Chris Madden Cartoons

A searchable archive for licensing

Pollution cartoon

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pollution cartoon
Ethical investment illustration

Pollution cartoon.

The cartoon shows the Global North and the Global South on a pair of scales, with the Global North producing most of the pollution. This pollution is drifting across and if affecting the Global South while the Global North remains relatively unaffected by its own pollution.

A cartoon that comments on over-consumption at Christmas.
Drawn: November 2023
Cartoon reference number: a959

A cartoon about throw away fast fashion

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Fast fashion or throw away fashion illustration
Fast fashion or throw away fashion illustration

An environmental illustration or cartoon about fast fashion.

The illustration shows a person wearing “slow fashion” clothes instead of “fast fashion” clothes.

Throw away fashion or fast fashion is a form of fashion where clothes are made very cheaply so that they are cheap to buy and easy to throw away after very little use – maybe even just one night out.
Drawn: July 2022
Cartoon reference number: a951

Dog and ball

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Dog and earth globe as ball  - illustration

An environmental illustration or cartoon showing a dog chasing a ball.

The ball is the earth as a globe.

The intension of the illustration is to draw a link between pet ownership and the environment. It was originally drawn for a booklet about how to look after your pet in an environmentally responsible way.
Drawn: July 2022
Cartoon reference number: a950

Banksy exhibition

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Banksy exhibition Just Stop Oil protest - cartoon

Banksy exhibition disrupted by Just Stop Oil protester – cartoon.

The cartoon shows a Just Stop Oil protester disrupting the Banksy exhibition in the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Glasgow.

The Banksy exhibition is titled Cut and Run. 18 June – 28 Aug 2023.
Drawn: July 2023
Cartoon reference number: a949

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Just Stop Oil cartoon

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just stop oil cartoon

A cartoon about the Just Stop Oil campaign.

The cartoon shows a Just Stop Oil protester in an art gallery being removed by a person wearing a ‘Just Stop Just Stop Oil’ T-shirt

The cartoon is a comment on the fact that, despite the worthiness of the cause, some of the campaigners’ chosen modes of protest – such as the throwing of tomato soup over valuable artworks in art galleries – can have an alienating effect on the public.
Drawn: 21st October 2022
Cartoon reference number: a931

Recycling cartoon

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recycling cartoon

Recycling cartoon

A cartoon featuring the earth in a waste skip as though it is being thrown away in a similar way that the normal items of consumer waste are thrown away in skips.

Skips are often used for builders’ rubble and the waste material when a house is being refitted or modified. The house can be thought of as a metaphor for the planet on which we and all other life lives.
Drawn: September 2022
Cartoon reference number: a924

Marine waste cartoon

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Hermit crab with tin can as a shell - cartoon

A cartoon about marine pollution showing a hermit crab using an old tin can instead of a shell

The cartoon could be interpreted as showing wildlife desperately trying to adapt to a changed ecosystem.
A cartoon about waste recycling, household waste, wildlife in danger.

See an alternative version of this cartoon here.
Cartoon reference number: env094c

Environmental approaches to domestic heating cartoon

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environmental domestic heating cartoon

Environmental approaches to domestic heating cartoon.

A cartoon about two alternative ways to keep warm in the winter.
Either install (and run) an expensive central heating system or put on a few more clothes.
This cartoon has relevance for the fuel crisis of 2022, when fuel prices and the price of gas and electricity rose hugely.

Drawn: December 11th 2020
Cartoon reference number: a882

Air pollution cartoon

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pollution cartoon

Atmospheric pollution cartoon.

A cartoon about air pollution, showing a person breathing using an oxygen cylinder in which the oxygen is being produced by a tree.

The cartoon is about the importance of preserving trees, other plants and basically all of the natural world, if only for our own good (as in the image). Of course the natural world is important in its own right, with or without us in it!
Original version: 1991
This version: September 2019
Cartoon reference number: env071d

Bioplastics cartoon

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bioplastic packaging cartoon - bioplastic pea pods

Bioplastics cartoon

In this cartoon the cellulose of the pea pod has been modified to form plastic packaging.
Plastics produced from plants are known as bioplastics.

Bioplastics are in some ways a good substitute for plastics produced from oil, however they may have a downside in that if they were extensively used vast amounts of agricultural land may have to be set aside for the production of plastics instead of food.
Original version drawn: 1999
Cartoon reference: env116b

Environmental cartoon – consumer waste

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waste land builders skip boat - cartoon

Escape from the waste land cartoon

An environmental cartoon showing a builder’s skip being used as a boat to escape from a land covered in waste – a wasteland.

The illustration is concerned with the amount of waste and rubbish generated by our consumer society.
The people in the image are escaping from the polluted land by using a builder’s skip as a boat. Such skips are in my mind associated with over consumption, as they are often to be seen outside houses that are being refitted with more modern and fashionable fittings (especially in the kitchens and bathrooms).

This cartoon reflects my interest in environmental issues such as consumer waste and the climate emergency.

First version drawn: 1991
This square version: 2020
Cartoon reference number: a445b

Inkblot test of contemporary anxiety

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inkblot test of contemporary anxiety - cartoon

 

Inkblot test of contemporary anxiety.

In the 1960s during the Cold War the major anxiety in the western world was the potential destruction of civilisation by nuclear weapons.

In the twenty-first century it is the threats to the environment caused by excess human activity.

 

The cartoon shows a Roschach test being interpreted as the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion by someone in the 1960s and as a tree by someone today.

Drawn: 2013
Cartoon reference number: a334b

 

Environment cartoon – the end is nigh

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Climate crisis cartoon - the end is nigh placard

A cartoon of a man with an “End is Nigh” placard.

A woman is saying “There was a time when I’d have dismissed him as a crank”.

A cartoon about the pessimism that is currently felt about the state of the world and about the future.
The cartoon primarily refers to the climate crisis and global warming, but could equally refer to other malaises that are afflicting the planet.
An environmental cartoon from my selection on the subject.

Original version: 2010
This version drawn: 2019

Cartoon reference number: a709b
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Sustainability cartoon – sustainable transport cartoon

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sustainability cartoon – sustainable environmental transport

The environmental impact of unsustainable road traffic

Roadkill cartoon
A cartoon about the impact of cars and transportation on the environment

The image shows a globe of the earth squashed flat on a road by a car, signifying the global impact of cars and transport on the environment – a sort of global roadkill.
A cartoon about transport, sustainability, car use, traffic, the environment.

 

Original version created: 2004
This version created: 2019

Cartoon reference number: a478b

Cartoon about plastic pollution

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plastic pollution cartoon

Plastic pollution cartoon.

The cartoon cliche of a desert island used to make a point about the pollution caused by plastic.

A person on a desert island throwing a message in a plastic bottle into the sea.
Cartoon reference number: a764b

There’s a colour version of this cartoon here.

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Plastic pollution cartoon

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plastic pollution desert island cartoon

Desert island plastic pollution cartoon.

A cartoon that uses the cartoon cliche of a desert island to make a point about the pollution caused by plastic.

The cartoon shows a person on a desert island throwing a message in a bottle into the sea.
Cartoon reference number: a764

There’s a black and white version of this cartoon here.

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Electric cars cartoon

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electric car cartoon

Electric cars cartoon
Sustainable energy cartoon

A cartoon showing electrically powered cars filling with fuel at a filling station. Instead of filling at petrol pumps they are filling at a small electricity pylon

This cartoon doesn’t actually make a comment on the usefulness of electricity to power vehicles, I suspect that electric vehicles won’t turn out to be as viable and sustainable as their advocates claim. How is all that electricity going to be generated for instance?
A cartoon about the environment, ecology, transport systems, hybrid cars, oil-free economy, battery power, fossil fuel dependency, power supply, energy sources.

Drawn: 2011

Cartoon reference number: env061

You can find a colour version of this cartoon here.

Our course into the future?

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Environmental cartoon: The human race driving itself over the precipice

A cartoon about the course that the human race is possibly taking.

A possible problem with progress – cartoon

The human race ignoring the warning signs and recklessly carrying on along the same road – resulting in it driving itself over the precipice and into the abyss.
The cartoon uses a car to denote the human race, the metaphor applies to other areas of human endeavour other than transport.
Cartoon reference number: env051b

The destructive impact of tourism

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Destructive impact of tourism cartoon

A cartoon highlighting a problem with mass tourism – the destruction or degradation of the tourist destination due to the impact of the tourists themselves.

Here the tourist destination is a world heritage site – exactly the sort of place that is degraded by insensitive of excessive tourism.

Mass tourism, tourist, holidays, holiday destinations.
Original version drawn: 1990
Cartoon reference number: env123
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The fallacy of progress cartoon

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transport cartoon - traffic gridlock

Environment cartoon about transport systems
Philosophy cartoon about the fallacy of progress

A cartoon about progress, in which the progress (represented here by road transport) creates its own problems.
Is progress a good thing?

Cars at a standstill, gridlocked in a traffic jam symbolising progress (or the lack of it) in transport planning and the excessive use of cars as personal transport.
Also a cartoon about the philosophical question of whether progress is necessarily automatically a good thing (Some aspects of progress obviously are, but not all of them).

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Created: 2015.
Original version (with older vehicles) created: 1991

Cartoon reference number: env050b
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New Year 2020 cartoon predicts bad year ahead (Drawn before the Covid-19 pandemic was foreseen!)

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Happy New Year 2020 father time tripping

New Year 2020 cartoon – prediction of a very bad year ahead.
When I drew this, in 2019, who’d have known 2020 would be such a bad year due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

The cartoon shows the old year 2019 (Father Time) pushing the baby New Year 2020 in a baby buggy. Father Time is tripping over the base of a Happy New Year sign, sending the new year rushing forwards out of control towards a cliff edge.

Cartoon drawn: December 2019
Cartoon reference number: a770

Environmental art cartoon – biodegradable art

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Environmental art cartoon – biodegradable art

An environmental art cartoon, showing a piece of contemporary artwork that is 100% biodegradable.

Because the sculpture depicted in the cartoon is biodegradable it will have a limited lifespan that will make it unappealing to art collectors (never mind art conservators).

A cartoon about the art market, art conservation, environmentalism, transient art, gallerists. I’ve been producinng work about environmental issues since the 1970s.

Cartoon drawn: 2019

Cartoon reference number: art035
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
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Environment cartoon book

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Environmental cartoon book

The Beast That Ate the Earth
Environment cartoon book

Versions of many of the environmental cartoons on this site can be found in my book, The Beast That Ate the Earth.

I’ve been drawing cartoons on environmental matters since the early 1970s.
The book was published in 2004 and contains about a hundred cartoons in black and white.

The book is available through Amazon.
Such as at:

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Amazon Germany