If we want to get out of this alive, we could do worse than look to the galaxiids for tips.
The tiny native fish have managed to hang on despite the wholesale transformation of their environment, polluted waterways and predation by imports.
Problem is, they can be hard to spot, diluting their inspirational potential.
Prolific muralist Bruce Mahalski is on the job though, on a recent week painting galaxiids into prominence on a Ranfurly wall as part of a project to raise their profile more broadly.
"Pretty ironic considering what’s happened," Mahalski says, in typical style, cutting short any dewy-eyed contemplation of the aquatic taonga by bringing the focus back to the parlous state of things.
He’s referencing the coalition government’s consignment of the Otago Regional Council’s proposed land and water plan to the round filing cabinet — a move that some say leaves the region’s waterways unprotected. And the life in them exposed.
Again, typically enough, Mahalski’s response is defiant.
"So, I’ve got to pay my Otago Regional Council rates at the end of the month, and it’s like, what’s the most effective way I can do a rates boycott?"
Mahalski’s been mixing art and politics for decades now, at least as far back as his agitprop band of the ’80s, Crystal Zoom. For the past couple of years his activism has included the cartoon strip, A Change in the Weather, in this publication, in which a parade of, mainly avian, spokes-animals advocate and educate on the climate crisis.
As often as not, the climate campaigners in the strip are penguins — kororā, hoiho or tawaki — their message, "he waka eke noa, we’re all in this together".
They are, by no coincidence, straight speakers. In a typical frame our protagonist regales a sceptical kiwi: "If the average worldwide temperature increased by 2°C there will be even more storms, fires, floods etc. Coral reefs will disappear and there will be a big decline in global fisheries. Hundreds of millions of people will be thrown into poverty."
So, pretty confronting, and even the throwaway line of a character in the background, "Beak fungus?", which at first glance seems to be there for comic effect, turns out to be a reference to the threat of bird flu.
And yet, because it’s all presented in the traditional frame-by-frame format beloved of readers of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes, it’s somehow more approachable.
Various characters take responsibility for interrogating aspects of the crisis, its causes, our inadequate responses, and what’s genuinely required to meet the challenge.
"A lot of the cartoons are sort of playing devil’s advocate," Mahalski explains.
"And, obviously, the kiwi is always the businessman, the ruthless sort, you know. And a lot of what the kiwi says actually are things people have said to me."
For all his long background in the arts, the cartoon format was a new challenge for Mahalski.
"In the beginning it was like, hey, how the f... do I do this s...? It’s taken quite a while to find its feet, but I think it’s found its feet now," he says.
"It’s like with Garfield, you know, I was a huge fan of Garfield. When Garfield first started, Garfield looked completely different, and he had a different personality. Because it’s very hard at the beginning of a cartoon strip to come in and have the whole thing, the whole world, the character completely formed."
Other changes for the strip during its first two years have included changing faces behind the ink pen. At first Mahalski drafted the strip before local graphic artist Veronica Brett inked the final work. Inking duties were then taken on by Abe Hunter before Mahalski brought it all in house, doing all the work himself from earlier this year.
The urgency with which he sees the crisis has certainly not diminished in that time.
When preparing the chosen strips for the book, he had to update some of the data because of the speed at which the crisis is moving.
"When I started, we were at 1.1°C above pre-industrial temperatures. And now we’re closing in on 1.5, in two years."
The carbon sinks on which the world depends are failing, he says.
"It’s just f...... terrifying."
So, for all that Mahalski does a very good line in dry humour, evident in the strips, he says there’s no way of actually making this stuff funny.
"But it’s trying to make it palatable and not frighten young people, particularly. So, trying to have some sort of uplifting messages in there."
As the Givealittle-backed book is another expression of Mahalski’s sense of mission, he’s planning to give 200 copies to schools and use what he makes on the remainder of the first print run to finance a second edition.
