Reverse Thinking
There have been many attempts to describe the global Climate and Ecologic Crisis in a way to help us to understand it emotionally and not only in an abstract rational form, the most current being the impressive essay and book "The Uninhabitable Earth" by David Wallace-Wells. Other more literary attempts, like Kim Stanley Robinson's "New York 2140", make the future under the shadows of the Climate Crisis seem like an interesting and relatively peaceful experience.
Much more gripping literary accounts were written by other authors in times where the human caused climate crisis was not even expected or at least not deeply understood. John Wyndham used deep sea dwelling aliens in "The Kraken Wakes" to heat up the oceans and drown the coastal regions of the planet. J.G.Ballard described the psychology of a world turned hell by climate change in his 1962 novel "The Drowned World" . But also here, the climate change was not caused by human activity, the culprit being changes in solar irradiation.
A deeper analysis of "Climate Fiction" will be done at a later point. A first impression is that there are not many books which combine factual precision with a sufficiently broad perspective, "The Collapse of Western Civilisation" by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway tries to do this, but feels more like an essay on current climate politics than visionary Climate Fiction. Other authors in this category, like Michael Crichton with "State of Fear", may have caused deep level damage to the climate movement in a way only compareable to the damage Oswald Spengler caused to democracy with "The Decline of the West".
Nevertheless, to understand the Climate Crisis and our responsibility for it on a more emotional base, while at the same time having a chance to identify pivotal points where critical changes could still be made, it may be useful to take a similar science-fiction like perspective, although more fact based and with a global outlook instead of a personal narrative. By constructing a reality which is not too far from our own experience, we remain able to relate to it on an emotional level.
The principles of such a construction, similar to a historical re-construction of reality, are that all major aspects of nature, human behaviour and technology should be included as possible. In science fiction as well as in futurologist writing, this is usually limited to certain aspects, like e.g. Artificial Intelligence or cultural changes. The following aspects may be seen as a first selection:
- Precipitation changes leading to water scarceness and agricultural breakdown in many regions
- Political consequences of the resulting food crises
- Forest destruction by fire and logging
- Sustained periods of extreme heat in regions not prepared for it
- Regional flooding of low lying coastal areas, often highly urbanized
- Political effects of internal migration on still functional state structures
- Political effects of breakdown of state structures in both developing and developed regions of the world
- Political and military reaction of those states where structures are still strong enough to survive, This includes thinking about the potential use of weapons of mass destruction as these become ever more available
- Political and military effects of successful and failed large scale resettlement efforts of populations threatened by the Climate Crisis
- Social effects of population developments which go in different direction (ageing in some regions, unemployed masses of young people in others)
- Local adaptation initiatives, both by government and by local structures
- Technological developments in Information Technology, with effects on communication, manipulation, political management and prediction and as tools of further technological development (Singularity hypothesis)
- Impact of technological developments in other areas - although it is difficult to predict such developments especially under stressful conditions, some developments can be assumed, especially in the area of arms technology.
- Interaction of economies with multiple crises
- Cultural and religious developments in all regions of the world, as times of crisis in combination with a high flow of information between cultures have often resulted in the creation of new religions and cultures
We will try to build such a model / description, jumping to the year 2100, a year which seems far in the future, but is in living range of many young people today.
Addendum - 2020.07.15:
Two excellent sources of information on Climate Fiction have been identified:
We will follow up those leads in the following months.
| 