The climate crisis is a crisis of imagination
“I feel like my circles have divided between those who’ve read the opening chapter of The Ministry for the Future and those who haven’t,” wrote novelist Monica Byrne on Twitter.
I agree.
We need to starting talking about climate change and nature loss as if we were novelists, not news reporters or scientists.
I’ve worked on environmental issues for more than two decades. I’ve written countless briefing documents, articles, opinion pieces, made arresting infographics and fact sheets, videos, memes, science and told my share of human-interest stories.
Yet, it’s the fictional description of a future heatwave set in India written by Kim Stanley Robinson in his climate fiction novel set in 2040, ‘The Ministry of the Future’ that pounds my head with its visceral images of suffering and death. It’s this opening chapter I want everyone to read, not the recent UN IPCC science assessment report which predicts the same horrific future scenarios, but in language most of us don’t comprehend.
Robinson’s novel opens in Uttar Pradesh, India, where the character Frank May, an American who works for an NGO, barely survives an extreme heat wave that kills 20 million people in India. “It was getting hotter,” the novel begins, before taking us through ever worsening events over the…
