Grappling with the climate crisis is difficult given that it’s what we call a “wicked” problem. The changing climate and resulting weather lead to changing biodiversity, changing water quality and quantity, changing ocean carbon sinks, and changing sea ice formation. Glaciers retreat and snowpack declines. The changes are myriad, and are also seen in everyday life: infrastructure collapse and food production and security.
Scientists calculate climate change on a 50- to 100-year timescale, but we have a hard enough time imagining the next decade, let alone the next century. Geologists have long debated whether or not we have entered a new geologic era: the Anthropocene. Their official decision is that we haven’t. But we continue to use the term because we need to humanize the timescale of climate change. We need something that helps us understand the magnitude of the crisis without being overwhelmed. Story is the answer.
In 2016, author Amitav Ghosh called for more climate fiction (“cli-fi”). He suggested that literary fiction could engage readers by bringing characters to life in a world of climate change, though he ignored the canon of science fiction and speculative fiction that deals with these subjects. His idea was to slide climate change into novels along with plot and character development, to avoid scientific facts and news clips and reach readers where it counts: their hearts and minds. These readers would then be more informed about the climate crisis, and may actually do something about it or at least share it with their friends.
2016 is well behind us, and cli-fi has exploded. Writers are incorporating the weather extremes caused by climate change into their work: flooding, drought, and wildfire. Believable climate fiction is blossoming, whether that’s the work’s primary approach or just the world in which it’s set.
This reading list collates seven cli-fi novels, each of which has a female protagonist. Not only are these books well written, but they situate the reader firmly in a climate-changed world that the characters have to deal with. These novels bring the climate crisis home to the reader on a manageable and understandable scale.
FICTION
Flight Behavior
By Barbara Kingsolver
Harper Perennial
Published June 4, 2013
This seminal work was one of the first cli-fi novels in the mainstream press, published before Ghosh’s exhortation to write more cli-fi. Dellarobia Turnbow lives in rural poverty and less than domestic bliss with her husband and children. When she finds a forest full of monarch butterflies in a place where they shouldn’t be, her world changes significantly as people come from everywhere to see this extraordinary sight, including scientists. Dellarobia helps the scientists with their work, where she learns that this phenomenon is a function of climate change. Kingsolver deftly maneuvers Dellarobia through the challenges she faces from her family, her church, and visitors to their rural valley, with an unexpected ending that permanently changes Dellarobia’s life.
FICTION
Migrations
By Charlotte McConaghy
Flatiron Books
Published July 6, 2021
In the near future, a world where fuel is rationed and anti-oil protestors are ubiquitous, Franny Stone arrives in Greenland with a plan to follow the Arctic terns on their annual migration to Antarctica, which may be their last given the changing climate. She joins a fishing crew heading south, away from land and out to sea. But Franny’s story is about more than just the terns; she is as fixated on them as she is on her last chance at redemption, given her past and all that she leaves behind. But she may get more than she bargained for on this last voyage south.
FICTION
The Deluge
By Stephen Markley
Simon & Schuster
Published January 10, 2023
Kate Morris is a magnetic personality who believes that something big and unexpected must be done to address the climate crisis. She works within and outside government to effect that change, which culminates in a shocking crisis as peaceful protestors clash with the police. At the same time, Shane is a single mother motivated by her urgency to call attention to and halt the climate crisis. She develops a network of activists, unknown to each other, who perform acts of civil disobedience, like blowing up power plants, without getting caught. While Kate and Shane implement their plans to change the world and address the climate crisis, the world is crumbling around them. What will they do to survive?
FICTION
Greenwood
By Michael Christie
Hogarth Press
Published February 9, 2021
Four timelines converge in this family saga that spans 100 years. In 1974, Willow Greenwood is constantly being arrested for environmental activism against logging and climate change, her way of atoning for the sins of her father’s timber empire. In 2038, Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a guide for wealthy tourists who visit the last remaining temperate rainforest on the West Coast of Canada. Part of her job description is to be alert for a fungus that has killed much of the rainforest around this preserve. Along with two other male characters and timelines, this is a saga of broad proportions that turns on an axis of family secrets and climate change to bring the disparate pieces of a family puzzle together.
FICTION
The Ministry for the Future
By Kim Stanley Robinson
Orbit
Published October 19, 2021
In 2025, Mary Murphy becomes the head of the Ministry for the Future, an international government entity that seeks to make life on earth as good for future generations as it is in the present. Through banking initiatives, geopolitical maneuvering, environmental law, and less savory mechanisms, Murphy leads the Ministry from its nascent state tackling climate change into a force to be reckoned with. Robinson did extensive research for this book, reading academic articles from the fields of science, economics, sociology, and others, and it shows. It’s almost a blueprint for how to address the climate crisis.
FICTION
Mobility
By Lydia Kiesling
Zando – Crooked Media Reads
Published August 1, 2023
Bunny Glenn isn’t your typical protagonist in a cli-fi novel. She’s somewhat vapid, and works in the oil industry without connecting the dots between oil and climate change. She believes that her job at an oil company in the small section devoted to renewal energy, and the industry talk about the “energy transition,” is truthful and noble. She also believes that her position is critical for bringing more women into the oil industry. Meanwhile, her home in Houston, Texas survives a massive flood, but a second flood inundates her mother’s home—both caused by climate change. Her past will come back to haunt her, however, as she lives into 2051, a period of climate breakdown driven by the very oil companies she used to work for.
FICTION
The Light Pirate
By Lily Brooks-Dalton
Grand Central Publishing
Published December 6, 2022
Wanda is born during a hurricane in Florida and is named after that storm. Her life is just as stormy as, hurricane after hurricane, her community slowly empties out. The municipal government shuts down, the grocery store is abandoned, and the remaining residents must fend for themselves. Wanda’s brother leaves and her father dies in the flooding from yet another hurricane, leaving Wanda with her neighbor, who is prepared for this eventuality. When the neighbor dies after being attacked by citizens stealing her preserves, Wanda is left alone in the world. Or so she thinks. This is a book about the slow creep of climate change’s impacts, how they affect ordinary people, and the extraordinary communities they can go on to create.
