October 8 -- Two weeks ago I saw a film called "The Sixth Sense", which is deeply unsettling for reasons I cannot describe without spoiling the film. Since then, I have been thinking about why this film has been causing me nightmares and affecting whole parts of daily life. The reason I think is that a horror film of this type undermines one's faith in the normal categories of things -- that ordinary objects will stay put, that things won't jump out at you -- and so you temporarily find normalcy threatened and threatening. Hitchcock's masterpiece, the much more frightening Vertigo, is about other things -- but the idea of vertigo is something like this.
In the mid-1980's I happened by chance to be at a private International Meteorological Association briefing on the new results coming in from the British Antarctic Survey which revealed for the first time that there was something startling happening to the ozone layer over Antarctica. I remember being in this room with hardnosed scientists, physicists, climate specialists, and senior government leaders as the computer generated maps (the first) were shown on the screen. I remember that the room filled first with shock, and then with horror as they realised the full dimensions of what was happening; and then there was pandemonium. I can remember 20 minutes later going into the men's washroom and seeing an elegant director of an international agency being violently ill from the shock. It was at that moment that I realised that all our categories of normalcy -- from the bright sun to the beautiful blue sky -- were threatened, and that it could make people physically ill from the feeling of loss. That horror wore off, but it comes back from time to time to remind me of what got me started on environmental issues; and I ironically got a taste of the original feeling again, in this different context, two weeks ago. (p.t.)