Tag: climate fiction

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I was recently invited to participate in a number of panels for WriteHive 2022, an online conference for writers. It has been a great honor chatting with authors like Chelsea Lockhart (also the CEO of Written in Melanin), fellow biologist and clifi writer Patricia Tavormina, and memoirist Yujin Kim. Always interesting to pick the brains of such a diverse group of people who all love writing.

If you have the time and are curious, do check them out (links at the bottom).

The panel that I enjoyed the most, however, was a one-on-one with the charismatic and eloquent Jerusha René, fellow writer and CEO of WriteHive. We talked climate fiction.

I’m writing these lines just a few days after my city, Copenhagen, broke a nearly 50-year old heat record. It hasn’t been the only city that has broken heat records this summer. Parts of Italy went on a state of emergency and London is shutting down. Greece experienced a 750% increase in forest fires since the previous year.

The thing about fiction is that you can write about anything and, if you coat it in a good story, it will stay with people. I used to think it was climate change deniers that were holding us back and it was them I was hoping clifi could reach to.

I no longer believe that.

It’s inertia that will do us in. Governments promising to cut fossil fuel emissions while awarding increasing incentives to dig for oil. Corporations being lazy because they can’t see beyond the next quarter’s results. I mean, look at this.

Climate fiction will become more and more important as we witness a true apocalyptic scenario unfolding before our eyes. It is my hope that this will spur people into action. Make them demand change from their governments and boycott those industries that continue leading us to a disaster we cannot recover from.

Please, if you value your existence, take action. Recycling and taking public transportation will not cut it anymore. We need big scale drastic action now.

Write to your politicians. Demand action. Form grass-roots organizations and campaign. Do Not. Give. Your Money. To Polluters.

Links to the other panels;

Scientists in Science Fiction

Indie Authors: Is it right for me?

Indie Publishing when English is Your Second Language

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About a lifetime ago (the early 2000’s, to be exact), when I was doing my undergraduate degree in Marine Biology, I spent some time going over climate change evidence.

I went through all the usual data; the narrative that ice core samples tell us about temperature cycles. The tight correlation between greenhouse emissions and temperature increases. And the apocalyptic impact just a 2-degree centigrade change would have on the world.

Back then, the scientific consensus was that we still had time to act. If we were to make drastic changes, say, decrease emissions by 25%-50% or shrink the meat industry, we could avoid the worst of it.

Forget about the sea level rising. The “worst of it” was fires, floods, and drought. It was our food supply being threatened. It was conditions where humans could no longer survive in. Us, Homo sapiens. The ultimate badasses that can thrive anywhere, from the Sahara desert to Antarctica, dropping dead because the environment becomes too hostile.

That was 20 years ago. And we’ve failed to act.

For all the awareness that we now have, for all the Greta Thunberg’s of the world and green initiatives, things look bleak. I remember Jeff Vandermeer, probably my favorite environmentally-conscious writer, having a mini-breakdown on social media over how desperate things look for the future. As he wrote, however, in his novel “Dead Astronauts”, winning (whatever that means for our planet) may not be the point. Maybe the struggle is the point.

I’m currently brainstorming a book idea revolving around this feeling of despair over the environment. This state of knowing black days are to come, of fighting against the inevitable, and failing. It’s something I feel I need to get our of my chest. I’d be lying if I said I din’t sometimes lie awake at 3am, thinking about what kind of world my two-year old niece will grow up in. Are we heading into a “The Road” kind of situation? Or is “The Parable of the Sower” the best we can hope for?

I also think this state of hopelessness makes for an interesting story. The definition of tragedy is suffering because of personal flaws, and what could be more tragic than bringing about our own suffering because we failed to take action?

I just hope this book remains forever in the fiction section.

PS. Maybe not all hope is lost. Check out this article on geoengineering.