As the world turns (and warms), cli-fi is winning the youth market

by staff writer and agencies

WEBSPOSTED: January  1st, 2020

As the world turns (and warms), cli-fi is winning the youth market

A new genre of fiction shows that writers and readers worldwide are now taking climate change risk scenarios seriously.

In fact, a new standalone, independent genre of literary fiction that explores the potential effects of climate change is gaining global popularity. Climate fiction, affectionately dubbed “cli-fi,” is a new idea that is experiencing a phenomenal growth. Its genesis can be found in some earlier literary works, such as the 1964 novel ''The Wind From Nowhere,'' by British sci-fi writer J.G. Ballard, and in Hollywood creations like the 2004 blockbuster ''The Day After Tomorrow.''

According to some observers, the advent of cli-fi was brought on by President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and his refusal to accept man-made climate change as a serious threat.

Cultural phenomenon and anxieties tend to eventually manifest themselves in art. Just as fear of radical political regimes spawned classics by Orwell and Huxley, Greta Thunberg's  obsession with climate change is informing art now and not just in her native Sweden. Cli-fi has gone global.. Novelists and Hollywood directors  are using their imaginations to construct imagined worlds where the planet is punching back at humanity in a cataclysmic fit of rage.

Authors are asking questions about this new world, as well they should. What will it mean for food acquisition? In what ways will it rip apart the family structure and redefine morality? Their answers conjure at time a chilling dystopian landscape and at other times a hopeful, optimistic scenario in the distant future. Think science fiction turned climate visionary.

Take, as an example, Omar El Akkad’s novel ''American War.'' The author imagines life in America following the outbreak of a second civil war in 2074.

Through these cli-fi stories, writers are attempting to transform climate change from the political to the personal, blending their version of the truth into emotional cocktails that hit the bloodstream, delivering a potent dose of anxiety to the hearts young and old

The movement is finding its junkies where these things tend to: Greta Thunberg and her global youth army. Scores of climate fiction falls into the “young adult” (YA) category, and young people are devouring the concepts in their media as well. When youthful minds tend to balk at charts and stats and numbers, the emotional appeal of literature and cinema is far more effective, according to acadenics in the field. Cli-fi courses are sprouting up in universities around the world, according to Dan Bloom, one of a dozen cli-fi aficionados and according to other observers in academia, “Cli-fi” literature as an academic study will be catching on big time in the 2020s and 2030s.

Sharpen your pencils, polish your keyboards. Cli-fi is here.