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Screenshot from Mark Fiore animation (see link at right). Used with permission.
Photo by Sierra Club.

by Jon Zilber
Environmental Expression Through Art Session

Cartoons and comics aren't just for putting up on your refrigerator or cubicle wall these days. Well-crafted political cartoons have a sly power to get a point across that might be impolitic or impossible to make in any other way.

Case in point: Cartoonist Andy Singer wanted to show the folly of the Bush administration's rhetoric that the solution to the soaring gas prices and the country's insatiable demand for energy is to develop yet more sources of less expensive oil. The resulting cartoon showed Bush applying this same illogic to other problems. The solution to the epidemic of crack addiction? Find more sources of cheaper crack. After reading the cartoon, it's hard to miss the point that in both cases, the right solution is to reduce the demand, not to enhance the supply.

Journalist and cartoonist Ted Rall used a similar technique to illustrate the questionable practice of allowing corporate polluters to trade unused pollution credits from companies with leftover credits to sell. In this cartoon, the same notion was applied to marketplaces for other sins. Need to illegally torture a detained terror suspect? Just buy a civil rights waiver for someone willing to swap theirs for cash.

By changing the context, cartoons can place these abstact environmental policy choices into sharp focus. Stephanie McMillan's cartoons generally take a more direct approach, which include snippets from real-life events and over-the-top satirical cynicism. Her character-driven cartoons tend toward more open-ended observations, such as "If nuclear power is ever the answer, we've got to ask a different question." Animated political cartoonist Mark Fiore's cartoons will be familiar to regular visitors to the Sierra Club website, often telling short stories or parodying familiar forms like TV commercials to sell a point of view instead of beer or soap.

-- 09/10/2005 Sat
3pm