The Last Word On Nothing

The Devil had two tattooed women in tight skirts holding a rope taut on stage. One he told to stand on her toes while the other crouched slightly. The rope between them showed a slight angle downward, which the Devil said expressed global mean temperature decreasing slightly from 1998 till now.

The Devil’s data was cherry picked from satellite records from NOAA.

His two stubs of horns caught the light as he laughed about using scientists’ own data against them. He explained that global warming is a hoax and climate change is the best bet if you’re a scientist.

“Of course climate change is going to happen,” the Devil preached. “It’s called job security.”

Michael Soulé, one of the founding scientists of conservation biology, stood from the audience and objected. All heads in the theater turned toward the 79-year-old man, his noble, bald dome shining as a spotlight fell on him.

Soulé then eviscerated the Devil’s argument.

I’d planted Soulé in the audience for this purpose. Soulé is a friend of mine. The Devil is a friend, too, a bold climate change denier I’ve known for years. Pitting the two against each other in front of an audience of 175 people might have been unfair. The Devil didn’t stand a chance.

This time every winter I put on a show for two nights in the small town of Paonia, Colorado. This is what happens when a science writer rents a theater and brings in local talent for a couple hours of performance art. Sometimes standing room only, it’s become a popular small town event. I plan it for the nearest weekend to winter solstice. Its purpose is to do what humans have done through the ages on the longest nights of the year. We gather around the fire and tell stories.

Last weekend we had a broad crowd of hipsters, ranchers, and curious local residents who thought they should come see what the fuss is all about. One man wore a bunny suit thinking it was going to be an Ice Age Burning Man show like I put on last year. (Whomever you were, thanks for keeping the solstice weird.) This year the subject is radical change expressed in several acts and backed by a band on the dance floor — a drum set, didgeridoo and the vocalist Beth Quist on a hammer dulcimer, one foot slapping a tambourine, the other keeping rhythm with a shaker as she sang into a microphone.

A few of us started the show eight years ago in a farmhouse several miles outside of town. We billed it as a winter solstice story telling, a concoction of a couple musicians, a DJ, some dancers and myself. I demonstrated about earthquakes, avalanches, and flash floods, acts of the planet interwoven with our lives. When it looked like more people would show up than the house could hold, we moved it to an old theater.

The Devil and Soulé were part of a bigger story I told on stage about a trek through industrial cornfields in Iowa. The Devil, a traveling companion of mine, had come along for the trip. Images of him struggling through corn with a pack showed on the screen while I explained three days of backpacking through rows of summer agriculture, green leaves slashing at us like blades. In many of the slides, the Devil looked withered. A film clip showed him sweating on his back in one of the rows where he complained bitterly of being hot and sticky and dirty.

This journey was my attempt to understand how industrial agriculture has changed not only the face of our planet, but the chemistry of it, and the fate of species in the ever crowded realms of extinction.

Taking my friend into a cornfield during a heat dome event when the nearest high temperature was 129° F on the dew point did not convince him the world needed saving. He seemed to become an only more vehement challenger of climate science. While we’d been in the corn he’d conceded that the earth is undergoing significant changes, and now he rants that temperature is not one of them and we are only feeding fear.

For the show he glued horns to his head, taking on a persona he preferred. I brought in Soulé to throw some weight the other direction.

After our first performance Friday night, one in the morning and nursing a dirty martini, my friend the Devil told me he believes climate change is a distraction. A well-read fan of Michael Soulé, a supporter of conservation biology, and a land-surveyor by profession, this Devil took off his horns. He still believed temperature was not an issue and greenhouse gasses were less of a threat than we want to admit. He said he felt the real issues are extinction and biodiversity, habitat fragmentation and pollution of waterways and air. He said we are being brainwashed into helplessness by the scale of climate change.

As my friend dwindled into a drunken stupor after the show, I thought this was the purpose of our performance, getting the juices flowing, a reason to keep going through winter. The next night he was back on stage with his tattooed consorts. Soulé got up and ripped him even harder. The Devil turned and with a smirk said he was taking his girls back stage with the rope, and the rest of us could be as fearful as we wanted.

Photo by Bob Maynard, poster by Andrea Lecos, footage by Craig Childs.