Why Climate Change Fiction?

When I was in kindergarten, I became fascinated with a picture book about endangered animals. The book displayed different ecosystems comprised of two pages: the first page was clear plastic and filled with pictures of a variety of endangered animals, and the second page had the painted backdrop of the environment. The effect was such that as you explored the different ecosystems — whether it be a jungle, a marsh, or the tundra — every time you flipped the plastic page, the animals would vanish, leaving an empty landscape behind.

I had asked and learned what “endangered” and “extinct” meant, but didn’t really comprehend the true weight of the subject. The thought that something could be gone forever didn’t make sense, and after all, I only had to flip the pages backwards, and the animals would return to their respective homes.

Although I had always had a deep rooted connection to the natural world, growing up I mostly read fantasy books, and preferred to mull over the problems of the fantastical, fictional worlds I read about rather than pay attention to the problems of our very real and vulnerable world. I always figured if I did become a published author, it would be for writing an epic story set in a magical, made up world of my own design, and up until I started writing “The Silver Planet”, I focused on writing fantasy.

In high school and later university I really began to understand the terms “climate change”, “biosphere”, “extinct”, and “Anthropocene”, and I started to pay a little more attention to the world around us. Last year the earth hit a new record high of temperature coupled with extreme weather events, and there is virtually no doubt among scientists that humans have played a large role in climate change. The effects of climate change are far reaching, and although we can’t pinpoint exactly how bad things will get the consensus is that if we continue on our current path the results will be devastating, including the loss of species, increased extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels, and negative health effects.

It’s not all doom and gloom though; just last week, more than 170 countries signed an international treaty to combat climate change. Still, it got me thinking. What kind of world would we live in if we were unable to prevent climate change from passing the tipping point, and we had to deal with the fallout of devastating ecological effects? The world would certainly be as alien to us as any fantasy or zombie-driven post apocalyptic world that I could dream up. That thought is equally intriguing and terrifying.

The result of those thoughts (coupled with my relationship with my grandparents and working closely with seniors, perhaps the topic of another post) inspired my novel, “The Silver Planet”. That’s not to say that I will only write climate change fiction, or that I won’t return to the fantasy stories that I set aside. But for now, this world and its story and possible future are what interest me.