Wren James
Having worked with hundreds of climate writers over the last five years, the climate fiction I see is mainly dystopian, focusing on the negative effects of climate change without offering proactive solutions. Rather than encouraging action, stories like these make readers shut down and feel anxious. I would love to see more books that show how people can really make a difference in their community- especially in romances and thrillers, which are read in vast quantities. Weaving sustainable messaging into those books could start conversations about climate change in every household in the country. Scientific research shows the most effective climate fiction is set in the present day and shows achievable sustainable actions, while being positive and solutions-focused.
Writing is activism. Over a decade as a published author, I’ve come to learn this. It’s subtle, and slow-working, but incredibly effective. My book about climate magicians, Green Rising, was recently used to kickstart a discussion of climate-friendly investments in a book club for fossil fuel bankers and their families. In the story, teenagers can grow plants from their skin, and use their powers to rewild the planet and stand up to the profit-hungry corporations driving carbon emissions. The fun adventure story hit struck a chord with the investment bankers in a way that a newspaper article wouldn’t, because when we read about fictional characters and experience their emotional highs and lows for ourselves, it unlocks a higher level of empathy and compassion. Even after the book is long finished, these characters stick in our minds. We are able to imagine their feelings in a way that we can’t relate to a faceless population on the news.
For climate activism, this is incredibly important. So many of the effects of climate change feel so distant, both in time and location. It’s hard to connect that to our daily lives. Fiction can help inspire people to act – whether that’s talking to their employer about their pensions scheme’s investments in fossil fuels, or changing to an eco-friendly energy tariff.
More importantly, fiction can help us to feel hope. 62% of people say they hear much more about the negative impacts of climate change than they do about progress towards reducing climate change, resulting in a perceived Solutions Gap. If you feel like the world is doomed, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it, then there’s no reason to take any action.
I expected the process of writing Green Rising to be depressing and mentally exhausting. But, in fact, immersing myself in the climate debate helped me to stop feeling anxious and helpless about our future. I could see all the things that needed to be done to fix the future.
Writers don’t need permission to write a story about the climate crisis, or expertise in science. They don’t need to consider themselves an activist. They only need to be creative and imaginative. Historically, fiction has always had a big impact on politics. As imagineers and world-weavers, we should be leading the charge in climate progress by imagining a better future world. As writers, we can engineer a future world long before it exists in real life. In the forties, creators were envisioning men on the moon long before space travel existed. That cultural drive led to so much energy being invested in the Apollo missions and our successful journey into space. Without those early science fiction stories creating a cultural desire to walk on the moon, we wouldn’t have been driven to make it happen so soon.
In the 1900s, stories about a future where women had the vote encouraged support for the suffragist movement. In fact, a group was founded in the UK in 1908 called the Women Writers Suffrage League, whose mission was to encourage writers to mention the fight for the vote in their writing. As their prospectus stated, “a body of writers working for a common cause cannot fail to influence public opinion.”
Climate writers today do the same thing for our future. By creating stories about worlds filled with climate solutions, we are changing our collective picture of the future. It’s especially important for children to see hopeful visions of the future world they are going to grow up in. A few years ago, I pitched to my publisher a ‘positive’ climate anthology for children. The authors were given a list of solutions believed to combat climate change most effectively, and encouraged to create stories set in the future. I told them to use their anger and frustration to drive their writing, but not to write an angry book. Their settings aren’t always positive utopias, but they don’t represent a hopeless dystopia. We want children to read stories that convey the seriousness of the situation without making it seem futile. They need to see that climate change is solvable.
I was also very careful about where we laid the blame for the climate crisis. I didn’t want to leave readers feeling guilty about their carbon footprints. We want to inspire people, not panic them. No one will engage with climate activism if they’re just going to be made to feel guilty about not recycling. Instead, we need to encourage writers try to show the industry, economics and political factors which are to blame. To call out the companies who have been specifically working to slow climate activism, like fossil fuels companies who spread climate science misinformation in the nineties.
Ultimately, climate change is a political topic – it has to be. It’s unavoidable. The end of world is profitable. My characters are angry they’re being told to reduce their climate footprint, that they’re being made to feel guilty about their personal pollution when industry is responsible for the vast majority of emissions.
The best climate fiction captures the feeling of being part of an ongoing green revolution. It acknowledges that we are living in a time of unprecedented existential fear. And then it shows people how to turn that fear into hope and action.
Wren James is the Carnegie-longlisted British author of many Young Adult novels with Walker Books, including Last Seen Online, Green Rising and The Next Together. Amazon MGM Studios is developing The Loneliest Girl in the Universe as a feature film. They are a RLF Royal Fellow and the story consultant on Netflix’s Heartstopper (Seasons 2 and 3). Season 3 features guest star Jonathan Bailey in a role created by Wren. Wren is the founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League and editor of the anthology Future Hopes: Hopeful stories in a time of climate change. They work as a consultant on climate storytelling for museums, production companies, major brands and publishers, with a focus on optimism and hope. Find out more at wrenjames.co.uk or follow them on Instagram at @wrenjameswriter.
Call to action: Find out more at climate-fiction.org or subscribe to our Substack at climatefictionwritersleague.substack.com, and read The Climate-Conscious Writers Handbook, which helps writers to build confidence and supports them with tips and activities as they draft their stories. Pages include: How to Avoid Being Preachy, Climate Solutions Checklists, How to Reach out to Scientists for Collaboration, Common Climate Story Models, Guided Nature Walks, Traditional Storytelling and Folklore, Climate Poetry and more. The handbook is available to buy with global distribution. It is being sold at printing costs as a not-for-profit project.