This cartoon, titled 'Snooze Button', by Harry Bruce was published in the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin on the 23rd of March 2023. It is in landscape orientation, measuring 27 by 21 centimetres.
In the centre right of the cartoon, a figure lies in a bed. Dressed in striped, turquoise pyjamas, they are lying face down, huddling against a headboard in light wood. Their lower body is covered by a rumpled, pale blue blanket, thin enough that the contours of their back, buttocks and skinny legs can be discerned.
The feet are sticking out of the blanket to the lower left. Hairy forearms and knobbly hands all appear to belong to a light-skinned human being. Bruce has included minute details – the jutting bone above the ankle, the flap of skin that is visible when the elbow joint extends, and the short, neat fingernails.
However, the figure's head is a terrestrial globe featuring cerulean sea, green and yellow continents, and blue-white ice.
This figure is jamming a white pillow over its head and curling into the mattress. The southern tip of South Africa, the southern coast of Australia, Tasmania, and the northern shelf of Antarctica are visible where the nape of a person's neck would be. They are stretching out their left hand towards a bedside table of light wood.
On, or rather just above the nightstand, a grey, oblong alarm clock has leapt into action. It looks almost alive, its electrical cable coiled behind it like a tail. A jagged red halo surrounds the machine, suggesting blaring noise. Seven sets of short, curved black lines highlight its sleek profile and illustrate its furious vibration. 'Wake up' is stamped across the front in white lettering, where the digital clock would normally be.
Along the alarm clock's right side, the words 'climate change report' are written in capital letters. The globe-person's hand is raised, index finger poised above the red snooze button. Above the muffling pillow, a speech bubble pleads: 'five more minutes'.
In the background, Bruce has sketched a bedroom half in shadow, the walls cross-hatched with black lines. The grey curtains frame a window overlooking an ominous vista – a burnt sepia sky with orange clouds.
The cartoonist's signature, the linked letters H and B, appear in the lower right corner.
The label text for this cartoon reads: In 2023 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth Synthesis Report since it began reporting in the early 1990s. It carried an urgent call to action, citing a continual increase in global greenhouse gas emissions and current global warming of 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC said emissions must be halved if the world is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, but Harry Bruce asks if this is enough of a global wake-up call.
