Transcript Climate Change Narratives

“Climate Change offers great storytelling potential.”
Mike Hulme
Climate Change Narratives
What are they?
Why teach them?
What texts to teach?
By Drew Hubbell
What are Climate Change Narratives?
• A sub-genre of Speculative Fiction, closely
related to Science Fiction.
• Cli-Fi: fictional work thematizing or plotted
around climate change; setting is present, nearfuture, or retrospective from distant future.
• Generally accepted: Cli Fi was developed in
1970s.
Cli-Fi Stats
• According to eco-fiction.com, cli-fi narratives
are the fastest growing subset of naturethemed fiction.
• In the last two years, 103 of 124 naturethemed fiction publications were cli-fi.
• In the last 150 years, 88 of 128 were cli-fi.
Science Fiction
• Sci Fi: fiction that explores potential consequences
of scientific and technological innovations; often
futuristic settings.
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 1818, often cited as
originating genre.
• Co-emergent with disciplines of modern science,
industrialism, urbanism, consumer capitalism,
middle-class mass public.
• Ranges from boosterism to dystopian.
Speculative Fiction
• Broad genre: any fictional writing set in worlds
postulated, by terms of story, as realistic or
scientifically possible, including fantasy.
• Using narrative to play philosophical game of
“what if” to spin out likelihood of causal chains.
• Using narrative to imagine alternative futures,
alternative possibilities; scenario building.
• As ancient as storytelling; in some respects, the
main purpose of using fictional narrative.
Narrative
• Narrative is any report of a sequence of events
leading to a conflict and its resolution, linked
together by cause and effect and having a
discernible point of narration.
• God created the world in seven days.
• We now predict that the world will warm by 4°C
by 2100, ending human civilization as we know it.
Why Teach Cli-Fi?
• “It is not sufficient to argue that more or clearer
information about climate change from scientists
will lead to greater public engagement.”
Hulme 215
• There is enough science, enough technology, and
enough money to address all the mitigation and
adaptation necessary to keep global temps below
2°C by 2050. 2°C by 2100 is much harder, but still
feasible with current science, technology, and
available money.
Why Teach Cli-Fi?
• “Science can’t help us discover the meaning of
climate change.” Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree
About Climate Change, p. 325
• “As well as describing physical reality, climate can
then also be understood as an imaginative idea.”
Hulme p. 14
• “One of the reasons we disagree about climate
change is that we receive multiple and conflicting
messages about climate change and we interpret
them in different ways.” Hulme p. 215.
Why Teach Cli-Fi?
• The dominant narrative about climate change is
apocalyptic-dystopian.
• “While it has been claimed that the term ‘catastrophic
climate change’ should be adopted in order to alarm
the public, positive messages tend to be more
attractive and effective in motivating behavior change
than negative ones.” Hulme p. 234-5
• “It frequently leads to disempowerment, apathy, and
skepticism among its audience.” Hulme 348
• Leiserowitz Study on AmericanAttitudes toward CC:
http://environment.yale.edu/climatecommunication/articles/archives/C15
Why Teach Cli-Fi?
• “Indeed, a great deal of the work of deep social
change involves having debates during which new
stories can be told to replace the ones that have
failed us. Because if we are to have any hope of
making the kind of civilizational leap required of
this fateful decade, we will need to start
believing, once again, that humanity is not
hopelessly selfish and greedy; the image
ceaselessly sold to us by everything from reality
shows to neoclassical economics.” Naomi Klein, “A
People’s Shock” The Nation, 1/6/14, 18-20.
Why Teach Cli-Fi?
• Does it matter if we secure our goal of
restabilizing global climate but have not made
the world a better place?
• “Rather than placing ourselves in a fight
against climate change, we need a more
constructive and imaginative engagement
with the idea of climate change…the idea of
climate change should be used to rethink and
renegotiate our wider social goals about how
and why we live on this planet.” Hulme 361
What I teach: Primary Texts
• A mix of short and long fiction and films:
– The Rapture
– The Collapse of Western Civilization
– Flight Behavior
– The Stone Gods
– Snowpiercer
– The Day After Tomorrow
– The Age of Stupid
– Avatar
What I Teach: Types of Texts
• Different versions of climate change narrative
– Apocalypse / dystopian
– Action Adventure
– Domestic Realism
– Fantasy
– Speculative Fiction / Magic Realism
– Documentary from the Future
What I Teach: Secondary Texts
• Supplemental texts from science, journalism,
policy studies, and cultural criticism
– Why We Disagree About Climate Change
– This Changes Everything: Capitalism v Climate
– Targeting Zero-Zero
– Culture, Environment, and Ecopolitics
– IPCC AR5 SYR Summary for Policy Makers
What I Teach: Intellectual Approaches
• Critical thinking, resistant reading, knowledgebased assessment of power structures,
climate justice analysis, ecocriticism
• Moral and ethical inquiry: what future do we
want?
What I Teach: The Empire Writes Back
• A project that enables students to write their
own narratives for specific audiences.
• Team Project
• Local Setting and Subject
• Targeting Peer Audience
• Using any available narrative medium: film,
short story, installation art, poster