Cli-Fi Will Only Reinforce Existing Views, opines UK literary expert George Margall in the New York Times, beating his dead horse

George Marshall is the founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network and author of the forthcoming "Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change."

July 29, 2014

Climate change is an exceptionally ambiguous threat. There is no external enemy with an intention to cause harm. The personal impacts of ever more bizarre weather are still intermittent and open to biased interpretation. And when scientists speak with professional caution about uncertainties and effects far off in the future, we distance ourselves further from an issue that — let’s face it — we were already all too willing to ignore.
Stories are vitally important for us to make sense of climate change. The rational side of our brain can readily accept that this is a problem. But it needs the alchemy of stories to turn that cold data into the emotional gold it needs to mobilize.

The unconvinced will see these stories about global warming as proof that the issue is fiction, exaggerated for dramatic effect.

The problem is that stories are also the means by which people define their personal identities. This means that every story about climate change presupposes social values that might lead some people to reject the information it contains. The dominance of the liberal environmental viewpoint on stories of climate change -- the polar bears, consumer guilt and calls for greater government controls -- is a major reason why it has become so toxic to conservatives.

I predict that “cli-fi” will reinforce existing views rather than shift them. The unconvinced will see these stories as proof that this issue is a fiction, exaggerated for dramatic effect. The already convinced will be engaged, but overblown apocalyptic story lines may distance them from the issue of climate change or even objectify the problem.

There is too much silence on the topic and cli-fi is a welcome addition that could help people talk about climate change more, but to build conviction this genre would need to contain stories about a successful struggle to defend shared values with a resolution in a world that is stable, secure and, in some ways, better. I am not sure that many writers will get excited about writing that!