The Science and Politics of Climate Change in Steve Waters’ The Contingency Plan

Abstract

Abstract Recent movies have relished depicting nature striking back at a human population that has forsaken her. Films like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and San Andreas embrace the apocalyptic destruction of cities around the globe by way of sub-zero hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, and other natural disasters. Surprisingly, the British theatre is equally engaged (albeit less spectacularly) in exploring the same threat. Namely, what happens when the natural world strikes back and begins to encroach against our established homesteads and populated cities. One of the best-known plays on the topic of climate change is Steve Waters’ The Contingency Plan (2009). Waters delves into the growing crisis of rising water tables to low lying areas of England by exploring the effect it has personally on an aging climate scientist and his wife and politically on their son, also a scientist, who is charged by two newly installed government officials with preparing Britain for the looming watery disaster. Eschewing the bombastic Hollywood nature of disaster films, Waters’ play is intimately crafted, showing the dangerous and fatal disruptions of the changing natural world, and, more specifically, the negotiations that take place between science and politics when it comes to the unpredictability of rising sea levels. My article examines this work in relation to how it approaches the threat of climate change to the British Isles by exploring Waters’ exploration of how politics, science, and family tensions affect the climatic future of the country.