Lessons on the environment from a sci-fi classic

We must cultivate ecological literacy to learn how to address the planet-wide problems, writes Deborah Williams

How can we protect the planet? Ecological literacy has some answers for us. Sam Panthaky / AFP

Wednesday was Earth Day. Have you noticed that with only a few exceptions, all these “days” celebrate what usually gets overlooked? For instance, in the US there is “Secretary’s Day”, but nowhere on earth is there a “Hug a CEO” day or “Kiss a Multi-National Conglomerate Day”.

So yes, the Earth, our poor exhausted Earth, gets a day of recognition, where we all try to remember to shut the lights off and turn the AC to a slightly less bone-chilling temperature. I suppose Earth Day is better than last month’s “Earth Hour”, when we were all supposed to dim our lights … for an hour.

They say that every little bit counts, but is that really true? Does every little bit count or are our individual “bits” so tiny as to be irrelevant? In a city where every hotel and mall worth its salt (desalination pun utterly intended) has a “water feature”, does it matter if we let the tap run while we brush our teeth?

Thinking about water in the desert and a beleaguered planet leads me to another anniversary: the 50th anniversary this year of the science-fiction novel Dune, which came out in 1965 and hasn’t been out of print. I first read Frank Herbert’s novel when I was about 12 and much of the novel went right over my head. I missed the elements of Greek tragedy and Arab culture, and didn’t understand that the novel critiqued the global reliance on fossil fuel (depicted in the novel as something called “spice”, only available on the desert planet, and the only thing that enabled intergalactic travel). To me, Dune was just a juicy novel bursting with adventure and intrigue.

Sci-fi, however, is not really my cup of intergalactic tea. I just like Dune, which by now I’ve read more times than I can count. The first time I went out to the Empty Quarter, in fact, I had a kind of déjà vu, caused by the novel’s ­eerily precise descriptions: the vast spaces that dwarf human existence, the muffled silence of the desert at dawn. One of the novel’s central plot lines concerns the plans of the desert dwellers – called Fremen – to “green” their planet through an intricate irrigation system that gives every seedling its own tiny moisture catcher. In their effort to change the planet’s surface, the Fremen have decided that yes, every little bit helps: they wear “stillsuits” that reclaim the body’s water; they know to the fractional millionth how much water they need to achieve their goal.

Herbert said that he intended his novel to be a warning against slavish devotion to heroes, but when I reread the novel again this autumn, what stood out were lessons about planetary responsibility. The novel’s “bad guys”, the Harkonnen family, offer standard displays of villainy – murder, theft, depravity – as well as being environmentally destructive. They waste water and they waste human resources. The Harkonnens, like many of us (albeit without the Harkonnen-esque character flaws), assume that someone, somewhere else, will solve the ecological problems that beset the world. In their profligate attitudes, the Harkonnens become a warning to us all.

The novel offers another warning about ecology in the final thoughts of the Planetary Ecologist. Marooned in the desert, he thinks “you can’t draw neat lines around planet-wide problems … we must cultivate ecological literacy”. Ecologically literate people would realise we can’t quarantine environmental damage: the huge atolls of refuse adrift in the Pacific Ocean, for instance, comprise rubbish from every country in the world, not just one.

I hope that Dune never goes out of print. I’ve loved sharing its arcana with my children now that they’re old enough to read it (and, as I did, to miss many of the novel’s subtleties). But I hope that in 10 or 20 years, the planet is so healthy that we no longer have to celebrate Earth Day.

Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi. She is the author of The Time Locket, a novel that she wrote as Deborah Quinn