This graphic novelist tells the true story of climate change

climate changed page 112-3If Philippe Squarzoni knows one thing, it’s that a book can’t change the world. When the French graphic novelist — whose work tackles such hard-hitting topics as the Zapatista movement in Mexico and homicide rates in Baltimore — decided to put together a 500-page tome on climate change, he did so, he says, not out of any kind of activist agenda, but because “je ne pouvais pas ne pas le faire” — “I couldn’t not do it.”

He never thought it would alter the trajectory of things, change anyone’s mind, or make people care. Nope: He claims it was simply because the problem was so vast and so all-encompassing. The more he learned about it, the bigger and scarier it got, and he just couldn’t to put it down.

“It’s climate change that chose me,” he says. “I didn’t choose anything.”

Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through the Science was published this spring in the U.S. The original French title translates as “Brown Season,” which refers to that lifeless, muddy interval between winter and spring, and, as Squarzoni told OnEarth Magazine, “I feel like humankind is in a similar state of transition.”

Read more: http://grist.org/people/this-graphic-novelist-tells-the-true-story-of-climate-change/