Supply chains broken; shortages; tens of millions out of work; hundreds of thousands dead and dying, the morgues overfull; hospital and health care systems and workers overwhelmed; nations shutting down borders — these things were happening before the COVID-19 pandemic. They were and are caused by the climate crisis. The pandemic is a multiplier effect.
I often wonder how writers of speculative fiction — especially science fiction — are able to come up with new material and get it into print before reality makes it obsolete. I read news of X-treme weather around the world on a weekly basis, and it’s hard not to suspect that a lot of it was written by Jerry Bruckheimer. But it’s not a dystopian future, it’s the dystopian present, and those who live in the global south (i.e., most of the human race) are the extras. And that’s a big part of why we in the global north don’t hear about it unless we go looking for it. The star of he picture is named Karbon Ekonomi, and he lives right here in the USA (in Houston, Texas). “[C]li-fi is made up mostly of disaster stories set in the future,” writes novelist Amitav Ghosh, “and that, to me, is exactly the rub. The future is but one aspect of the Anthropocene: this era also includes the recent past, and, most significantly, the present.” There’s nothing speculative about it: this is that science fiction novel that kept us up at night. The pandemic is not the apocalypse (you heard it here first); it’s not even the last pandemic, and probably far from the worst that lies ahead. Plus drought, killer heat, flooding, killer cold, windstorms, duststorms, firestorms, hailstorms — all coming more rapidly in succession. That’s OK for the Book of Exodus, maybe, but not for the contemporary novel (which is precisely the problem, according to Ghosh). How will literature keep up? How will people’s imaginations keep up? That’s not just a question for literature, of course; it’s a question for all of us. “What’s the worst that could happen?” Well . . . if you don’t imagine it, you can’t prepare for it. And if you don’t think the worst can happen, talk to a non-rich person in Uganda, Kenya, or Mozambique, right about now. Ah, but it can’t happen here. We USAmericans really do think that, at least unconsciously. That’s why Sinclair Lewis wrote that damn book: there is indeed a virulent fascistic strain in the (white) American psyche. But the book was plausible to readers in 1935, because many were beginning to notice what was going on in Germany. Today, all eyes are — well, looking at different things. Other than the climate-created cloud of locusts that stretches from east Africa to central Asia and that threatens to create famine for hundreds of millions, that is. The WHO estimates 250,000 deaths annually from climate change between 2030 and 2050 (though other studies peg the number of deaths from food shortages alone as much higher than that). What kind of poem would you make out of that? What agent would take your novel? Even if people found it plausible, who would want to read it? Everyday reality is depressing enough as it is, no?
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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. |