{"id":2013,"date":"2020-01-30T19:03:50","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T00:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/spire\/?p=2013"},"modified":"2020-03-21T19:38:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-21T23:38:37","slug":"davanzo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/spire\/2020\/01\/30\/davanzo\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiction as a Vehicle for Climate Change Education"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Charlene D’Avanzo<\/strong><\/p>\n Introduction<\/strong> From ecologist to cli-fi author<\/strong> I stood outside the UMass auditorium feeling angry, but also rattled that I\u2019d known nothing about Bradley\u2019s ordeal. His was a story that needed to be told! The idea that I<\/em> could write that narrative suddenly came to me, but I immediately dismissed it as daft. Sure, my name was on many research papers and grant proposals, but telling Bradley\u2019s story would be entirely different.<\/p>\n Over the following weeks and months, I read numerous articles and essays about climate change scientists who were the targets of such harassment. Although compelling, these non-fiction accounts appeared in scientific magazines that the public never saw. What most people read, I knew, was fiction. As time went on, I simply couldn’t shake the idea that I could write climate-change fiction. After all, I understood the mechanics of writing and the discipline required from my career in academia. With time and a good deal of help, surely I could learn how to become a fiction author.<\/p>\n Finally compelled to “do something” about the looming climate crisis, at semester’s end I left my position at Hampshire College and began the long process of transforming myself from a writer of research papers and grant proposals to a cli-fi author. Now, three books in my Maine Oceanographer Mara Tusconi mystery series have been published and the fourth is scheduled to come out early this summer. I was drawn to mysteries in particular because the process of following clues and relying on data, as detectives do, is akin to scientific investigation. Each book features a different climate change understory based on actual events. For example, in Cold Blood, Hot Sea<\/em> scientists on a research cruise suspect climate change deniers are behind a series of suspicious incidents at sea. The Gulf of Maine’s rapid warming pits threatened lobstermen against each other in Secrets Haunt the Lobsters’ Sea<\/em>.<\/p>\n In the era of fake news, fiction as an environmental education vehicle may seem an odd choice. Here I explain why non-scientists, including climate change skeptics, may be more receptive to information about warming and its consequences in fictional narratives in contrast to more traditional non-fiction approaches.<\/p>\n Fiction and Social Change<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a long history in the use of fiction to confront social injustice and disinformation. For instance, Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em>, the second best-selling book of the nineteenth century after the Bible, fueled the abolitionist cause at that time. Similarly, Upton Sinclair\u2019s 1906 novel The Jungle<\/em> exposed horrendous working conditions in Chicago\u2019s meatpacking industry as well as the environmental impacts. More recent environmental fiction examples include Edward Abbey\u2019s The Monkey Wrench Gang<\/em>, Dr. Seuss\u2019s The Lorax<\/em>, and Barbara Kingsolver\u2019s Flight Behavior.<\/em><\/p>\nEmerita Professor at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA<\/h5>\n
\nEnvironmental educators, climate activists, and scientists help people understand our climate crisis through a variety of approaches including newspapers, television, environmental reports, presentations, and more. However, in my experience as an ecologist and teacher, many climate change educators disregard an extremely popular and potentially effective venue\u2014fiction. In this essay I explain why fiction can be a powerful vehicle that makes real the climate catastrophe facing present day and future Earthlings.<\/p>\n
\nMy own transformation from college professor and marine ecologist to cli-fi<\/em> (climate fiction) author was sudden and completely unexpected. One afternoon I was listening to a well-known climatologist, Raymond Bradley, describe how powerful climate change deniers were personally attacking his reputation with challenges to his research, including unreasonable demands for data, computer records and the like. Bradley has written over two hundred scientific papers on climate change, is a University Distinguished Professor and Director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and is the author and editor of thirteen books. He was visibly shaken by these attacks, and I was appalled that a scientist whose research will help us prepare for the impending climate crisis could be treated so poorly.<\/p>\n“What most people read, I knew, was fiction.”<\/h2>\n
“There is a long history in the use of fiction to confront social injustice and disinformation.”<\/h2>\n