Stories To Save The World: 5 Novels Of Climate Solutions
Stories of changegettyFour years ago, I went looking for happy endings to climate change. Or at least, powerful adventure stories with a hint of hope!In 2022, I shared this list for Forbes of 14 “anti-fatalism”...
Stories of change
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Four years ago, I went looking for happy endings to climate change. Or at least, powerful adventure stories with a hint of hope!
In 2022, I shared this list for Forbes of 14 “anti-fatalism” novels. From Aldous Huxley’s Island to Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built, they imagined societies adapting, rebuilding, resisting or simply finding different ways to live.
I’ve often argued in these pages that stories are psychological blueprints for navigating the climate crisis. And boy, we’ve had plenty of stories about the end of the world. What we desperately needed then were stories about what happens when we refuse to let it end.
Today, I’ve revisited the bookshelves. Climate fiction is still very good at destroying things. Floods, fires, famines and societal collapse remain reliable plot devices. But alongside them is a growing body of fiction interested in the much harder imaginative challenge: what might we actually do?
The solutions have entered the story.
Here are some of the novels published since my original list that give me hope. I suggest you open their pages, and open yourself to some wild and wonderful ways to solve our climate crisis:
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1. The Lost Cause - Cory Doctorow
If you want to see what climate solutions look like when they stop being PowerPoint slides and become everyday life, start here.
Doctorow serves us a near-future America dealing with the consequences of climate change while simultaneously rebuilding. He doesn’t shy away from the reality of the impact, but his answers are just as plausible and compelling. I particularly love that he acknowledges that even solutionists trying to save lives can be extremely annoying in meetings!
2. A Half-Built Garden - Ruthanna Emrys
Aliens arrive on Earth and offer to rescue humanity from its environmentally devastated planet. But folks aren’t as enthusiastic about that as you might expect!
Because Earth has begun the long process of climate repair and building new forms of democratic/ecological society. The aliens regard our planet as essentially doomed. The humans have the audacity to believe otherwise.
That’s the twist which makes this such a wonderful read. We are so accustomed to stories in which humans destroy the Earth that the idea of humanity saying, “No thanks, we’re fixing it” feels radical.
3. Birnam Wood - Eleanor Catton
I’m a sucker for anything Shakespeare related, and mix in some sustainability, this is my catnip! Macbeth supplies this title, guerrilla gardeners supply the environmentalism and a billionaire supplies the trouble.
Catton’s ecological collective occupies unused land to grow food, but then encounters a fabulously wealthy man with his own plans for the landscape.
The result is not exactly an advertisement for harmonious environmental cooperation. It is dark, funny and morally messy. Will would have loved it.
4. When There Are Wolves Again - E. J. Swift
If you’re scared of wolves, this isn’t the book for you! But if you love a bit of visceral re-wilding, pick this up immediately.
The novel follows two women across half a century as Britain attempts to restore devastated landscapes and bring back species that once lived here. As the wolves come back, habits restore and old ways of thinking are wilded along with the canines.
But…human beings have to decide how much nature they are really prepared to live alongside!
5. Godstorm - Solitaire Townsend
Sharpe-eyed readers will spot the similarities between the author of this book and the author of this article!
I wrote Godstorm to have FUN with a serious issue I work in everyday. Godstorm is set in an alternative history where ancient Rome runs on petroleum. Oil is wealth, military might and imperial power. Sound familiar?
My heroine, Arrow, is considerably less interested in energy transition policy than I am. She’s a former gladiatrix trying to rescue an abducted child, and her preferred method of systems change involves a very sharp sword. But underneath the blood, storms and Roman politics, I was wrestling with the same question that drove my original list of novels: can stories change things?
When I wrote that original list in 2022, I said we needed a creative explosion around climate. I’m excited that’s started, but it hasn’t finished yet!
There still aren’t enough novels in which climate solutions are simply part of the furniture of the future. Heat pumps should be as unremarkable as telephones. Renewable grids should fail during romantic comedies. Carbon removal companies should have office politics. Someone should get divorced over a neighbourhood adaptation plan (something I’m sure has already happened).
Stories are where we rehearse the future, and I’m excited to see what’s coming next.