Anyone who writes a dystopian story hopes that it will never come true. A few years ago, my novella, “Wasting Water”, was published in Undeniable: Writers Respond to Climate Change. It is a coming of age story of a young girl growing up in a world where continuous drought has ravaged the interior of the United States. This was my vision of a possible world where climate change had gone unchecked. When I wrote that story, I believed we could reverse the dangerous direction of our activities that contribute to this possible future. Sadly, the people on our planet may now have gone beyond the point of being able to reverse the effects of climate change and the deadly results of it. I am not alone is seeing the disaster unfolding.
The World Wild Life Fund says this: “More frequent and intense drought, storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and warming oceans can directly harm animals, destroy the places they live, and wreak havoc on people’s livelihoods and communities.”
The United Nations says: “Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. Climate impacts are already harming health, through air pollution, disease, extreme weather events, forced displacement, pressures on mental health, and increased hunger and poor nutrition in places where people cannot grow or find sufficient food.”
This November there was an election. In the past, our new president-elect has stated that climate change is a hoax. He appears to have no intention of curbing the human activities that contribute to this undeniable future. Ironically, the very things he has promised to do, curbing immigration into the U.S. and reducing consumer costs, are the very things that a warming world will aggravate.
Climate refugees are fleeing places that can no longer support them through farming or that are so ravaged by extremes of weather that their homes are being destroyed. Their numbers are increasing, and they will continue to flee to anywhere they can survive. They believe one of those safe places is the United States. Whatever measures will be taken to try to stop them, there will be more and more of them because they have no place else to go. Unfortunately for us all, the U.S. is becoming a place of doubtful refuge. Rising sea level, hurricanes of unprecedented severity, wild fires, floods, and droughts are causing people within the United States also to become climate refugees.
As for reducing consumer costs, especially the cost of groceries and housing, the new administration will have to deal with the challenges of food production becoming increasingly compromised by changing climate and the threats to housing in places ravaged by floods, storms, and fires . All of this is already observable.
The results of climate change increasingly threaten building and maintaining housing. Even if a house can be built, no insurance company will take on the risk because it is too high, making getting a mortgage impossible. This may be a minor concern compared to the end of life on the planet, but for some people, this is such an urgent issue that the survival of all living things is secondary. That species are dying–the last white rhino died this week–and other species, both of plants and of animals, are declining in number or are vanishing, is less important than affordable housing. One’s own survival instinctively comes first, but the death of our fellow creatures is a harbinger of our own demise.
I don’t want my dystopian story to come true, but I’m afraid it has already begun. Perhaps, during this National Write a Novel Month, I can write a new story. One where people change their behaviors to try to pull Earth out of the fire. Where people realize the world is fragile and full of humans and animals who deserve to live their lives without hate, fear, starvation, or extinction. Where there will be no wars across the globe causing terrible suffering. The role of science fiction has so often been to inspire hope. And perhaps even change. It may be too late, but I can’t give up. I owe it to my planet and all who live here.
