Climate fiction and climate action

The interactions between climate fiction and environmental activism are the subject of a paper by Alacovska and Holt (2023). They describe environmental activism as “grassroots, decentralised social movements” which attempt to address issues of “inequality and systemic injustice arising from anthropogenic climate change, environmental degradation and ecological collapse” by means of non-hierarchical collective organising. The main object of their paper is to propose methods for future research, but here we will only draw on their introduction to the subject and its background. They believe that the popular genre of climate fiction influences climate activism, with the potential to stimulate the imagination and to energise the “quest for the attainment of better climate alternatives”. This stands in contrast with much writing on climate change, which is concerned with data and “mathematical prediction models for forecasting and comprehending the gravity of global environmental challenges and the urgency of climate action”. Researchers have however also sought to understand “how people reckon emotionally with climate breakdown” and how they envisage better climate futures. In this context it is claimed that work such as fiction based on climate change (so-called ‘cli-fi’) can not only assist individuals to grapple with the “severity and ominousness of climate disaster” but also stimulate pro-environmental action. (Examples of climate fiction mentioned include Vandermeer, Annihilation; Bacigalupi, The Water Knife; and Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain.) Environmental activists are reported as having acknowledged the influence that works in this genre have had on them. Rather than providing blueprints for action, such fiction suggests the “possibilities of imagining alternatives”.

Referring to studies by other researchers, Alacovska and Holt note a range of conclusions. One believes that ‘green speculative fictions’ have helped climate activists to distance themselves from the “grim realities of the unfolding climate catastrophe” and so to think beyond them. Another claims that science fiction stories have helped some groups to “practise a social and political critique of the transnational fossil fuel industry”. It has also been argued that utopian fictions can combine reason, emotion, energy and passion in educating the desire for better ways of life, and that their “often dark, perturbing and apocalyptic narrative renditions of future climates” can enliven our imaginations; the shock and horror of such writing can make climate change become ‘viscerally more “real” than it appears, for example, in scientific discourse’ and motivate readers to prevent the realisation of such dystopian futures. There are also opposing views: one writer concluded that “dystopian narratives of climate disaster tend to generate not only ‘negative’ but ‘demobilising’ feelings of helplessness and fear which hamper pro-environmental action.” Alacovska and Holt believe that “the resonances to be found between reading/watching climate fiction and engagement in ecopolitical action will be not only highly intricate, collective, embodied and sensory but often also quite fleeting, messy and inconsistent” and this view supports their case for improved research methods.

It could be argued that the issues touched on above are relevant to any writer on climate issues, whether in fiction or in non-fiction. The subject of climate change can be so daunting that the mere title of a book on the subject is enough to prevent its being opened. It is perhaps in response to this situation that some attempts to engage people with the subject have started from an imagined future in which the challenge of climate change has been overcome, and the road taken can be reviewed from a position of safety. Two examples of this approach have been the subjects of previous posts: the first is Carbon Ruins, an exhibition of the imagined past seen from the safety of 2053, in which we view items such as the last toys made from plastic and a picture of the last fast-food hamburger (Lund University, 2021). The second is A View from 2050, the “Zero-Carbon World Oration for 2050” which looks back on a successful transition to an imagined future (Wiseman, 2017).

If literature and the arts more generally inspire action on climate change, what kind of action results?  A starting point for inquiry is provided by Garcia-Gibson (2023) in his paper on the ethics of climate activism, which includes discussion of “concerns about climate activism being ineffective, uninclusive, undemocratic, and violent.” Regarding ineffectiveness, he claims that “Some forms of climate activism may be causally inefficacious in promoting climate goals” and that when the action imposes costs on others, this is an ethical concern, particularly if it also fails to produce the desired good. In attempting to decide whether climate action is effective or not, some of the relevant issues are that it needs to happen “across national borders”, since the problem is global, and that “climate benefits … are dispersed in space and time” rather than mainly “benefiting the community where activism takes place”. This can mean that officials in “jurisdictions with high levels of electoral competition” are unlikely to produce politically costly climate policy under pressure from activists. Some climate movements have been criticised as uninclusive, and three examples are given: a group may be mostly composed of white, middle- and upper-class individuals; its activist practices may be too costly, or unattractive, for many people; and it may ignore or downplay “the fact that climate harms fall disproportionately on vulnerable people”. While “most forms of climate activism are compatible with democratic ideals”, more confrontational forms such as protests and direct action “have a less straightforward relation with democracy”. A climate protest is characterised as a “confrontational, public, and often collective act” working primarily through changing social and legal norms. Two kinds of protest are distinguished: persuasive protests which seek norm change through appeals to reasons, and cost-levying protests which “seek norm change by increasing the costs to others of not adopting new norms.” In contrast climate direct action is often a covert act “that tries to achieve its climate goals primarily through coercively stopping” the production of emissions. Examples are blocking or destroying fossil fuel refineries, pipelines, and power plants and sabotaging high-emissions vehicles. Advocates of climate disruptive activism are sometimes in favour of violence against property which “has been vindicated and practiced by environmental activists for decades” and may now be viewed by some as justified “given the short timeframe left for mitigation”. Carbon emissions are “sometimes understood as a form of violent attack against humans, non-humans, and the planet” and this has been used to justify violent climate action as a form of defence. Violent resistance has also been described as counter-productive both “because it alienates potential adherents, and because it can trigger violent governmental repression.”

Goldhill and Fitzgibbon (2021) address climate activism in their introduction to an issue of the Journal of the British Academy dedicated to the subject. They set a context in which global and national policy commitments have failed to produce enough real action on climate change, which requires “system-level transformations in how we live, consume, produce, use energy and move around” and which are at heart political, and “must extend beyond documents and negotiating chambers to reach the ground, uniting governments, businesses and citizens in alliance for change.” The authors suggest two popular images of climate activism; one of public protest, involving street petitions and blockades, and the other of “the concerned citizen weighing up the carbon and financial costs of air travel, plastic use, eating meat and so forth.” However, “much of the most effective climate action is to be found elsewhere, in the collective actions of cities, communities, faith-based groups, even businesses and financiers” and taking climate action means opening our imaginations to new kinds of future, perhaps through climate fiction, climate movies, or engagement with artists and museums “to start creating new forms of meaning and identity for a low-carbon good life.” The next articles in the same journal issue deal with projects aimed at bringing together “artists, scientists, and urban communities to address a range of environmental issues, including the climate crisis, urban equity, and health”. It is followed by a paper claiming that “appropriate leadership that guides widespread climate action … is best sought from those groups already facing the loss of climate change and … already engaged in climate-related social action and activism, including youth and Indigenous peoples.” Further contributions address new local forms of climate activism, and climate activism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lu (2022) notes that while radical actions can bring attention to a cause, they can simultaneously reduce support for it: a situation that has been called the activist’s dilemma. Radical action has been seen historically as effective in two areas; “in the early phases of a movement” due to the media attention which it attracts, and in “preventing or stalling specific events that don’t have social licence”, such as destroying trees. She also describes what has been called the ‘flank effect’ in which “the radical faction of a social movement” can increase support for more moderate groups in the same movement and can also have the effect of normalising radical tactics over time. However, researchers disagree on the effects of radical action: Lu cites one view which sees a nonviolent radical flank as likely to “increase an overall movement’s likelihood of achieving policy wins” and another which “found that radical climate action does not alienate those who are already sympathetic to the cause.”

Pomarede (2022) includes disruptive tactics in the “menu of actions” available to environmental activists while noting that art, creativity, and storytelling also have the power to make effective change. She records views of speakers at a London School of Economics event responding to COP26 and to the promises and perils of disruptive protest tactics. Civil disobedience was described as having “undeniable revelatory power”, but it can present “a nebulous message” and attract biased media attention. One speaker stressed the need “to elevate the narrative” from a view of ‘villains’ and ‘victims’, so that all parties can actively cooperate. Another advised the climate activism movement to “be aware that wealthy individuals are perhaps the most effective at remedying” climate injustice. The importance of the context of civil disobedience was discussed, and it was noted that Extinction Rebellion types of protests are not to be found in, for example, disruptive engagement around energy projects in Brazil, as the “stakes are too high, it is a matter of life and death.”

If we do accept the view put forward by Alacovska and Holt, Pomarede and others that the arts, including the popular genre of climate fiction can indeed influence climate activism, the complex issues surrounding radical action make it clear that its results are far from predictable. This invites questions on whether writing or art which inspires activism can also guide its direction, and on the ethical positions of the writers and artists. Schneider-Mayerson (2018) expressed interest “not in the meaning of climate fiction, but the work that these texts accomplish in the world.” He conducted a qualitative survey of American readers of climate fiction which considered their psychological, intellectual, emotional, and behavioural responses to the works. They tended to be “younger, more liberal, and more concerned about climate change” than non-readers of the genre. While “cli-fi” reminded readers of the severity of climate change and its impact, “the actions that resulted from readers’ heightened consciousness reveal that awareness is only as valuable as the cultural messages about efficacious action that are in circulation” and most works of climate fiction led readers “to associate climate change with intensely negative emotions, which could prove counterproductive to efforts at environmental engagement or persuasion.” Nevertheless, he concluded that cli-fi “might effectively nudge moderates and remind concerned liberals and leftists of the severity and urgency of anthropogenic climate change”, and notes that “memorable literary visions are likely to lead readers to bring specific climate futures to mind more easily”. He also expressed the urgent need for “clearer and stronger messaging about appropriate behavioral responses to climate change”.  In a later paper (Schneider-Mayerson et al., 2023) the authors report the results of conducting “the first randomized controlled experiment on the persuasive effects of reading a climate fiction story.” Their findings built on “a large body of literature indicating the persuasive power of storytelling in environmental issues” and concerned “the longevity of the effects that occur from a single exposure to a message.” They observed “small but significant positive effects on several important beliefs and attitudes about global warming” immediately after a single reading of a cli-fi story, but these effects “diminished to statistical nonsignificance” when retested after a one-month interval.

 

References

 

Alacovska, A., and Holt, M., 2023, The intertwinement of speculative fictions and environmental activism: Towards a sensory sociology of climate fiction, The Sociological Review, online, accessed 1 Sept 2023

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368340137_The_intertwinement_of_speculative_fictions_and_environmental_activism_Towards_a_sensory_sociology_of_climate_fiction

Garcia-Gibson, F., 2023, The ethics of climate activism, 2023, WIRES Climate Change, online, accessed 1 Sept 2023,

https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.831

Goldhill, S. and Fitzgibbon, G., 2021, Climate activism: introduction, Journal of the British Academy, 9(s5), online, accessed 1 Sept 2023

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/3459/JBA-9s5-01-Goldhill-Fitzgibbon.pdf

Lu, D., 2022, Throwing soup at the problem: are radical climate protests helping or hurting the cause? The Guardian, online, accessed 1 Sept 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/13/throwing-soup-at-the-problem-are-radical-climate-protests-helping-or-hurting-the-cause

Lund University, 2021, Carbon Ruins: An exhibition of the fossil age, online, accessed 1 Sept 2023

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lup/publication/89ac5963-8829-484e-a20d-c6dd2d243079

Pomarede, C., 2022, Are disruptive climate protests effective? LSE, online, accessed 1 Sept 2023

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/government/2022/01/18/are-disruptive-climate-protests-effective/

Schneider-Mayerson, M., 2018, The Influence of Climate Fiction: An Empirical Survey of Readers, Environmental Humanities (2018) 10 (2): 473–500, online, accessed 14 Sept 2023

https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-7156848

Schneider-Mayerson, M., et al., 2023, Environmental Literature as Persuasion: An Experimental Test of the Effects of Reading Climate Fiction, Environmental Humanities, online, accessed 14 Sept 2023

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17524032.2020.1814377?journalCode=renc20

Wiseman, J., 2017, The great energy transition of the 21st century: The 2050 Zero-Carbon World Oration, Energy Research and Social Science, online, accessed 1 Sept 2023

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629617303389