Imagining climates

Background/Question/Methods

The climate crisis is often seen as a problem that must be tackled by science and engineering and as a problem of scientific communication: How do we ensure that a general population understands the science of human-caused planetary warming and then responds to the crisis on the basis of this understanding? But the climate crisis is also a narrative problem, one that requires a response rooted in imaginative practices. The ways in which we narrate the climate crisis to ourselves -- individually and socio-culturally – shape our response. What climate stories do we need to hear now? What imaginative practices can be fruitful when it comes to engaging with the problem? How might one bring together literary and scientific discourses in acts of transformative communication? I will consider different modes of climate storytelling – produced in different literary, pedagogical and disciplinary contexts – and how narrating the climate crisis can move us beyond disciplinary and epistemological siloes.

Results/Conclusions

I will examine some of my own procedures in creating a work of climate-responsive fiction, the novel Blaze Island, which features a climate scientist as a central character. The novel engages in amplifying observations of the natural world while considering the ethical dilemmas and magical thinking of climate engineering. I will consider what a climate-themed novel can do. I will introduce some imaginative practices of climate storytelling – very short micro-climate stories that focus on specific experiential elements; the potential uses of metaphor -- to allow us to re-see and transformatively experience scientific and ecological phenomena.