GLOBAL DISASTERS AND PERSONAL RESPONSES IN IAN MCEWAN’S SOLAR

Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010) is centered around a Nobel Laureate Professor of Physics
whose peak of academic achievement is thirty years behind him, who is trying to
retrieve his reputation by proposing replacement of coal and fossil fuel use by solar
power and a planet whose heyday as a nurturing haven for human species is but a
fantasy. The protagonist’s conspicuous consumption of romantic entanglements also
mirrors the daily routines of billions of human beings in overconsumption of
commodities and non-renewable planetary resources. His one original contribution is
his almost instinctive response to another major factor in climate change:
overpopulation. I will focus on our failure to maintain foresight for imminent
antropogenic disasters as human species as well as overpopulation as a neglected
cause for such disasters, even in Solar, since the solution to overpopulation involves a
counterintutive measure: not to have children.