, Cookson’s cartoon displays positivism towards the potential role of science in finding a ‘solution’ to the problem of oil pollution as the result of man-made disasters. Cheap oil (the first major oil crisis was not to occur until the OPEC oil embargo of October 1973 – March 1974), booming economies and improving global living standards had created a huge global fleet of oil carrying supertankers. Accidents were therefore more likely, and science was charged with solving what seemed a necessary evil.To date, however, microbes have never been successfully deployed in wake of an oil spill. • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

34. Record code: CA0295 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • No caption • Mel Calman : The Times(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

35. Record code: CA0295 - annotation • In his distinctively minimalism style, Calman imagines oil seeping from the television the moment ‘THE NEWS’ flashes onto the screen. A glum disposition suggests this is not something to be celebrated. Events of the early 1980s highlighted the volatility of oil as both a commodity and a substance. After the events of 1973, the 1979 oil crisis bookended a decade of energy concerns, and by 1981 crude oil prices reached a peak of nearly 40 dollars per barrel (more than double what they were just two years previous). These crises, however, had compelled Europe and the United States to look outside of OPEC for oil imports. Norway, Mexico and Nigeria were courted by the free-market, leading ultimately to the oil glut of the 1980s.In Nigeria, where drilling have began in 1958, Shell and BP used this opportunity to aggressively pursue fresh oil reserves. But poor operational standards brought with it increased spillages. Corrosion of pipes in particular has been blamed for approximately half of the nearly 1.8 million barrels of oil spilt between 1978 and 1981. Indeed in 1980 alone 241 near shore spills resulted in 600,000 barrels of oil polluting the Nigerian coastline, destroying people’s livelihoods and the environment they depend upon.Science had therefore failed to solve the problem of oil, and Calman reflects that pessimism. Regrettably, the reckless behaviour of multinationals with respect to poor countries and their environments persists today. • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

36. Record code: 62184 • British cartoonists neglected to report the Exxon Valdez oil spill which occurred in Price William Sound, Alaska on 24 March 1989. Since the event, Exxon Valdez has come to be considered the most devastating environmental disaster caused by man. Perhaps little notice was taken because the accident took place in an isolated location not of immediate impact to human communities. The event certainly was considered less newsworthy than Mikhail Gorbachev's impending state visit. However, a weariness towards oil spills must also be considered a factor.In the early twentieth century, the attention of British cartoonists turned to the relationship between oil companies, governments, and the environment. And it is only then that Exxon in particular begin to play a prominent role in graphic satire.Willson here suggests that, although President George W Bush may think the United States to be Atlas, that in reality it is the big oil conglomerates, such as Exxon, who are in charge. It is their premiership has that caused the planet to be tossed aside, ecological concerns marginalised, and the environment destroyed... • The world's only superpower ... ... Alas! • Richard Willson : The Times(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

37. Record code: 64451 • However, once Britain and the United States invaded Iraq, in doing so circumventing the jurisdiction of the United Nations Security Council, the suspicion emerged that these western governments rather than engaged in a power struggle with oil companies were in fact willing subordinates.For Dave Brown the Dubya view of the world, keenly observed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is distinctively oil and oil company centric... • No caption • Dave Brown : The Independent(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

38. Record code: 63754 • ...and the questionable motives for the Iraq war are central to this accusation. • No caption • Dave Brown : The Independent(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

39. Record code: 77665 • Iraq did not, however, stabilise oil supply and oil prices. With an economic crises deepening, a beleaguered George W Bush sports a heavily oil company liveried fighter-pilot suit. He holds a petrol (gas) refill nozzle, thus visually connecting the Iraqi fuel pump with multinational oil companies. Bush's concerns are purely with politics – by staying in the pocket of the oil companies the energy crisis, and predicted rise in crude oil prices to $150 per barrel, may be averted. The environment then is, once more, disregarded. • No caption • Steve Bell : The Guardian(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

40. Record code: 81068 • On 20 April 2010 the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon suffered a catastrophic explosion, killing 11 workers and spilling nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a 4 month period. As a result the year saw the attitude and power of oil companies over the environment and environmental policy came under significant criticism.In the aftermath of the third and final televised debate before the 2010 British General Election, Rowson uses the Deepwater Horizon disaster as a symbol of the financial mess both Conservative leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg claimed 13 years of New Labour had left the British economy in.Rowson depicts an surreal and apocalyptic landscape suffocated by oil, trapping the weak and defenceless (if not fantastical) beings. • Slick • Martin Rowson : The Guardian(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

41. Record code: 81274 • Soon the 'blame game' began. For the American press the arch-villain of the piece was BP chief executive Tony Hayward. British Prime Minister David Cameron offered Hayward little defence.Thus here, on the eve of the FIFA World Cup clash between England and the United States, President Barack Obama gruesomely tackles Haywood. Cameron, rather than protesting, shows willingness for Obama to pass him the mangled corpse of the BP chief.Here then is the British media reflecting not on an oil spill in the American seas, but on a global emergency with global repercussions. Attention is not on finality, 'clean-up', or technological solutions, but the imbalance between globalisation and ecology, the failure of laissez-faire economic, and the inevitability of environmental crises as a consequence of our oil-drenched societal structures; a regrettable legacy of the mid-twentieth century. • U.S.A v. Engerlaan! • Martin Rowson : The Guardian(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

42. Record code: LSE0326 • See next slide for accompanying annotation. • Behind the curtain • Low; David (1891-1963) : Evening Standard(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

43. Record code: LSE0326 - annotation • 4) Nuclear weaponsNuclear weapons – the testing of, and threats and fears surrounding them - were a central political narrative of the twentieth century. The existence, power, persistence, and apocalyptic potential of nuclear weaponry were also central to the emergence of a strong environmental rhetoric in the western world. Unsurprisingly therefore cartoon responses to the nuclear problem were (and remain) both legion and myriad. Moreover, the visual language of nuclear warfare and fallout have been used to inform and augment comic commentaries upon a variety of subjects. Threading clear representational threads through and trends from this vast corpus is not the purpose of this section. Instead, it presents striking examples of how 'the bomb' has been imagined by British cartoonists; as a facet of a wider conversation upon man's flirtation with self-induced apocalypse.“She came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high [...] Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw”Much like Lewis Carroll's Alice, a small boy of 1928 peeks with intrigue behind a curtain. He is met with a feast of technological invention - an imagined future of weather control, robots, and communicative media (here 'TELETASTE' stands out as a particularly jovial comic flourish). However, among these delights of utopian and egalitarian optimism stands three portentous potentialities – 'THE FINAL POISON GAS?', 'THE FINAL EXPLOSIVE?', and 'THE HARNESSED ATOM'?.Post-war optimism, science-fiction, and technological achievement combined to create an aura of optimism in the 1920s. Things hitherto imagined could, it seemed, be brought into actuality. Yet as Alice discovered as she traversed Wonderland, appearances can deceive and the beneficial does not always discern itself clearly from the troublesome. Low here plays upon this conundrum, thereby problematising the hope underpinning scientific prediction. Little did he know that Ernest Rutherford's model of the atom, discoveries in astrophysics, and the experiments with radioactivity and nuclear physics to which he refers in this piece, would in the coming years form the basis of an atomic weapon possessing such shocking violence, toxicity, and finality. • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

44. Record code: LSE1258 • On 6 August 1945 “Little Boy” fell on Hiroshima. Three days later, “Fat Man” detonated over Nagasaki. These actions, conducted by the United States, marked the beginnings of the age of atomic weapons.Low was not to know these attacks would represent the only deployment of nuclear weapons in the twentieth century and indeed to date. His design is stark, minimal, and brutal, juxtaposing human ingenuity with the alarmingly underdeveloped decision making ability of humanity. • "Baby play with nice ball?" • Low; David (1891-1963) : Evening Standard(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

45. Record code: ILW3584 • On 14 October 1962 a US photo-reconisence plane flying over Cuba captured on film what the CIA had long suspected – that the USSR were building missile bases on the small communist republic just 230 miles from Florida. The 'Cuban Missile Crisis' followed, two weeks of US-Soviet antagonism where, it is said, the world came closest nuclear apocalypse.On 28 October the leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev, issued a statement declaring that the 'offensive' weapons on Cuba were to be dismantled and returned to the Soviet Union. The crisis was over. But as Illingworth makes clear, the tensions were still high. • No caption • Illingworth, Leslie Gilbert, 1902-1979 : Daily Mail(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

46. Record code: 02360 • France began live nuclear tests in 1960 with an atmospheric explosion in the Algerian desert. Underground tests followed as Charles de Gaulle sought to limit international pressure to cease activity, but French tests remained controversial. Indeed, by 1966 France had moved the programme to her Polynesian territories, specifically the Mururoa atoll. The fierce reaction to these later tests from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), is documented in JG Ballard's Rushing to Paradise (1994) [see also http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/14339 above].Here civil servants preparing to travel to Paris for talks on nuclear test bans hysterically (and thus, to us, humorously) liken Britain's investment in the failed US Skybolt project to the problem of French nuclear testing. • "French nuclear tests are bad enough, but what happens if De Gaulle offers Macmillan a French substi... • Margaret Belsky : Daily Herald(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

47. Record code: 04075 • The world woke on 6 August 1963 to discover that the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union (the 'Big 3') had signed a Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (later PTBT). Most nations were to follow suit (with the notable exceptions of France, Saudi Arabia, and China). The world, stated Premier Khrushchev, would be free from “lethal mushroom clouds”.With ratification falling on the eve of the anniversary of Hiroshima, Vicky takes a morbid tone, contrasting the optimism of Lord Home (the British delegate) with reality. For all Home's statements of security for future generations, Vicky admonishes Home for failing to remember the many children already born who had been killed or poisoned by nuclear weapons. • "...Every human family can live from now on free from the fear that their unborn children may be ... • Vicky [Victor Weisz] : Evening Standard(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

48. Record code: PC4017 • Latterly, concerns have focused on the nuclear test programmes of emerging nations. In May 1998 longstanding antagonists India and Pakistan completed significant underground nuclear tests. This flexing of muscles in lieu of actual conflict ushered these South Asian nations into a period of détente, whilst simultaneously propelling them into narratives of global détente. • "Indian Rope trick" • Bill McArthur : The Glasgow Herald(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

49. Record code: PC4027 • No caption • Bill McArthur : The Glasgow Herald(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk

50. Record code: PC4028 • "Unhealthy competition." • Bill McArthur : The Glasgow Herald(c) The British Cartoon Archive • This document was created at The British Cartoon Archive - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk