INTERVIEW: Dan Bloom on CliFi – Can We Save the World Through Fiction?

Fancy some climate change with your popcorn or bedtime read? Climate fiction, or cli-fi, is a new genre of fiction that was first identified as a distinct concept by Dan Bloom, a freelance writer who has been based in Tokyo and Taipei since 1991. It is, basically, fiction which touches in some way on the topic of climate change.

Dan recently sat down with me, SCC chief consultant and author David Thorpe of the cli-fi novel Stormteller, and I picked his brains about the cream of the genre and particularly what the writers of these works think will happen to cities in the future. This is what happened:

David: First, Dan, tell me, what is cli-fi?

Dan: Cli-fi is a new genre term for novels, short stories and movies that stands for works of art and storytelling that deal with climate change and global warming concerns: "cli" stands for the first thee letters of ''climate,'' and "fi" stands for the first two letters of ''fiction.'' Just as sci-fi stands for science fiction, cli-fi stands for what might be called "clience fiction," or novels and movies where climate change is a major theme, although not always the main theme.

Many sci-fi novels and movies also delve into climate themes, so in many ways cli-fi is a sister genre to sci-fi, but with a specific focus on climate change concerns. You could say that sci-fi and cli-fi are cousins.

But in the world we are living in today, where both scientists and the general public is well aware of what the future might look like if we do nothing to stop CO₂ emissions and runaway climate change, cli-fi serves a very important function for writers, literary critics, book reviewers, film directors, scriptwriters and movie critics.

Jeffrey Newman in London has told me that in his view of things, cli-fi is a "reframing" of the national and international discussions we are having on climate issues. Scott Hill in Los Angeles has referred to cli-fi as "a cultural prism" in which to view global warming and its possible fallout, if we do nothing to stop it. I also like to think of cli-fi as a critical prism: a way to focus on what the future might hold.

In the end, what is cli-fi? It is a literary and cinematic ''platform'' for artists and writers to use to say what's on their minds.

David: Can you give examples of how cities are portrayed in cli-fi novels and films?

Dan: Cli-fi novels or movies can deal with large cities, or with smaller cities and towns as well. In "The Odds Against Tomorrow" by New Orleans writer Nathaniel Rich, the setting is Manhattan in the near future, where rising sea levels put the entire area under water, and people are seen canoeing down major streets and avenues. In "Flight Behavior" by Barbara Kingsolver, the setting is the rural countryside where a massive butterfly die-off brings in scientists from the big cities to study the problem.

In "Polar City Red" by Jim Laughter, the setting is Fairbanks, Alaska in 2075 after heat waves in the Lower 48 states of the USA have made that part of the world uninhabitable and climate refugees take refuge in so-called "polar cities" – domed or underground cities – in the Arctic regions to serve as "breeding pairs" for future generations, an idea that was originally put forth by British chemist James Lovelock.

Dan Bloom and Ah-Lin, an actor playing JERKY, in a scene from POLAR CITY RED the movie during location shooting in Alaska.

David: Do you regard the way LA is portrayed (constant rain) in Blade Runner as a clifi feature?

Dan: Yes. That's a very cli fi feature of that movie. And I lived in Tokyo City for five years in the 1990s.....thirty million population....it was Blade Runner to me for five years especially at night and especially in the spring rainy season.

But it doesn't have to be all dark and depressing in cli fi novels or movies. I also hope to read and see cli fi works that portray positive, hopeful ways of coping with what is arguably the most pressing existential threat humankind has ever faced. I am an optimist, myself. I hope cli fi can help readers and movie-goers break through to the side of optimism and hope. But there is a lot of ground to cover, and not all of it is going to be a pretty picture.

In "Finitude" by Scottish novelist Hamish MacDonald, the setting is a city much like London in some un-named country much like Britain in the near future, where all hell breaks loose and a group of people search for a safe haven, against all odds. It's all one of the first cli-fi novels written by a gay author and with a major gay romance in the story.

So cli-fi is an open genre that serves as a platform for writers and film people to explore the future, not in a sci-fi but in a cli-fi way.

David: In some cli fi novels or movies, cities are abandoned. Do you think this is likely?

Dan: Yes, I do. I can't see the future, and I don't have a time frame for when all these things are going to happen, it's anybody's guess and my instinct tells me it's still 300 to 500 years away before the shit hits the fan, so to speak, but if we cannot curb the problems that are causing man-made global warming and runaway climate change, then cities will have to be abandoned and climate refugees will have to seek food, shelter and fuel in northern areas of the Arctic. Goodbye Manhattan, goodbye London, goodbye Paris, goodbye Beijing, goodbye Sydney.

Possible refuges might be New Zealand, the island of Tasmania, and all of the Arctic from Alaska to Canada to Greenland to Scandinavia to Russia and northern China. This is all fertile ground for storytellers to explore with the cli-fi platform.

David: Are all cli-fi films and novels dystopias? Or are there examples of how we might cope positively with climate change in the future?

Dan: "Cli-fi" movies and novels are emerging as a niche genre, taking the pomp of doomsday science-fiction films and novels and mixing it with an underlying message of environmental awareness. Cli fi works do not have to be dystopian, and I hope to see utopian cli fi as well.

Margaret Atwood (right, reading her book Year of the Flood) has coined a term she calls "ustopian" for novels and movies that are both ''u''-topian and dys-''topian'' in theme. Most of what I have read and seen so far in literature and cinema has been what I call dystopiana. But I really hope to see cli-fi take on more optimistic approaches to what ails the Earth these days.

Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and a filmmaker himself, believes that cli-fi movies allow people to view a changing part of the world through what he calls ''the prism of an anecdote.'

By relating the scientific part of a cli-fi story in a way that people can be entranced by it, cli fi storytellers can win their audiences over, he believes. I like the way he frames it.

What I hope to see in the future are cli fi movies and novels with the power of Neville Shute's 1957 novel "On the Beach," which painted a wake up call picture about the dangers of nuclear war and nuclear winter. We need an "On the Beach" about the dangers of climate change and with, hopefully, a hopeful, positive ending, to raise awareness and also to goad people to take action in ways they see fit.

We need to go beyond abstract, scientific predictions and government statistics and try to show the cinematic or literary reality of a painful, possible future of the world climate changed. I do believe that cli-fi is a veritable cultural prism, a powerful critical prism, that we need to cherish and nurture among our artists and visionary storytellers. Time will tell.

David: What are your favorites?

Dan: For me, "Finitude" and "Polar City Red" resonated deeply. Neither novel is well known, and neither novel was reviewed by the mainstream media critics in London or New York or Los Angeles and both were released by small presses. But I read them both three years ago, and the stories they tell still remain with me. I'd love to see either of them turned into a movie. Hollywood, are you listening?

David: Do we have an idea of how popular they are and who reads them?

Dan: Cli-fi is still such a new term that only ten per cent of the population has ever heard of it, and such novels and movies – classified as cli-fi – are not on the radar of mainstream book reviewers or movie critics.

So for the time being, the publishing industry and the Hollywood establishment has largely ignored the rise of cli-fi (even with major news stories about the genre in Time magazine, the Guardian, The Financial Times and the New York Times).

I believe the public is hungry for cli-fi – both movies and novels. But how to get such storytelling distributed to the public is a question I cannot answer. I'm looking for the answer now but it still eludes me.

Follow #CliFi on Twitter to keep up.

David Thorpe's novel Stormteller is available from the publisher here. or on Amazon.com. 

How we can keep global warming to 2°C or below

There is no greater challenge for the world this year than to reach an agreement at Paris' climate change talks in December that will limit global warming to within 2°C. This is the threshold, moving beyond which scientists agree would create terrible and irreversible damage for our planet and all who dwell upon it.



Amongst the main issues to be solved is the long-standing difference of opinion between poor and rich countries over who pays for the required mitigation measures. The poor countries' view is that since the wealthy nations put most of the planet-warming gases into the atmosphere, then they should pay for it. These rich nations in turn do not dispute this, but argue that many of the poorer countries are now producing a huge and growing amount of the gases, and themselves must accept a share of the responsibility.

Then there are the extent to which all nations will be bound by whatever agreement is reached, and, crucially, how it will be monitored, since many nations, such as China, have said they would regard it as a breach of national sovereignty were their emissions to be scrutinized by outsiders. Instead, they demand to be trusted, something which others are uncomfortable about.

Then there is the collapse in the price of oil, which is almost back at $50, previously thought unreachable again. This makes the cost of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures seem much more expensive by comparison. It is leading some to call for stronger taxes on carbon to redress the balance.

On the positive side, the evidence of the reality of climate change is now hitting home in peoples' minds, despite the increasingly hollow-sounding voices of sceptics. 2014 was the hottest year on record - and 10 of the warmest have been since 1998.

Graph of yearly global temperature increases.

We are increasingly seeing more of a push by cammpaigners, scientists, artists, writers and musicians, as well as religious leaders such as the Pope, to build a mass, global consensus that we have to act, and do what the science demands.

If an agreement is reached then we can expect a huge mobilization of activity, but not staight away because an agreement reached in Paris in eleven months would not become binding for another four years.

In order to achieve the 2 °C climate target with a likely probability (>67%), cumulative global CO₂ emissions in the 2010–2100 period need to be constrained to about 1000 GtCO₂ (range of 800–1200 GtCO₂). The projected global 2020 greenhouse gas emission level is now around 10% above the 2010 level.

The ‘least-cost’ 2°C scenarios show lower 2020 emission levels, in the range of 38 to 47 GtCO₂eq. But these typically assume immediate implementation of mitigation policies in all countries and sectors.

If large emission reductions by 2020 are unlikely it will become increasingly harder to reach the 2°C target; global emission reduction rates will need to be much higher, and so, therefore, will the mitigation costs.

This in turn raises the risk of missing the 2°C target and the requirement for deploying technologies that often meet with public resistance.

A new analysis of the models (Long-term climate policy targets and implications for 2030  a Dutch PBL Policy Brief) shows that achieving the 2°C target critically depends on well organised international policies, in the short term, to realise stringent reductions during the 2020–2030 period.

This means formulating ambitious mitigation goals and increasing the participation of all parties in climate policy.

And it necessitates taking real action; implementing long-term incentive structures to reduce emissions (given the inertia in economic and energy systems) and stimulating innovation.

The biggest challenge is, in a tough economic climate, with a low price for oil, how to increase the motivation to implement ambitious climate mitigation policies.

It is therefore useful to look at ways of doing so that additionally achieve synergies with other policy areas, such as job creation, poverty relief, food provision, energy security, economic opportunities and risks, air pollution and ecosystem degradation.

The costs of meeting the 2°C target would be lowest if the global emissions level were to peak within the next 10 years.

Can we achieve this? Right now, emissions are increasing, but the rate of increase is slowing. The average growth in emissions over the last decade – excluding the global financial crisis between 2007-2012 was 3.8% per year. A 2.5% growth is projected by PwC and the International Monetary Fund in 2015.

What can cities and regions do? They can set unilateral targets and work with partners on their own strategies. Individuals can put pressure on their local representatives. All can help to put pressure on national governments to reach a firm and proper agreement in the Paris talks.

To borrow two clichés: all hands on deck – it will be touch and go.

David Thorpe's book, The 'One Planet' Life: A Blueprint for Low Impact Development has received the following praise:

"An excellent and immensely practical step by step guide" – George Marshall, author of Don't Even Think About It, Why Our Brains Are Wired To Ignore Climate Change.

“This year’s must have book.” Jane Davidson, former Environment Minister for Wales and Director of INSPIRE

"There is much inspiration to be had from this comprehensive and beautifully illustrated book. David Thorpe is a master of lucid writing on one of the most important topics of our time.  I highly recommend this book to anybody who is interested in assuring that we leave a habitable planet to our children." Herbert Girardet, founder of The World Future Council.

"Makes the irrefutable case for ‘one planet living’" – Oliver Tickell, editor, The Ecologist

Living the One Planet Life at the UK's 15 year old sustainable community

The view from the south looking over the lake towards the terrace.

Not far from the minster town of Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in England's Midlands (Robin Hood country to you) Hockerton housing cooperative is one of the UK's best-known example of communal one planet living. Five households have been forging a new way of living there for 15 years that is more sustainable than most, and self-sufficient in energy, water, sewage treatment and much food. They also run courses, both online and offline, and accept site visits.

When I went to see them it was a lovely late summer’s day. All of the trees and bushes were laden with fruit.

 

Part of the vegetable garden at Hockerton Housing Project.

I was taken on a tour by Bill, a resident who’d been living there for about seven years with his family. We explored the ten acres of orchards and fields where residents grow 40% of their food, keeping bees, sheep and hens. The community is about two-thirds self-sufficient in vegetables but less for fruit and meat. The hives most years generate more honey than can be eaten so surplus is exchanged. Wine-making makes use of some fruit/vegetable excesses.



Hockerton looking east from the roof of the terrace. On the left is the earth covered rear of the homes, which merges into the orchard. To the right is the lake. The chimney is for natural ventilation. At the top of the glazing can be seen the photovoltaic array.

Water supply

I was taken next to a pond that collects water filtered for use in their washing machines, sinks and toilets. Drinking water is collected from the glass roof of the conservatory in front of the row of houses via copper pipes, which are slightly antiseptic, and stored in a tank with a capacity sufficient to last around 100 days. The water is passed through a five-micrometre string filter, a carbon filter and a UV-light filter. The community is self-sustaining in water and energy.

All of the effluent is purified using an attractive reed bed at the side of the homes, buzzing with dragonflies and other insects, whose outflow enters a long lake situated along the front of the terrace, which is stocked with carp that is harvested for food or sale, and on which the children go boating. The whole is a haven for wildlife.

The houses

The houses themselves are partly earth-covered on the north side, for insulation, and constructed of a shell of dense concrete. The idea is to create thermal mass to hold the sun's heat that is captured by the south-west facing conservatories, which are also used for clothes drying.

Nowadays we know more about the carbon cost of using concrete and there are carbon-saving alternatives that do the same job. Each house is six metres deep, not so deep that it’s dark at the back, and 19 metres wide, fronted by a sunny conservatory accessed by French windows.

The rooms at the back are reserved for functions requiring less use and light, such as bathrooms and utility rooms. The homes are spacious, light, warm and comfortable.

Right: The two wind turbines and willow for coppicing.

Electricity

Electricity is provided by 7.65 kW peak arrays of PV panels on the roof and new ones on the office to help power that and charge an electric shared car, and by two nearby wind turbines;

• a 6 kW Proven wind turbine installed early 2002 year (upgraded in 2008) and
• a 5 kW Iskra wind turbine installed in 2005 as part of the construction of a community building. 

The wind turbines have produced only 40-50% of their projected output (partly due to turbulence and poorly matched inverters), some heat pumps failed, and energy use has been higher than expected (put down to teenagers, more people working from home and food processing).

This is why more PVs were installed in 2012.

The typical energy use for a house is around 10kWhrs/day (all electric).

The community has on balance more electricity than it needs and the surplus is exported to the grid for profit.

Hot water is produced partly via a heat pump and super-insulated thermal stores, but since they mainly failed, mostly by electricity.

Below: the view looking directly down across the solar electric panels, a solar water heating panel, and into the small patch of private front garden each dwelling has, with a raised bed and composting area.

Educational role

Part of Hockerton's mission is to spread the word about how it is possible to live more lightly on the earth. Although residents own their own homes they are all members of a cooperative and agree to spend 300 paid hours per year supporting a joint business which runs a programme of tours and educational events, workshops and consulting on both new and retrofit energy efficient building.

Finance for the building and land purchase came from the Co-operative Bank & Ecology Building Society. If you wanted to live there it would not be cheap: despite construction costing just 15% more than an average house of comparable size (£95,000 in 1998), recently one of the four bedroomed homes sold for £500,000. So it's not for everyone, and rather the opposite of much of what we think of as 'low impact housing' in the UK.

"My kids love it here," says Bill. "And, after the initial suspicion, the local council and residents like us too. In fact, they are very proud of us."

The planning conditions

Planning permission was initially granted with great difficulty, despite the involvement of senior academics Robert and Brenda Vale, from Nottingham University’s Architecture Department, who had built and lived in the country’s first autonomous, self-sufficient home in a Conservation Area in nearby Southwell. This is because the founders wanted to build on agricultural land, something not permitted in the UK without good reason because of the fear of land speculation and 'unfettered development'.

Permission eventually came with a condition (a 'Section 106' requirement), whereby a fixed number of hours (300 per year per household) must be spent on the land, in addition to the same number of hours spent on the community's business.

This condition seems to me to be both fairer, more achievable and manageable, than having to provide a percentage of food supply from the land, as with One Planet Developments in Wales. It also helps to secure the planners' prime directive of preventing such developments becoming owned by people who do not want to use the land, and who will instead commute to jobs elsewhere.

300 hours per year is just about six hours per week, which is quite do-able and leaves time for other work and leisure, plus the other 300 hours of Co-op work.

The project had to be viewed by the planning department as “a move towards Sustainable Development”, which “could be seen as complimenting the council’s (Newark & Sherwood District Council) own energy / environmental activities”. Account was taken of the social provisions of the scheme – “(it) is not just for the houses in an isolated situation but as a whole living project…the occupants of the dwellings will work on the site towards a system of self-sufficiency through sustainable employment with low impact on the environment”.

Besides owning a shared electric car, some families have fossil-fuel powered cars, two share one of these, and there are many bikes for local journeys.

To improve biodiversity over 4,000 trees have been planted around the site, including willow for coppicing, wild cherries for birds, and oak and hazel.

Because of this and the lake/wetland, biodiversity is flourishing, with several pairs of regular breeding waterfowl on the lake, including little grebe.

A number of passing bird migrants have been seen including green sandpiper, hobby and water rail. The ponds are monitored by the local agricultural college (Brackenhurst) who are pleased about a flourishing population of the endangered water vole.

Many people have visited this inspiring place and attended workshops, but so far, despite individual homes being modeled on aspects of the project, no community has yet emulated it in full.

Why is this, I wonder? Perhaps it’s due to the difficulty of finding the right combination of land, motivated, experienced architects, pioneers and finance. It’s notable that three of the community-scale projects I looked at in the course of writing my book The One Planet Life (of which this article is an extract) – BedZED, Hockerton and Lammas – have been led by visionary architects.

We need more of them.

More info at http://www.hockertonhousingproject.org.uk/.

David Thorpe's book, The 'One Planet' Life: A Blueprint for Low Impact Development has received the following praise:

"An excellent and immensely practical step by step guide" – George Marshall, author of Don't Even Think About It, Why Our Brains Are Wired To Ignore Climate Change.

“This year’s must have book.” Jane Davidson, former Environment Minister for Wales and Director of INSPIRE

"There is much inspiration to be had from this comprehensive and beautifully illustrated book. David Thorpe is a master of lucid writing on one of the most important topics of our time.  I highly recommend this book to anybody who is interested in assuring that we leave a habitable planet to our children." Herbert Girardet, founder of The World Future Council.

"Makes the irrefutable case for ‘one planet living’" – Oliver Tickell, editor, The Ecologist