Gail Pittaway
Emergency Weather by Tim Jones (The Cuba Press, 2023), 255pp, $38
In this fine example of the cli-fi writing genre, the title of which is all too accurate, the impact of climate change on people, places and events is explored through a variety of scenarios and happenings. Tim Jones is a self-professed climate activist who has already published on these themes—including a poetry collection, New Sea Land (Makaro Press, 2016) and his previous climate fiction novella, Where We Land (The Cuba Press, 2019). Emergency Weather brings three distinctive characters to Wellington in the very near future to ride out a super storm, ferocious beyond the expectations of any hardened Wellingtonian. But long before that, each character has already been a casualty of climate-changing catastrophes. The novel covers a range of aspects of climate change and global warming but also shows how the ineptitude and inertia of authorities have only contributed to worsening the situation.
Allie’s farmer husband has recently committed suicide after a drought dried up their Otago dairy farm and desiccated their livelihood. After the drought, there was a ferocious storm, and suddenly the farm was awash with ‘Shit and mud everywhere’. Sadly, there had been no compensation from the bank or any other authorities, and Bill’s desperation and anguish spilled over into aggression and then despair. He had already spent too many sessions in the local police station on charges of assaulting the bank manager and resisting police restraint. Jones creates a sympathetic account of the stresses and provocations that have brought Bill to take the drastic action of shooting himself: ‘He had been considerate. He had shot himself … so the blood splatter was limited in extent and wouldn’t be too difficult for her to clean.’ Allie must adjust to this unexpected tragedy while finding a way to continue and survive. Should she sell the farm or keep it on? Overwhelmed by the accumulated crises, she runs away to Wellington, where her politician brother-in-law has recently become a Minister in a new parliamentary office with the Beehive, with the Orwellian title of The Ministry of Resilience. The Beehive itself is described as: ‘A place where all angles were unnerving, a labyrinth where monsters lurked down each strangely shaped corridor, where only initiates could find their way from A to B, while the rest were transported from A to Q or X, or never heard from again.’
At the other end of the country, teenaged Zeke has survived a terrifying ordeal as his family’s house and the land it rests on slip down in a remote part of the East Coast. He was at home with his younger sister, Te Aroha, when his online game was stopped by a power cut, followed by a forceful rainstorm, and then by the wrenching of the house from its base as everything turned sideways. In the aftermath, as officials and journalists convened to get mileage out of the disaster, Zeke’s family was split up. His mother and younger sister went to stay with Whaea Ngātai, further up the East Coast, and his older sister, Grace, moved in with her boyfriend in his sleepout. With his father long since set up in Perth and unlikely to send for him, Zeke was put on a bus to stay with his aunt and uncle Mere and Paul in Lower Hutt, a shift to a bland, flat city that only adds to his feelings of despondence. There, alienated by his small-town and coastal background, his misery intensifies until a chance encounter at a heavy metal concert with his relatives gives his situation some reprieve. Caity, beautiful and confident, is one of the leaders of a climate activist group that paints graffiti slogans and pastes up posters around the locality. She is Zeke’s age, and she seems to like him. When he follows her to a demonstration at the Beehive, neither realises that they will be faced with the consequences of the climate crimes against which they are there to protest.
In the meantime, civil servant and climate scientist Stephanie is called in as a consultant by the Ministry for Resilience, which has been formed in response to the growth of climate-related catastrophes in the country. Already disenchanted by the ministry and by the government’s lack of action, she hopes her voice of warning will be heeded: ‘The illusion of economic growth—the giant shadow cast by greed on the planet’s future—still held sway … whatever the policy documents said, the Government somehow always managed to find money for new motorways.’ But it is not until she and her wife Miranda encounter raw nature on one of their regular mountain tramps in the South Island that she fully grasps the extent of her disenchantment—it is not depression, but grief that is causing her to consider offering her resignation.
Stephanie’s advisor’s position, coupled with her cynicism about government procrastination, gives Jones the opportunity to develop his call for action while also portraying a convincing account of the perspectives of the many interest groups and lobbyists involved in any political select committee. The miners, farmers, iwi and industry leaders each have their say after Stephanie, the scientist, has laid the case for immediate action: ‘Unless we reduce emissions all our attempts at adaptation will ultimately fail.’ While all seem to agree on the need for reductions in carbon emissions, each has a reason to delay drastic cuts. It is through Stephanie’s perspective and voice that Jones’ most overt political stance is expressed. Matt, the Minister of Resilience, is a person of good intentions, but his clichéd speeches and habit of starting consultancy groups then leaving them for a time, only to return after the main opinions have been expressed, does not promise progress: ‘The Government was working with an emissions reduction plan that was more about reducing political discomfort than reducing emissions.’
Jones writes with engaging energy and warmth about the various settings, especially the South Island high country and Wellington, the scene of the convergence of characters, climate and catastrophe. The descriptions of storms and storm damage are powerful and alarming, while the Beehive, as the focus of nature’s fury, is a fitting fulcrum for the gusts and twists of nature; it’s a behemoth, looming over the characters and their concerns.
Through the strength and vitality of his characters, the voice of each so distinctive and credible, Jones lifts this novel beyond a moralistic rant to a substantial and believable story of ordinary people caught up in extreme circumstances. The reader comes to care about Zeke, with his agonising teenage lack of confidence, and the straight-talking Allie, risking a new relationship so soon after the end of her marriage. It is Stephanie, though, vacillating between despair and determination and facing both the heat of politics and the consequences of climate change heating up the planet, who, while seeming the least appealing of the three, is at the core of the novel’s intentions and at the eye of the gathering hurricane.
GAIL PITTAWAY is a Senior Lecturer in Writing, Media and Storytelling in the School of Media Arts at Wintec, Kirikiriroa, Hamilton. She has published both creative work and academic papers and is one of the co-editors of Meniscus (International Journal of Creative Writing). She regularly reviews books for Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon programme.
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