With rising awareness of climate change, many people are trying to understand it more through information-packed nonfiction books or emotionally moving fiction stories. Whether it be The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh or Praayag Akbar’s Leila, these works have an important role to play in starting climate discourse, and the more hopeful works might even lead to community-based climate action, as seen in research. Hence, we decided to share some climate-based works with our readers today.
Climate-Based Books and Shows
- The Living Mountain by Amitav Ghosh
Known for works like The Great Derangement and Gun Island, Ghosh is a prolific author with numerous awards to his name. The Living Mountain is at once a story about society, colonisation, and nature, which follows what happens when a group that worshipped a living mountain are enslaved by rationalists who don’t understand what it means for the mountain to be alive, even at the very end.
- Interstellar
In a well-known movie, the idea of ecological collapse is what drives the story. It is the reason the journey is undertaken, after all.
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built
While not climate fiction in the conventional sense since it doesn’t look at human-caused climate change, the story has been part of climate fiction research and is solarpunk in its nature as it imagines a world where we have solved climate change and found peace in community. With deeper questions about life, the story takes us on a journey of a monk and a robot.
- Snowpiercer
A story set on a train in a desolate world following a failed climate intervention, this is a dystopian story showing us what the apocalypse could look like. While there have been numerous disaster movies showing natural calamities, Snowpiercer stands apart as it brings to light how human intervention, if not thought through, can make situations worse.
- Breaking boundaries: The Science of Our Planet
In this work, experts look at the biodiversity collapse that’s currently happening and how it can be averted. As we know, we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction on the planet and human actions have been identified as a leading cause, with climate change, human-wildlife conflicts and habitat destruction all contributing to the crisis. Since we live in an interconnected ecosystem these problems will eventually affect humans too, making it a human problem, which the work examines from a biodiversity and scientific perspective.
A Parting Note
While works like Wall-E and Dune, too, have been considered climate fiction by many due to their setting of a waste-filled land (Wall-E) and the exploration of resource extraction and greed (Dune), we have not included them in the list since they’re not specifically focused on anthropogenic climate change, despite their relevance to contemporary times. Similarly, Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie, PhD, has not been included due to the criticism of it being extremely technooptimist, despite the reassurance it offers.
Whether it’s stories, infographics, or docu-series, learning about climate change is the first step to battling it. While it remains a systemic issue, our individual actions can spark community-level change. To learn more about climate change, stay tuned to NB News.
