Climate fiction as a tool for climate justice
“Dystopia has been giving us some really important cautionary tales,” said Aya de León during the panel “Climate Fiction as a Tool for Climate Justice” at the Bay Area Book Festival. A Black/Puerto Rican author who teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley, De León’s approach towards climate fiction is writing contemporary realistic fiction of working class women of African heritage who go about their business not thinking about the climate crisis, get impacted, politicized, decide to take action and participate in movements.
Held under a bright sky, the Climate Justice panel drew a full audience, with many lounging on the grass around the stage in MLK Jr. Civic Center Park. Moderated by author and activist Keya Chatterjee, the discussion featured four climate fiction authors who touched upon topics ranging from taking a positive spin on the climate crisis, inclusive, intersectional approaches to environmental justice to decolonizing the legacy of the environmental movement.
Working as a climate communicator at NASA twenty years ago Chatterjee had a moment of realization: the impact of burning fossil fuels on the planet was happening a lot faster than predicted and she was frustrated by resistance from those in power.
“If people in power don’t want to hear the truth, and if people are getting paid to not hear the truth, then it’s very hard to get them to understand the truth,” she said.
Imagining victory for climate justice
As Chatterjee moved into nonprofit work and activism, she realized that the challenge was in imagining activists doing something as big as getting rid of Jim Crow laws, or getting the British to Quit India and actually succeeding. So, she turned to writing climate fiction, understanding its role, and helping people and activists comprehend what it might look like to win, because only in fiction can one explore different pathways to winning.
De León echoed this sentiment during the panel, saying her focus is on writing stories on contemporary conditions while imagining victories. Charlie Jane Anders, author of the science-fantasy YA series “Unstoppable,” discussed grappling with the recurring theme of violence as an easy solution. “How do we deal with genocide and fascism?” she said. “How do we come together? How do we build alliances and communities? That kind of ends up being the heart of this trilogy.”
Sim Kern, a journalist and USA Today bestselling author, connects their climate movement work with the Free Palestine movement as a Jewish author. “I do a lot of writing on social media about deconstructing Zionism because Palestine is connected to abolition,” they said. “And without abolition we don’t get any social justice, we don’t get any movement.”
Chatterjee, with extensive experience at the World Wildlife Fund, USAID, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, noted the need for a movement capable of transforming dictatorships into democracies.
Systemic obstacles to climate policy
She highlighted the systemic obstacles to passing effective climate policy, rooted in governance structures designed to maintain power for a privileged few. Decades of efforts and some wins expose the deep inequalities and limitations of the current system, she said.
“And so I come to the kind of conclusion that, well, if we can’t save humanity with this governance system. Maybe it’s the wrong governance system. Maybe, it isn’t the wrong goal.”
She cited the need for 3.5% of the population to engage in regular direct action to bring about change, a daunting task given the increasing violence and extremism from those opposing such movements.
The role of decolonization
During the panel, Chatterjee asked the panelists about the role of decolonization in books for advancing climate justice. De León emphasized the importance of indigenous rights and the disproportionate impact on people of color and the global South, who have been highly involved in the environmental movement and disproportionately affected.
Indigenous knowledge and climate justice
“Indigenous rights are climate justice,” De León said, arguing that decolonizing environmental thinking involves recognizing indigenous knowledge and practices as central to sustainable relationships with the land.
Rebecca Roanhorse, a New York Times bestselling author, is an Indigenous novelist, inspired to write stories where native folks are the entire cast.
“Because when the world goes to hell because of climate change, who’s going to survive?” Roanhorse said, “These people, who have been surviving on this land for generations.”
Representation in climate fiction
De León added that Black communities also have deep ties to land stewardship, which are often erased in mainstream narratives. Kern noted that science fiction, predominantly written by white men, was dominated by that perspective, often focusing on themes of domination and colonization.
So, changing the portrayal of heroes is crucial. Historically, Persons of color were depicted as victims while white characters were saviors. So, for Roanhorse, writing stories where native and Black characters got to be the villains, heroes, love interests and everything in between felt radical.
Similar to the world origin stories involving a mother nature narrative, all the panelists, Chatterjee observed, emphasized nature’s power in their stories, contrasting the narrative of technological conquest. As Anders put it, “If we don’t respect the power of nature, nature will make us respect it.”
