As we were finishing editing interviews for the show this weekend, “Writing the Climate Change Story,” a U.N. report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sounded out a “code red for humanity.”
We knew it was coming — the floods, the heat, the weather that has somehow so gradually and yet so quickly become not a future problem, but one of our present. But it was still striking to read a report that outlined it all, that said it in writing.
Which is the inspiration for the show – highlighting the writers who wake us up to care about the climate, whether it is through historical research or fantastical fiction.
Several years ago writer Amitav Ghosh told TTBOOK he wondered where the climate change novels were – why people weren’t writing about Hurricane Sandy or fires in California.
But now, there’s a whole genre of climate fiction, and they’re bringing us stories we’ve never heard before. On the non-fiction side, Alice Bell goes back to the 1800s in her new history of climate change, “Our Biggest Experiment.” Novelists Lydia Millet (“A Children’s Bible”) and John Lanchester (“The Wall”) set the scene for intergenerational tension amid climate crisis, and Lidia Yuknavitch pulls history into the into the future through “The Book of Joan.”
I talked with Millet for this episode, about how climate stories can inspire emotion – guilt, fear, and rage. She says we need those emotions to survive, just like we need fear to not get burned by touching a hot stove.
–Shannon