I keep thinking about Omar El Akkad’s novel American War. It is set in a time of X-treme climate alteration, in which coastlines have drawn dramatically inland and snow only exists occasionally in Alaska. It’s a first novel by a Canadian writer who’s primarily done journalistic writing about war zones in the Middle East. And the dynamics he saw there — the backstabbing, sellouts, revenge killings, external manipulation, more revenge killings, etc. — are all present in the novel. In it, the South secedes again — this time, over prohibitions of fossil fuel use. At the time of the novel, only Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia (“The MAG”) continue to resist. And it seems that most everyone there has forgotten what the fight was about originally: it’s devolved into pure “Us vs. Them.”
It’s a pretty good first novel — certainly better than some fifth novels I’ve read. El Akkad wants to maintain thematic focus, so amazingly, white and African-American Southerners have somehow buried their differences in the fight against a common foe. (As someone who grew up in the deep South, that feature undermines the verisimilitude.) But the thought-exercise is very much germane to our present situation. What would happen if a climate-conscious candidate were elected President? If the government, under any administration, attempts radically to alter the way that people heat their homes and travel from home to work? The gun-rights advocates are the ones with the guns — and the ones who feel put upon by the eastern liberal elites. So, the potential for violent dissension (if not civil war) certainly exists. If they won’t let you take their guns away, they’re certainly not going to let you take their gas-powered pick-up trucks. A friend of mine, who has had experience in politics at state, national, and international levels, sees the conflict as being less about region than about city vs. country. He envisions a balkanized patchwork of local militias and warlords — not unlike the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Or, as he put it: “Lots of checkpoints manned by good ol boys between Nashville and Memphis.” Or between Topeka and Kansas City. Rural residents only make up 19% of the US population (a percentage that is shrinking). But that's enough people to seriously mess up inter-city travel. And one could easily imagine a balkanized USA, in which the coasts are cut off from one another by a landlocked, resentful heartland. American War also features a plague, not unlike Margaret Atwood’s cli-fi novel The Year of the Flood. In a world governed increasingly by apocalyptic death cults, it makes sense that somebody would use genetically-engineered bio-weapons, at some point. Then again, we know that shifting temps and weather patterns — and more people on the move — promotes the spread of certain pathogens (e.g., those spread by parasitic insects). Indeed, an argument could be made (and has been) that CoViD-19 spread to humans because of increasing contact with animals coming ever closer to human settlement, looking for food and water (and in some cases, being eaten themselves). In any case, we’ve seen examples from around the world of what happens when you raise taxes on hydrocarbon fuels or ration their use: people rebel. I have a hard time imagining a US where the transition to sustainable energy has been made seamlessly, in time to avoid the worst effects of climate mayhem. But I don’t have to imagine the country divided against itself, in large part due to conflict over the climate crisis.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |