The Power of Climate Change Fiction

Will movies and novels about the effects of climate change make a difference in how people react to global warming?

Climate fiction is a genre dealing with themes of climate change and global warming. “Cli-fi” is faced with a rapidly increasing popularity and while ten years ago it would be difficult to identify a handful of fictional works that fell under this banner nowadays more and more fictional works seem to pop out of this genre. With Hollywood embracing this new genre and a plethora of “cli-fi” novels emerges the question, “Will blockbusters like “Godzilla” and bestselling novels such as “Flight Behavior” make a difference in how people react to global warming?”. While the dramatic, overblown apocalyptic story lines may be misleading, they still have the power to raise awareness by making global warming feel psychologically proximate and by stimulating discussions.

Numerous films make the global warming seem like a palpable danger in the not so distant future. “Soylent Green” (America, 1973) is set in a dystopian future suffering from pollution, overpopulation, poverty, sinking oceans, and all year humidity due to the greenhouse effect, “The Day After Tomorrow” (America, 2004) takes a more extreme, apocalyptic approach with a set of catastrophic weather events that trigger a new ice age. Both movies don’t offer possible solutions or detail the specific problems so that we might avoid them, but rather they “represent our most pressing cultural anxieties” (J.P. Telotte. “Science Fiction Reflects Our Anxieties”. The Power of Climate Change Fiction. The New York Times. July 30, 2014. Web. August 24, 2014.) As asserted by J.P. Telotte who is a professor of film and media studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology, “All these films were not as much forward-looking predictions of real apocalypse as they were metaphorical responses to the widespread economic and political crises of the day.” The socio-economic system that governed the pre-dystopian world in “Soylent Green” seems to be one extremely insensitive to ecological matters. Likewise, there is an ever growing concern in our society that the government and corporations are not pressured enough to undertake major actions about environmental issues when there are more pressing issues with visible threats. And while “cli-fi” movies can’t make a difference in terms of solving the actual problems, they do make a difference in how people react to global warming by offering possible future scenarios that we want to avoid.

Some people might argue that the imaginations of the people are already activated but without a lot of understanding of the facts. Science fiction does not offer real world evidence and it often contains implausible, illogical and over-the-top scenarios. Science fiction is an element of narrative entertainment, so being a textbook isn’t really its function. Writers and directors are above all storytellers so they’ll usually be biased towards the scenarios that offer a good story. However, “overblown apocalyptic story lines may distance people from the issue of climate change or even objectify the problem” ( George Marshall. “Climate Fiction Will Reinforce Existing Views”. The Power of Climate Change Fiction. The New York Times. July 29, 2014. Web. August 24, 2014.). Fear of change and the desire to maintain consistency compels people to be reluctant towards issues that may perturb their comfortable, ignorant state and consider issues that do not pose a peril in the imminent future. George Marshall, the author of the of the forthcoming “Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change.”, points out that “The unconvinced will see these stories about global warming as proof that the issue is fiction, exaggerated for dramatic effect.” (“Climate Fiction Will Reinforce Existing Views”. The Power of Climate Change Fiction. The New York Times. July 29, 2014. Web. August 24, 2014.) . However, stories are powerful and it’s our imagination triggered by these dramatic scenarios that manages to think of the unthinkable possibilities. Science fiction creates a possibility to consider other perspectives and adopt new solutions. What may seem as a problem for the future generations, now represents a very real, impending danger. Eventually “It’s important to remember that while sci-fi can broaden our horizons, it can also cause us to see a biased subset of possible futures.” (Seán Ó Heigeartaigh. “Hollywood Global Warming Dramas Can Be Misleading”. The Power of Climate to Change Fiction. The New York Times. August 4, 2014. Web. August 24, 2014.)

On the other hand, facts are not enough to make people act when it comes to global warming. A lot of people understand the facts but climate change simply feels too distant, both in time and space. This is where science fiction makes a difference in how people react to global warming. Daniel Kahneman’s research ,published in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, defines two modes of information processing: an emotional system(thinking fast) and a rational system (thinking slow). His research shows that emotions trigger immediate actions, in other words it is personal stories that make the issue of global warming reach many people. Similarly, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” helped transform abolitionism into a mainstream cause due to the emotional, rational and moral aspects of it that moved many people to undertake immediate action. There is a long tradition of fiction being used to spur social change, and “cli-fi” is trying to do to the environmentalism the same that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “The Jungle” did to topics like slavery, poverty and dangerous working conditions. However, even though the facts might not be effective in influencing behavior we still need them to make informed decisions. We must not only want to do something about the climate change, but also know what to do.

Altogether, the solutions presented by cli-fi are seldom workable or even logical in real-world application. However science fiction sets forth the issue of climate change and raises awareness by stimulating discussions with which we demand a sustainable path forward. Science fiction makes the “impossible” destruction of the world easy to imagine and actualizes the issue. Also, when done right personal stories in science fiction are explosive and people are emotionally moved to make changes. Furthermore, recent cli-fi novels are less dramatic and focus more on the subtle, early impacts of climate change (as in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior”) and offer real world evidence which helps us make informed decisions. The novelist Sara Stone in a recent review of Edam Lepucki’s post-apocalyptic novel “California” wrote that: if we survive, “it will be in part because books like this one, which go beyond abstract predictions and statistics to show the moment-by-moment reality of a painful possible future, the price we may have to pay for our passionate devotion to all the wrong things.”