One world...of disasters and climate denial
The only novel you need to read about how it might be. And a plea for more stories
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The Big Story:
Deadly hurricanes. Catastrophic floods. Raging wildfires. Denialism. From the United States to India, Myanmar to Nigeria, Peru to Portugal, we really do live in one world – of bad news about weather disasters as well as a tornado of denials that climate change is even real.
As this week’s fictional book pick* says: “We had been watching people drown for years, and the only difference was that they had always been a long way off from us…disaster would only come when it had our own face on it”.
In the US, two devastating hurricanes in Florida led elected right-wing officials to promote wild conspiracy theories that the American government is controlling the weather for political reasons.1 The Republican candidate for president Donald Trump boosted the claim, having already told American voters not to worry about climate change because a warming world would merely create more “oceanfront propert[ies]”.2
Climate change denialism, especially from the US, risks further polarising the global debate and undermining confidence in green energy solutions.
This matters, just weeks before politicians and scientists meet at Cop29,3 the UN climate change conference in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, which is meant to signpost the global path to a low-carbon future.
Expert meteorologists such as Florida’s John Morales4 say they are accused of being “climate militant[s]” and “embellishing extreme weather threats to drive an agenda”. Some have even been sent death threats.5
This Week, Those Books:
A novel that speaks perfectly to our time – of late-stage capitalism and climate-induced despondency.
An acclaimed writer argues for a paradox – more climate realism and more climate fiction.
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