Climate Fiction to Inspire Green Actions: A Tale of Two Authors

Abstract

Many works of ‘climate fiction’ have a tendency to depict an apocalyptic future that imagines a planet in dystopian collapse. While hope is that such cautionary tales will prompt constructive behavior change, unintended consequences can occur leaving some audiences feeling defensive, hostile, or overly anxious. In contrast, there is a body of evidence indicating that stories and characters that model positive solutions to climate change are more likely to inspire audiences to imitate the fictional role models. This positive approach is shared by the authors of this chapter—Denise Baden in her rom-com Habitat Man and Jeremy Brown (and team) in the comic series The Renegades: Defenders of the Planet. This chapter draws on their experience to offer advice to creative writers within climate fiction. While there are differences in the depiction of gentle versus radical solutions, both authors advocate the need for stories that generate a sense of agency, hope, and courage.

The flourishing genre of “climate fiction” (cli-fi) is increasingly prevalent across the arts as anxieties rise about the fate of the planet. The phrase itself was not visible until first used by Dan Bloom in 2015 (Svoboda, 2016). But cli-fi, as a trend, was already noticeable in the 1990s with the significant rise in fictional books depicting human-caused climate change as a focal point of the narrative. Toward the end of the 2000s, dozens of cli-fi novels had entered circulation as the impacts of climate crisis became more obvious (Schneider-Mayerson, 2017; Trexler, 2015)—Solar, The Year of the Flood, The Wind-Up Girl, A Children’s Bible and Clade, to name just a few best-sellers. Similarly, Svoboda (2016) provides an overview of 60 movies which fall within the genre of cli-fi. Notable examples of climate films include The Day After Tomorrow, entering cinemas in 2004, dramatizing the collapse of ocean currents (Lowe et al., 2006), and most recently, Don’t Look Up (2021), a dark comedy about an apocalyptic comet which parodies much of the world’s indifference to the climate crisis. At the time of writing, the film had already broken records on Netflix (Lewis, 2022). Similarly, many works of literary cli-fi are receiving a positive reception. For example, Florida (2018), an anthology of short stories by Lauren Groff, was a finalist of the National Book Awards (Schneider-Mayerson et al., 2020).

However, empirical evidence is mixed over whether climate fiction can bring about the desired changes in behavior needed to make a meaningful contribution to “saving the planet.” For example, a study by Schneider-Mayerson (2018, p. 494) found that many of the new behaviors reported by novel readers did little to “contribute to climate mitigation, collective adaptation, or the pursuit of climate justice” with very few political actions. For example, reading Flight Behavior merely caused one participant to start using recycled shopping bags—a necessary but insufficient response to the scale of the climate emergency. The Day After Tomorrow meanwhile, left viewers “feeling” motivated, but somewhat unable to respond, given the film fell short of depicting adequate solutions to the climate crisis (Lowe et al., 2006).

Furthermore, climate dystopias, while attempting to raise awareness of the need for change, may have unintended consequences, such as defensive reactions on the personal front, such as avoidance, denial, and/or on the political front such as hostility against immigrants. Another concern is that even if climate fiction increases awareness of the hazards of unmitigated climate change, this awareness may result in eco-anxiety, rather than effective action (Baden, 2019). However, the outlook is more promising for stories that depict positive solutions. For example, Baden (2019) recruited 91 participants to read and comment on a selection of four short stories with an environmental theme. The results showed that fictional stories with a solution focus were more effective than catastrophic stories at motivating intentions to carry out ecofriendly behavior.

The authors of this chapter come from different backgrounds, with different objectives and genres. For example, compared to Denise Baden’s Habitat Man, the stories of Jeremy Brown begin with a greater degree of dramatic or “scary” suspense about the threat of monsters, villains, and potential disasters. Yet the authors agree that increasing a sense of agency is important to showcase the kinds of behavior that might avert the futures we fear and bring about a happy ending. As creators, we share the belief that raising the alarm without increasing a sense of being able to do something about the issue often simply leads to eco-anxiety. Helping to move readers from high eco-anxiety and low agency to a sense of being able to make a difference (see Table 1) is an important driver for our work.

Table 1 Objective of moving toward low eco-anxiety and high agency

A particular aim of Denise Baden is also to reach the disengaged (low eco-anxiety/low agency), and her novel Habitat Man is targeted at a mainstream audience who might avoid “green” literature but would enjoy a rom-com. In the following section, Denise describes how she drew upon psychological theories of behavior to inspire green actions in readers. Techniques utilized include highlighting the benefits of green behavior to the user, presenting green actions as the norm, showing solutions, and tapping into more spiritual aspects relating to humanity’s relationship with nature. At the same time, romance, humor, and mystery are used to keep readers engaged with the plot and balance the tips on wildlife and climate mitigation that readers can adopt themselves.

In The Renegades series, aimed at younger readers, the solutions promoted are not always immediately achievable for the reader, but Jeremy Brown highlights that the aim is to plant ideas and values that may provide seeds of future actions in the long term, while modeling some behaviors that readers can engage in, such as political protest.

The common approach that we share in this chapter is around the need to create role models that generate this positive sense of agency, which can be radical, or focus more on gentle changes in behavior. In the remainder of the chapter, we illustrate this point through our experiences in writing, or co-creating, our own works of eco-fiction. In doing so, we seek to share our wisdom with creative writers embarking on a similar journey into climate fiction. We conclude our chapter by showcasing an ongoing initiative that promotes fiction to inspire green actions: the free series of Green Stories Writing Competitions set up by Denise Baden in 2018.

Denise Baden

Motivation to Write Habitat Man

When you work as an academic in the world of sustainability, it is easy to be extremely busy, while achieving very little. We share among ourselves latest news, findings, and articles about climate change problems and solutions and publish academic articles that only those who care about climate change read and teach courses on sustainability that only students who already care about the topic choose. It’s a sad fact that we spend most of our time talking in our own echo chambers. In desperation, I turned to fiction as a way to reach a wider audience—those who wouldn’t dream of watching a climate change documentary. A perfect framework for a book came to me in the form of a visit from a local ecologist in 2019 who’d retired early to become a green garden consultant, advising people how to make their gardens more wildlife friendly. It immediately occurred to me that this would make a lovely TV series—a bit like “All Creatures Great and Small”—each episode he could visit different gardens with character arcs in the form of a love story and mystery. I realized the best route to this was to first write a book which could then be adapted if successful. In Sept 2021, I published Habitat Man (D. A. Baden, 2021)—an eco-themed rom-com. The blurb is below:

Tim is fifty, single and in a job he hates. Inspired by a life-coaching session, he sheds his old life to become Habitat Man, giving advice on how to turn gardens into habitats for wildlife. His first client is the lovely Lori. Tim is smitten, but first he has to win round Ethan her teenage son. Tim loves his new life until he digs up more than he bargained for, and uncovers a skeleton, one that threatens to bring out the skeletons in his cupboard too. Only Jo, Tim’s long-time best friend knows his secret, but can she be trusted?

I began by thinking of what I wanted readers to do as a result of reading my novel, and then considered how I could inspire such behaviors. In the next section, I present extracts from my book Habitat Man which illustrates how I drew upon psychological theories of behavior change to promote certain behaviors. I also discuss the steps I took to avoid the trap of info-dumping or preaching. The age-old premise of “show don’t tell” came in very useful, as did the use of humor to disguise the green message.

Theory of Planned Behavior

One of the best known and most widely used theory of behavior is Ajzen’s (1985) Theory of Planned Behavior (Fig. 1). Ajzen posits that behavior is a product of:

• 1. Attitudes toward the behavior, which in turn are informed by awareness and knowledge.

• 2. Social norms—do the people who matter to you approve or disapprove of this behavior?

• 3. Perceived behavioral control—how able do you feel to engage in this behavior?

Fig. 1

Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985)

A similar concept to “perceived behavioral control” is self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). Self-efficacy can be broken down into three aspects: (1) self-efficacy expectancy, i.e., perceptions of competence/capability in carrying out the behavior, (2) outcome expectancy: belief that the behavior will result in the desired outcome, and (3) outcome value: the outcome of the behavior is desirable.

For example, according to this model, recycling behavior will be affected by attitudes toward recycling, which in turn is affected by awareness of issues related to recycling. The normative aspect would be whether the people close to us will disapprove if we don’t recycle, and whether there are recycling facilities available (perceived behavioral control).

Research indicates that the most effective drivers of behavior are social norms and perceived behavioral control. Countless studies into sustainable behavior report an attitude-behavior gap. For example, despite most people claiming positive attitudes toward green products, and intentions to purchase them, most purchase decisions are based on price and quality (Miller & Levine, 2019; Sheeran, 2002; Sheeran et al. 2003). Indeed, it is normative influences and feelings of being able to make a difference that drive behavior in reality. This is an issue as currently almost all climate change communications, including cli-fi, focus on raising awareness of the issues.

Those of us who are engaged in our own personal efforts to mitigate against climate change may have been inspired to do so by documentaries showing the effects of plastic on ocean creatures, orangutans wondering homeless in decimated rainforests, frightening statistics of rising temperatures, and desertification and acidification. Not unnaturally, we take what inspired us and try to share it more widely. However, many, when faced with such bleak prospects, switch off, go into denial, or succumb to paralyzing eco-anxiety, which, unless accompanied by effective action, simply adds mental health issues to the growing list of impacts of climate change (Baden, 2019).

One way to protect against this is to focus on solutions, especially those that people may not be aware of. In Habitat Man, there were plenty of opportunities for my character to hold forth about the terrifying statistics relating to biodiversity and extinction, but I decided to skip the alarm and focus almost entirely on the solutions. Possibly the only time the issue of biodiversity loss is directly mentioned is on his first visit as follows:

I rubbed the grey soil between my fingers… I dug another spadeful, still looking. A lone woodlouse, what had happened to the rest? Where were the worms, the springtails, the beetles, the millipedes? These were the building blocks of the food chain. I felt a jolt of anxiety in my gut. I’d not dug in soil for twenty years. Statistics were one thing, but the soil was barren. Where has all the life gone?

The above extract focuses initially on attitudes—raising awareness of the issues and consequences of barren soil. The next paragraph moves quickly onto perceived behavioral control—ways to solve this issue that are possible for readers to do and importantly solutions that readers may not already be aware of. Please note Florence is a dog!

Florence trotted into the garden and squatted, gazing serenely into the distance.

‘Do you use a wormer on Florence?’

‘Yes?’

‘That will kill all worms it comes in contact with.’ I held some unmoving soil in my hand. ‘How about flea treatment?’

‘Is that bad?’

‘Pets rarely get fleas in winter so maybe give it a rest till summer.’

‘The vet recommended it each month just in case.’

‘It’s a good income stream for them, but one typical flea treatment has enough pesticide to kill millions of insects, not just fleas, but bees too, and it gets into the water supply, affecting aquatic organisms and amphibians.’

‘OMG, I feel like a murderer now.’

‘Look for less toxic alternatives. If they don’t work you can always do a stronger treatment if problems occur.’

That is probably the longest info dump in the whole novel and the plot quickly moves onto the relationships developing between the characters. But most readers, even if they don’t own a pet themselves, will know someone who does, and few are aware of the toxic effects of pet treatments. This focus on solutions that continue throughout the book, and no issue is presented without corresponding information on what anyone can do to address it, thus tapping into readers’ feelings of behavioral control—they know what can be done and how to do it.

However, if readers wanted a book on green solutions or wildlife gardening, they’d have got one, and my aim was to reach a wider audience who wouldn’t choose such material, so in each garden there is something to keep the reader hooked. In the gardens with the love interest, Lori, the readers are kept engaged by seeing the romance play out. Similarly, in the chapter called “The Polyamorist,” I cover the topic of home composting, but the reader is hooked, waiting for Dawn the polyamorist to make a move. In the scenes with the wizard, Tim promotes the idea of a pond to attract frogs and bats, but the reader turns the pages in anticipation of some fun magic or wizardry. In Daisy, the Feng Shui gardener’s garden, there’s the mystery of the body in the garden unfolding to keep the reader’s interest.

Having a body naturally results in the need for a coffin and a burial, enabling me to promote the idea of green funerals. An inquest into the death provides a natural opportunity for a witness from the Natural Death Center to talk about the environmental benefits of shallow burial in a willow coffin, and avoiding toxic embalming fluids. Following the rule of “show, don’t tell,” this is followed up by a natural burial scene, so we experience an alternative approach for ourselves:

The intermittent sound of fiddles gave way to a proper tune, and gradually the chatter subsided and everyone looked towards Andrew and Katie. They brought their fiddling to a graceful close and we stood before the curtain of flowers and willow. Brian’s voice still taking to Paul was discordant in the sudden quiet, and he bumbled to a halt.

The music of the garden took over from the fiddles. Undeterred by the crowd, a tiny brown wren, tail cocked in the air, trilled its liquid song from the new willow fence. Nearby, a chiff-chaff chanted the repetitive call of its name. A queen bumblebee burred, her legs loaded with balls of pollen for her hungry offspring. A brimstone butterfly fluttered by, investigating the flowers on the willow bower, its bright yellow wings a flash of sunshine.

A roar of a plane flying overhead reminded us that we weren’t in the deep countryside, but in a suburban small garden, underneath the flight path from the airport a few miles down the road. When the plane had passed, Fern nodded at Andrew and Daisy and together they carefully lifted the willow curtain down from the branches and walked it to the end of the garden.

I steeled myself to look. But it wasn’t the deep, dark, rectangular coffin-shaped hole I’d pictured in my head. The hole in the ground was just as I’d left it, pond-shaped and three feet deep, except now Grandad, as I thought of him, was laid out in his baggy trousers and a colourful knitted jumper in the willow coffin, surrounded by the bones of his wife. I exhaled with relief. This was absolutely right. The shallow pond-shaped hole was like nature’s opening arms welcoming them back to the earth.

Another climate change solution I wanted to promote was food choices, especially the use of insects as a greener alternative to meat. The main barriers here are negative attitudes toward insects as food, so simply raising the idea makes a start toward normalizing the concept. I used the device of the comic side kick to develop a sub plot. Jo, the lead character’s best friend, devises a recipe generator that randomly picks seasonal ingredients to create recipes. Most challenging is the joker column which can include anything from edible insects to nettles. This provides humor and the opportunity to promote sustainable food choices. Fiction is now driving reality as a student inspired by the idea is working on making it a reality (see random recipe generator at Baden, n.d.).

Some sections focused on tapping into the normative drivers of behavior. The hero Tim leaves his job in finance in the city where the culture is one of competition and material values, because they turn down his proposal for costing for nature accounting system. He sets up as a wildlife gardening consultant—Habitat Man—and in the process comes across a variety of other characters who all represent different motivations toward sustainable behaviors. One character is a Buddhist who rejects material values and another is a pagan—the Wizard of Woolston who wants a habitat for bat and frogs. This allows me to show the overlap between the love of nature, fundamental to many pagans and alternative religions, and practices that promote biodiversity. Tim also visits the back garden of a psychologist who researches in trends toward non-consumption, which provides an opportunity to suggest that conspicuous consumption is out of date.

I turned to Eric. ‘How does your neighbour like your garden?’

‘Now they want to copy us.’

‘It proves my research, I think.’ Eleanor set down a bowl of steaming pasta in front of me.

‘What’s your research?’ Lori asked.

‘It was psychology of consumption, wasn’t it?’ I said.

‘Now I look at the new tendency to non-consumption.’

‘Like the Share Shop?’

‘Not quite. For example, our neighbour tells me they also want upcycled decking, but before, she’d insist on new. And it’s because the meaning has changed you see. The story behind new decking might be rainforest destruction, air pollution, climate change, it’s not a nice story, but the story behind your decking is a lovely story. We don’t just buy the product, we buy the story.’

The above extracts all show in various ways how the drivers of behavior, as delineated by Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (1985): attitudes (informed by awareness), social norms, and perceived behavioral control, were utilized to inspire greener behaviors in readers.

Rational Choice Model

Another common model of behavior is the rational choice model (Becker, 1976), which posits that people will make decisions based upon the costs and benefits to themselves. Thus, in Habitat Man, I often chose to emphasize the pleasurable aspects of the desired action, rather than the green aspects. For example, ponds are one of the most effective ways to increase biodiversity in back gardens, but instead of presenting it in those terms, which may make readers think they should install a pond for the greater good, I include a scene that allows readers to experience the delights of a pond through a child’s eyes. To keep readers hooked, the back story about a lost child that has been hinted at throughout the book is revealed in more detail.

Similarly, Tim, aka Habitat Man, visits a family whose members are very proud of their composting toilet and keen to highlight the green benefits, but in the next extract, the focus is on the more pleasurable aspects, and again readers are kept engaged by the gradual revealing of the back story of the child. When asked if he has children, Tim finds an excuse to leave by asking to use the composting toilet the family has in their garden. This allows the reader to experience a composting toilet vicariously through the character. The extreme decline of amphibians is hinted at rather than stressed:

‘Erm…’ I put the wine down and shook my head. ‘I think I will have a go at your composting toilet.’

Eric smiled delighted. The boys jumped up to follow me, but he held them back.

‘Leave him in peace. It’s his first time.’

I left the sounds of chattering children and walked outside. A few slow soft drops of rain remained, then petered out when the sun emerged, setting the raindrops sparkling against the vegetation. I walked down the garden to the hut and went in. I sat down. It was perfectly quiet except for the distant sound of a wood pigeon. It smelled of forests and fresh air. The feeling of calm and sanctuary in the toilet reminded me of Daisy’s garden. That sense of perfect harmony between art and nature, soothing to the senses and the spirit. No harsh lights, whirr of fans, smell of urine overlaid with air freshener. Instead, daylight streamed in through the small window, which I now saw had a picture set into the glass, a frog on a lily pad amidst dragonflies and bulrushes. The sun caught the stained-glass window and brought the scene suddenly to life creating an almost religious experience. The elusive frog so sensitive to water pollution, safe here where our waste was used to nurture life. A benign, quiet smell of wood shavings. I heard the characteristic chirp of a grasshopper and smiled. Danny would love that, and the pond too.

This time, I didn’t push the memories away. I thought back to the decision I’d faced, try again to see him and risk a jail sentence and destabilising a new family, or walk away. In the sanctuary of the composting toilet, at last I forgave myself.

I must admit, I wondered if I’d gone too far when I read the last line in the following review on Amazon:

What I loved most about Habitat Man was the gentle, non-preachy way in which it nudges the reader to think green and love nature, whilst being sucked into an enthralling drama. Yes, there are ‘radical lifestyle changes for the benefit of all’ messages, but they are peeking out from behind the willow hedges, rather than stuffed down the reader’s throat. Emerging from the pages is a satisfying triumph of good over evil, of love over anger, and of green solutions over wanton consumerism. There’s also a slightly weird fixation with pooing outside!

Jeremy Brown

Backstory of the Renegades: Defenders of the Planet

The basic job description of most superheroes is to “save the world,” but in the age of the climate crisis, who on Earth is going to “save the planet”? This is a question that’s been at the front of my mind since 2017, when a friend shared her idea of developing a comic book about climate change, out of her passion for the Marvel universe. I jumped at the earliest opportunity to bring the idea to life, because it strongly resonated with my love of art and undergraduate learning about the power of storytelling.

In 2018, I started sketching ideas for the plot and the three main characters—Katelyn, Leon, and Mo, otherwise known as “The Renegades.” But it soon became obvious that the comic would only become a reality with the help of professional artists, scriptwriters, and friends. Thankfully that’s where Katy, David, Libby, Ellenor, Jonny, and others came to the rescue, and within 18 months, we had completed three 96-page graphic novels in The Renegades series—all edited, printed, and sold by our publishers at Dorling Kindersley (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

The three graphic novels in the series, The Renegades: Defenders of the Planet (Brown et al., 2020, 2021a, 2021b). © 2020–21 Jeremy Brown, and Dorling Kindersley Limited

In the following section, I draw on both my personal story of producing The Renegades: Defenders of the Planet (Brown et al., 2020, 2021a, 2021b), and learning from my academic studies, to offer the following three recommendations—firstly, to design characters that model both achievable and aspirational behaviors; secondly, to break outside of our echo chambers; thirdly, to play around with careful metaphors. My advice here is intended for any creative writers that plan to enter the exciting universe of climate fiction (in general). But as I’m a PhD student specializing in comics, that’s where I will begin my discussion.

The Role of Cartoons, Comics, and Comedy

I went down the route of comics and graphic novels because their visual nature strongly appealed to my artistic side—especially having enjoyed painting and drawing as a teenager. But as revealed in the word “comic” itself, part of what sets apart this form of storytelling from others, such as photography, is their humor (Bouchard et al., 2018). The academic literature similarly underlines the psychological importance of comedy, especially among children, with one study illustrating how humorous cartoons about earthquake risks eased children’s fears of disaster in Iran (Sharpe & Izadkhah, 2014). However, the relevance of comic books even holds among young adults, with evidence from the USA revealing that 23% of 18- to 34-year-olds were reading comic books once a month (or more) during 2018, while 48% had done so at least “occasionally” (Yougov, 2018; cited by Statistica, 2021).

Superhero movies often enjoy a larger audience than printed comics, even across several age groups (National Tracking Poll, 2019; cited by Statistica, 2021b). But many films (from Captain America to Spiderman) were originally adapted from comics, and compared to films with actors, comics have the ability to imagine endless possibilities, without breaking the bank. Similar is true for animated movies and TV shows: Not bounded by the physical laws governing 3-D space, animated programs can feature casts of hundreds and take place in any geographic or historical time frame (Arnold et al., 2004, p. xiii). One of the most notable examples is Captain Planet—an animated TV series from the 1990s, starring a fun superhero created to inspire kids to go green. The story follows the adventures of five young “Planeteers,” recruited from across five continents to save the Earth from destruction. To aid their mission, the Spirit of Gaia endows the Planeteers with the powers of Water, Fire, Earth, Wind, and Heart. When combined, they usher the arrival of the Captain Planet himself, who aids their fight against polluting villains (TBS 1990, cited by King, 1994).

On reflection, engaging with comedy and superhero stories would have been a much healthier way to cope with a traumatic period of eco-anxiety that I experienced in 2018. It was partly triggered by watching Before the Flood—a gripping documentary emphasizing the serious moral injustices of the climate crisis. Within my mind, I’ve now moved on from the worst of the eco-anxiety, especially since I’m less exposed to the dangers of extreme weather than many communities on the frontline. But in my body, I can still feel the side effects of the trauma, even as I write this paragraph. My story was complicated by several stressful mistakes I made at the time, but I can only wonder whether some of the trauma would have been avoided if instead I’d watched cli-fi comedies, such as Don’t Look Up. With hindsight, it also would have been much better if my first instinct had been to reach out to trusted friends, like-minded activists, and professional therapists. And if you are experiencing eco-anxiety yourself, I would especially recommend the resources provided by the Climate Psychology Alliance (2022). But in my own case, I’m thankful that I eventually managed to channel my difficult experience into writing about eco-anxiety in the comic series. It was a therapeutic process that gave meaning to tough times.

In the next section, I will focus on a series of top tips from my comic experience that are relatable to climate fiction in general.

Tip 1: Model Actions That Are Both Achievable and Aspirational

When writing The Renegades: Arctic Meltdown (Brown et al., 2020), one of the environmental dilemmas we faced was about how our comic heroes would travel between the various and distant ends of the Earth where our stories were set: Eastern Africa, Bangladesh, Brazil, Texas, Britain, and the Canadian Arctic. In a typical twentieth-century story, we might expect the characters to catch a plane. But to be true role models for the twenty-first century, we felt it was important to invent an alternative mode of transport. Initially, we came up with the idea of a solar-powered sailing boat (Fig. 3). While this was suitably sustainable, it didn’t resolve the “need for speed” demanded by our heroes when suddenly alerted to the far-off locations of our villains and monsters. As a result, the team later came up with the futuristic gizmo of a solar-powered “jet.” (I like to think it’s what Luke Skywalker would fly if he was watching his carbon footprint!).

Fig. 3

The solar sailing ship in Arctic Meltdown (Brown et al., 2020)

This raises the question of whether our fictional solar jet has potential to inspire something similar in real life. The paper by De Meyer et al. (2020) underlines the psychological importance of featuring characters that act out behaviors that are easily “doable” or “meaningful” to readers. Otherwise, readers are often left confused over what they can specifically do about the climate crisis themselves. This finding is reinforced by Baden’s (2019) experiments which show that positive solutions that can be easily replicated by readers tend to be more effective at producing eco-friendly intentions. Unsurprisingly, none of our readers have so far told us they plan to buy a multi-million pound electric aircraft! But as social scientists and authors, do we also need to consider the potential for a “legacy” in the long term?

Aspirational Legacy

The importance of legacy is clear in the pioneering works of early science fiction. For instance, Hunley (1995) observes that at the age of 17, Robert Goddard was resting in a cherry tree at home while reading the Journey from the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. These stories stirred Goddard to imagine a technology that would have potential to travel to Mars—a highly enlightening experience for Goddard, which he commemorated by returning to the tree on the anniversary of his revelation (Hunley, 1995). As an adult, Goddard eventually went on to become the pioneer of the liquid-propelled rocket.

Some scholars of eco-psychology could argue that, strictly speaking, over 99% of readers of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were not inspired to invent a pioneering technology. But it is unlikely their true aim was to motivate all readers to become world-class engineers themselves. Perhaps a more universal objective was to bring about a more widespread change in attitudes about risky technologies. Indeed, James (2016) remarks that Wells managed to foretell the future of atomic weapons, planes, and tanks, thereby harnessing the power of creative writing to help either bring about a better world or warn of potential dystopias. Wells was also a highly political author (James, 2016), unafraid to draw parallels between the Martian invaders and the ecocide and racism of imperial expansion:

We men, the creatures who inhabit this Earth, must be to them [The Martians] at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us... And before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and dodo, but upon its own inferior races (Wells, 2003, p. 42–43).

Wells’ efforts to influence the “attitudes” of readers may have been a necessary first step toward real action such as readers’ actions to resist racism and dystopian technologies. Following in the tradition of Wells, our Arctic Meltdown comic intended to raise awareness of the threat of methane from thawing permafrost, at the same time as modeling radical political behavior that could act to reduce the threat. In all honesty, most of our readers (especially children) are unlikely to take part in non-violent direct action as a result of our comic’s story—in this case, a scene where the protagonists occupied the villain’s airport, inspired by the real activists of the Zone à Defendre, near Nantes in France (Jordan, 2019).

Achievable Behaviors

Yet we still attempted to balance this radicalism with general climate solutions which can be more easily imitated by the majority of teen readers, for example, fictional solar gadgets that could, in theory, inspire readers to campaign for their schools to install solar cells on their rooftops. It is likely that modeling these types of solutions would be perceived to be more “doable.” “Doable” in this context, equates to Ajzen’s concept of perceived behavioral control or Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy as discussed earlier. Thus, presenting solutions that are “doable” would be likely to have a greater impact on readers’ behavior.

Tip 2: Break Free from the “Echo Chamber”

When the time came to plan our comic’s sequel (Flames of Amazonia) (Brown et al., 2021a), I was keen to feature characters that modeled the benefits of plant-based diets. This would come naturally to the character of Leon, our vegan climate activist. But to be more easily achievable to most readers, we suggested that not everyone has to strictly follow Leon’s example of cutting out animal products completely. In another words, eating the occasional cheese omelet would not threaten the Amazon, as long as our heroes (and readers) stayed clear of beefburgers that originated from deforested land.

At the same time, I became increasingly conscious of the risks of demonizing low-income workers in the global cattle industry, particularly after listening to a lecturer’s (at King’s College London) warning of the perils of political polarization. Indeed, it is very difficult to escape the reality of the so-called “Culture Wars” that have erupted since 2016. As a result, I invented the character of Jack (Fig. 4)—a rugged cattle rancher from rural Texas—whom we presented not as a villain but as a hero. There was of course a need for the other characters to question Jack’s choices, to the point of eventually persuading him to devote at least part of his farmland to growing a plant-based alternative. But the point is that Jack became “part of the team,” as well as being someone who could challenge Leon whenever he verged into being too sanctimonious.

Fig. 4

Jack, the cattle rancher character in Flames of Amazonia (Brown et al., 2021b)

After publication, I was grateful to see that several (but not all) of the online reviewers agreed that we had succeeded in our efforts to prevent the narrative from being too “preachy.” Importantly, I suspect this resulted from how we had reached out to people outside of our echo chambers. In our case, this meant having conversations on Zoom with agricultural scientists from the typically Republican state of Texas. These conversations were particularly fruitful in the task of fleshing out the character of Jack—since they were people that had actually spent time with cattle ranchers in real life. Ideally, we would have likewise had video calls with real communities that had inspired the character of Alma (a teenage activist from an indigenous community living in the Amazon rainforest). But this proved to be too difficult within the constraints of our tight deadline. Conducting other forms of online research was therefore our best alternative effort at breaking free from another dominant echo chamber that cli-fi writers need to be aware of: the highly industrialized world of the Global North.

Tip 3: Play Around with Careful Metaphors

My final nugget of wisdom is around how best to balance entertaining metaphors with educational science. Here I speak again from experience, because when embarking on The Renegades comics, I was all too aware that I came from a scientific background. I have a creative side; but my earlier years were focused more on landscape painting and cartoon drawings, rather than creative writing. Therefore, I’m guessing the honest advice of anyone reading my first attempts at fictional storylines would have been “don’t give up the day job, mate.” Except I had already given up my day job! (A long story for another time.) But thankfully Katy and David soon came to the rescue. Essentially, I recruited them to bring to life my initial ideas for fictional characters and sketchy story arcs, with the end product being a professional script that could be shared with the publishers.

As well as adding emotional and literary depth to the fictional characters, the rest of the team’s input as experienced creative writers was crucial to introducing vivid and engaging metaphors. For example, in our third comic in the series, Project Neptune (Brown et al., 2021b), Katy suggested portraying the melting ice as a metaphor for the tragic disintegration of her parents’ health—a symbolic representation for how personal grief can often feel as overwhelming as a melting glacier crashing into the ocean. Another example is how we depicted the saltwater trees of the Bangladesh coast as “mangrove creatures” that could breathe, crawl, swim, or fly, as mythical animals. Beyond the benefit of being more visually playful, this metaphor meant that the gradual process of mangrove conservation could instead happen at the dramatic pace of the narrative. The consequences of the heroes’ actions could therefore play out within days or hours, at a speed fast enough to chase the villains.

However, such fictional ‘shortcuts’ and metaphors can dilute the educational messages about how the audience can act themselves, so there may be trade-offs between exciting fantasy and effectiveness at inspiring relevant environmental action. This was evident in The Day After Tomorrow, in which the film dramatically exaggerated the speed at which the climate crisis could disrupt the world’s ocean currents, culminating in a thick ice sheet enveloping the Statue of Liberty. The result was that several viewers encountered problems in separating science from fiction. As expressed by one participant of an academic study: “you didn’t know exactly where the truth ended and Hollywood started” (Lowe et al., 2006, p. 447).

We faced a similar dilemma with The Renegades in how our villains played an exaggerated role in the physics of coastal flooding. But to minimize any confusion between real science and fantasy fiction, we included two pages of non-fiction at the end of the book. These pages gave us the space to explain certain scientific details about sea level rise. This was important because the enjoyment of the narrative would have been diluted if we had crammed too much science into the story. Another tactic was to harness our book launch events as opportunities to explain real-life solutions to climate change in more detail. This was challenging for our launch of Project Neptune, given that Southampton isn’t exactly well known for its tropical mangrove forests! But linking back to my first tip, I still feel there is potential to explain how the mangrove creatures can be metaphors for achievable solutions on a local level, such as the protection of saltmarshes in the UK.

To sum up, I’d recommend to any writers of climate fiction that you feature entertaining role models that act out solutions that are sometimes metaphorical and always aspirational. But it’s important that your protagonists balance their heroic aspiration with solutions that are still achievable to readers of many different cultural and political identities. I hope the experience and knowledge I have shared here has been useful. Good luck with all your writing adventures—our planet needs all the help it can get!

Conclusion

Our work approached the topic of the climate through different genres and styles, yet both adhered to the guiding principles that fiction should demonstrate the risks of climate disaster, while highlighting the possibility of hope and presenting solutions. Progressive climate fiction highlights both radical actions individuals can take, such as non-violent direct action, alongside more gentle climate activism such as sustainable gardening.

Appendix 1 lists some positive examples of climate fiction and Table 2 demonstrates some of the variety of approaches that can be undertaken.

Table 2 Mapping examples of climate fiction onto a framework of suspense and agency

Both Ministry for the Future and The Carbon Diaries are hybrid, showing a mixture of policy solutions and disasters, yet both finish on a note of hope. The Carbon Diaries has a happy ending on the personal front in the romance tradition, yet the climate issues remain. It also shows that the carbon rationing introduced suddenly and drastically on an unprepared population in the story does operate as a solution, but also implicitly, one can see that personal carbon allowances, if applied earlier, might have prevented the worst of the disaster at a fraction of the cost.

In his Ph.D., Jeremy Brown is planning to apply these insights by exploring how comic style stories may have the potential to entertain and empower young people to imagine a brighter future for our planet. In doing so, the hope is that the audience will be inspired to imitate fictional superheroes that model a range of both gentle and radical responses to the climate crisis.

New, developing sub-genres such as “solarpunk” and “hopepunk” lead the way in this effort to resist a dystopian ending to our planet’s story. Hopepunk was defined in 2017 by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland as, “standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts.” We believe this emerging type of storytelling has an exciting future ahead.

Green Stories Project, Denise Baden

In 2018, I set up the Green Stories Writing competitions (Green Stories Project, n.d.). These are a free series of competitions that anyone can enter and have covered a range of formats from stage plays and radio plays, to flash fiction, screenplays to full-length novels, even interactive fiction (Green Stories Previous Competition Successes, n.d.). The aim is to create a cultural body of work that would engage the mainstream audience, not just in green issues, but informing them and hopefully inspiring them to adopt the kinds of green solutions that would be effective.

On the website, we present transformative solutions that could enable a genuine shift toward a truly sustainable society (Green Stories Project, n.d.). For example, changing our metric of success from the GDP, which measures mostly consumption, to a metric, such as the well-being index or Happy Planet Index, would shift attention toward sustainable policies rather than short-term economic gains at the expense of a healthy eco-system (Hoekstra, 2019). Similarly, shifting from a culture of ownership—buy, use, dispose—to an access-based culture or sharing economy allows greater equity and access to resources at much reduced resource costs and planetary impact (Baden & Frei, 2021). For example, almost all of what we own isn’t being used. It’s estimated for example that the typical drill is used for an average of 8 minutes a year (Skjelviket al., 2017). A library of things or shared shed would allow everyone access at much reduced environmental impact (Baden, Peattie, & Adekunle, 2019). Similarly, ideas such as personal carbon allowances or carbon credit cards would drive sustainability innovations across the board and enable a more equitable and rapid transition to a net zero economy (Fuso Nerini, Fawcett, Parag, & Ekins, 2021).

Twenty competitions have been run since its inception with thousands of writers entering and engaging in these solutions, so the green stories competitions were successful on that front, resulting in several publications: Visco by David Fell (2022) and Fairhaven by Steve Willis and Jan Lee (2024). However, they have been less successful in terms of authors writing these green solutions into their stories. Inevitably free competitions will attract many poor entries, but it was disappointing that not even ten percent met the green stories criteria:

• 1. Story telling ability—the story should be engaging

• 2. Incorporate green solutions, e.g., by

  • Showcasing what a green/sustainable society might look like and/or how we might get there

  • Smuggling green solutions into a story aimed at mainstream readers, which can be quite subtle

  • Using positive role models

We found that even among the well-written stories, many had green themes but few included solutions that readers could engage with. For example, several showed a heroine heading off to the rainforests to take on evil loggers. However, this is an issue that most are already aware of. On its own, awareness does nothing to address the problem. Much more effective, I believe, would be a story that did not have an explicitly green theme but did show positive role models of characters enjoying plant-based diets, or upcycling, or campaigning against companies that engaged in deforestation etc.—behaviors that will make a difference.

Social marketing approaches aim to apply marketing strategies to promote desired behaviors rather than products (Lee & Kotler, 2019). Thus, just as some books/films product place products, we encourage writers to “product place” sustainable attitudes behaviors products and policies. It may be more effective at engaging a mainstream audience if the story isn’t specifically about climate change. Any kind of genre—rom com, crime drama, legal drama, children’s book, sci-fi, etc.—can showcase sustainable technologies, practices, products, or ideas in the background. BAFTA’s “Albert” project trains production companies’ editorial staff on how to do this through “planet placement.”

We incorporated this technique in our anthology, No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet, where we teamed experienced writers with climate experts to create 24 short stories each with climate solutions at their heart. One story—a whodunnit—set in a citizens’ assembly has been adapted as an interactive play Murder in the Citizens’ Jury, which engages the audience in choosing what should be done (see Green Stories Project, n.d.).

Another acceptable approach could be to focus on characters. Currently, characters in fiction who are green/ethical are often portrayed as priggish or aggressive, and we’d like to see attractive characters behaving in sustainable ways. Green Stories partnered with BAFTA for the #ClimateCharacters, which is a series of fun social media posts comparing the carbon consumption of various fictional characters. For example, James Bond with his walk-in wardrobe of luxury suits and single-use sports cars kills bad guys with a much higher carbon footprint than Jack Reacher who travels by bus and shops in thrift shops! (See website Green Stories Project, n.d.). We want to start a conversation that asks if it is okay, in a time of climate and biodiversity crisis, that many of the top series and films have characters whose lifestyles are destroying our beautiful planet?

Check out upcoming competitions, projects, and events via the website https://www.greenstories.org.uk/

Appendix 1

Online Resources

• Green Stories Project. https://www.greenstories.org.uk/

• Role modeling. https://theconversation.com/positive-fictional-role-models-the-missing-ingredient-to-fight-the-climate-crisis-177684

• Heated. Substack newsletter. https://heated.world/

• Inkcap Journal. https://www.inkcapjournal.co.uk/

• Lights On newsletter. https://lightson.substack.com/

• Down to Earth by The Guardian newsletter. https://www.theguardian.com/info/ng-interactive/2021/oct/20/sign-up-for-down-to-earth-the-best-way-to-make-sense-of-the-biggest-environment-stories

• How to Save a Planet podcast. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet

Recommendations for Positive Climate Fiction

Adult Fiction

• Baden, D.A (2021). Habitat Man. Habitat Press.

• Chambers, B. (2021). A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Tor.

• Cade, O. (2020). The Stone Wētā. Paper Road Press.

• Fell, D. (2022). Visco. Habitat Press.

• Wigmore, R. (2021). Foxhunt. Queen of Swords.

• Walker, L. (2018). Melt. Lacuna Publishing.

• Miller, S. (2018). Blackfish city. Ecco.

• Woodrow, L. (2020). 470. Melliodora Publishing.

• Willis, S. and Lee, J. (2024). Fairhaven. Habitat Press.

Childrens Fiction

• James, L. (2021). Green Rising. Walker Books

• O’Connell, J. (2020). Beauty and the Bin. Pan Macmillan.

• Reynolds, E. (2021). Amara and the Bats. Simon & Schuster.

• Gold, H. (2021). The Last Bear. HarperCollins.

• Miyazaki, H. (1996), Princess Mononoke. Studio Ghibli

• Sutcliffe, W. (2021). The Summer we Turned Green. Bloomsbury.

• Smith, M. (2021). If Not Us. Text Publishing.

• TBS Productions, Inc. and DIC Enterprises, Inc. (1990). Captain planet and the planeteers: The power is yours. Public Relations kit.

• Okogwu, T. (2022). Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun. Simon & Schuster.

• Vachharajani, B. (2019). A Cloud called Bhura: Climate Champions to the Rescue. Speaking Tiger.

• Simmons, A. (2021). Burning Sunlight. Anderson Press.