Climate stories & cli-fi

What are climate stories?

Today, climate stories are emerging in all genres and in all media, grappling with climate directly and indirectly.

Climate stories are not only about oil, weather, the natural world, politics, science, colonialism, fear, and denial. They are about how we eat and talk and spend our time. They are about our jobs, our hometowns, our relationships and how we think. There’s nothing climate change doesn’t touch.

Climate fiction, or cli-fi, is exactly what it sounds like—an entertainment genre addressing climate change. First coined to describe literature, scholars and journalists now classify all types of storytelling media as cli-fi.

Current trends in cli-fi mirror shifts in wider culture—there is more acknowledgment, more discussion, and more direct experience of our rapidly changing environment. In fact, some believe the term cli-fi will soon be redundant—with the worsening crisis, unless it’s pure fantasy, every story will be cli-fi.

Climate stories are tools, used to connect or divide. They can amplify problems or deceive communities, care for survivors or oppress victims. They’re found in all forms of communication, in all levels of power—from geopolitics to preschool. They are also the simple exchange between neighbors, sharing what’s happening to our heating planet and backyards.

Positive effects of climate stories:

Developing more flexible outlooks regarding the affective, ecological, socioeconomic, political, and cultural realities around our changing climate
Communicating climate change
Climate change education
Connecting to climate change emotionally
Imagining a future (whether a future impacted by climate change or a more socially just vision)

History of climate stories

Stories about climate are not new. Paleolithic hunter-gatherers tracked the seasons with their cave paintings. Creation myths of ancient societies and religion describe the emergence of the sun and humankind’s relationships to the planet. Stories of Native peoples of North America affirm principles like reciprocity and good stewardship with all life. And science is a breed of climate storytelling, with chemists and biologists using geographical evidence, theories, and experiments to build probable scenarios, like life first emerging in deep sea hydrothermal vents.

But now that our relationship to the natural world is corrupted by industrialized resource extraction, our stories are more about disaster than creation. With many already imperiled by the effects of climate change, common climate stories reflect the estrangement of humans from the natural world, the stress of extreme weather, and the economic and political forces that have created this reality.

Types of climate stories & cli-fi tropes

Us versus them

A common feature of climate stories in the news and social media is the ‘us versus them’ paradigm, a binary opposition of we’re good; they’re evil. This binary serves a purpose. The United States has a history of rampant environmental racism. Powerful corporations and politicians willfully ignore climate change for continued profit. The fossil fuel industry creates misinformation campaigns and deceives the public, a practice sometimes called collective gaslighting. Us-versus-them narratives, when used skillfully, can motivate change and help us channel energy in to political action.

We also can’t avoid our impulse towards ‘us versus them’. Humans evolved a ‘blame instinct’—we look for simple causes or a scapegoat when bad things happen. But when we only consume and create these types of climate narratives, we neglect the more complex reality. We neglect aspects of others and of ourselves. We all have identities, beliefs, relationships, and livelihoods that overlap and defy categorization.

No one can deny conflict of interest is rampant, especially with challenges like a global clean energy transition. But for the systemic change needed to address the climate crisis, we need respect and collaboration. Us and them. Because, in the end, there’s just us.

Fossil fuel industry narratives

Fossil fuel interests have shaped cultural perception of oil since the beginning of Hollywood. In the early twentieth century, several corporations saw the profits and PR potential of movie-making. Ford Motor company started its own production company, Standard Oil and BP financed productions, and Shell created a full media strategy. In his essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, History and Cinema Studies Professor Brian R. Jacobs writes how Shell’s movies weren’t just about oil:

More often, they celebrated the things that oil made possible: air travel, automobiles, and modern leisure. Shell steered clear of overt propaganda or advertising and instead used film to forge positive associations between oil and the good life that only it could provide. Oil, Shell insisted, equaled vitality.

Oil-powered luxury and ambition are depicted in most contemporary narratives—from the jet-setting in John Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians to the fire suppression test on the FX series The Bear. After a century of Big Oil PR, this media simply reflects the omnipresence of our petroculture. Meanwhile, films about the exploitation and menace of oil interests, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, or films set in a world run on clean energy like Black Panther—are cultural outliers.

Speculative fiction

Historically, cli-fi has been speculative fiction, a super genre of ‘what if’ scenarios. Speculative fiction includes Octavia Butler’s canonical Parable of the Sower or dystopian fantasy novels like Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. These books explore global climate chaos and technology takeovers, all amidst humanity’s near-extinction. Speculative cli-fi also includes film, like George Miller’s Mad Max Fury Road, set in a dry violent landscape after ecological and societal collapse. These narratives resemble elements of our current reality, but heightened and set in a distant future.

Apocalypse

Apocalypse and post-apocalypse are also popular. It’s the near-end of the world and a select few struggle in a barren wasteland. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Atwood’s Oryx and Crake from her MaddAddam trilogy, and Miller’s Mad Max Fury Road would also fall in to this category, as would countless disaster films, TV shows, and video games. In these narratives characters try to survive and understand their new world order. Yet while these narratives are bleak, they’re powered by hope. Novels like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road depict a desolate world yet affirm the boundless love between father and son. Films like Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer show a stratified society with limited resources in a post-ecological disaster, yet affirm the enduring binary of deceit and truth.

Newer trends

Today, cli-fi is expanding beyond speculative forms. More stories are being set in the present, reflecting current ecological and political actualities. And as climate change continues to shape our lived experience, the genre is opening up to all forms—crime, romance, comedy, memoir, biopic, and all narratives that consider what’s happening right now. Find examples in Further Reading, which invite us to consider climate change through different cognitive and emotional frameworks.

How do climate stories & cli-fi impact our mental health & wellbeing?

Cli-fi offers an alternative to the anxiety-provoking headlines and invites us to imagine worlds not dependent on fossil fuel. Novels, film, TV, and theater about climate take creative liberties; they can be comedic, morally ambiguous, and explore the paradoxes of being human. These complex stories aren’t subjected to the algorithmic binaries of social media and can even break down our defenses against strongly held beliefs. Well-made cli-fi requires deeper engagement, immersive thinking, and is linked with affects like empathy and curiosity.

Good stories not only transport us, they can change us. Communications Professor Melanie Green explains how narrative transportation is a “key mechanism underlying the influence of narratives on individuals’ attitudes and beliefs”. And George Marshall, founder of Climate Outreach and author of ‘Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired To Ignore Climate Change’ elaborates on the primacy of communicating climate narratives if the goal is to get people to act:

Scientific data, although undoubtedly vital for alerting our rational brain to the existence of a threat, does not galvanize our emotional brain into action.

Climate stories can trigger negative emotions, too. ‘Us versus them’ narratives create binaries that imply superiority and can humiliate communities. Linda Hartling, Director of the global network Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, has consistently found humiliation to be a catalyst to violence:

humiliation is not only the most underappreciated force in international relations, it may be the missing link in the search for root causes of political instability and violent conflict…perhaps the most toxic social dynamic of our age.

Narratives created by the fossil fuel industry have seeded guilt in the public by pointing to peoples’ individual contributions to the climate crisis, thus shifting blame away from the big players of our toxic global energy system. In his article ‘The Carbon Footprint Sham’, Journalist and Science Editor Mark Kaufman unveiled how BP hired the PR firm Ogilvy and Mather to help shift emissions responsibility to the consumer, giving birth to the popular term ‘carbon footprint’, a guilt-inducing term now so ubiquitous it’s found on the EPA’s website.

And while guilt can be linked to accountability and behavior change, it’s not effective in the long-term commitments needed to address climate change. Or as Environmental Humanities Professor Nicole Seymour describes in Bad Environmentalism, Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age, “No one likes to feel bad, especially not about themselves.”

Unequal impacts

Polarizing climate stories and fossil fuel propaganda has unequal impacts on different communities.

Climate Activists: Activists are targets of fossil fuel interests’. In some countries these escalate into intimidation and violence. Indigenous climate activists are especially vulnerable.
Communities of Color: Communities of color experience higher impacts of climate disasters and distress while navigating the stress of racial hatred in divisive climate narratives. They’ve also been erased by the American conservation movement and criminalized for simply spending time in nature.
Indigenous Communities: Indigenous communities are othered or totally erased in dominant climate narratives and are historically and continually pushed off their land for development, drilling, and energy exploration. They have also been criminalized for trying to protect their resources.
Young people: Younger generations spend more time on social media, a digital space designed to reinforce polarization, and as young people form their identity and social circles online, they become more vulnerable to the negative mental health impacts of us-versus-them thinking, impacts like depression and anxiety. Young people are also the targets of propaganda and misinformation campaigns created by fossil fuel interests.

Research findings

There is evidence of climate-focused entertainment increasing support for climate policy, as shown in this Rare Entertainment Lab three-week longitudinal study of 1,065 U.S. participants who watched three climate-related episodes of the TV series Madame Secretary. The four surveys showed increase in climate concern, climate policy preference, and psycho-social predictors of individual action.

And there’s even evidence that subtle elements of climate narratives have noticeable impacts on public opinion. In their article published in Scientific Reports, Anandita Sabherwal & Ganga Shreedhar share the results of an experiment where they tweaked a character’s motivation for ecologically-minded action. When a protagonist’s intent was to right an environmental injustice, instead of a personal gain or some other plot element, researchers measured an increase in support for climate policy.

In the face of these encouraging results on positive impacts, the film industry has struggled to keep pace with the scope of the climate crisis. Good Energy, a script consulting firm that advocates for climate presence in TV and film, conducted a study of 250 of the most popular films from 2013 to 2022 and found only 9.6% passed their climate reality check (their check, simply put, is that climate change exists and a character knows it). And the 2024 Oscars study found that only 23% (three films) passed this easy test.

Tell more positive climate stories. Most people get climate stories from the news, 98% of which are negative. And 56% of people get their news from social media, an algorithmic space designed to spark outrage and polarization. Some climate communicators, like Anne Therese Gennari, are embracing the power of climate optimism; not toxic positivity that ignores the hard facts, but an attitude of possibility that spurs action—and action is also fertile ground for good stories.
Integrate climate change into popular media and storytelling. In past decades, Hollywood has failed to adequately grapple with—or even identify the existence of—climate change. Nonprofits have emerged to highlight this neglect and to support screenwriters and producers integrating climate in their storytelling. Good Energy advocates for replacing a climate denialism landscape with a realistic one and advise writers to embrace more complexity in their stories, instead of binary tropes like the do-gooder. And the Natural Resource Defense Fund created Rewrite the Future, a program partnering with Hollywood creatives who integrate climate and new futures into their storytelling.
Encouraging writers and publishers to break the climate silence. While publishing has a slightly better track record with cli-fi than Hollywood, the number of novels acknowledging climate doesn’t keep pace with the magnitude of the crisis. In The Great Derangement, writer Amitov Ghosh speaks about the absence of climate change in literary fiction and encourages writers and publishers to address climate change in their work.
Move away from simple narratives. The ubiquity of the fossil fuel economy and polarizing climate narratives in the news lead to a lack of imagination and an oversimplification of our climate reality. When we expose ourselves to dynamic, entertaining climate stories that more accurately reflect ourselves and our present moment, we reflect on the complexity and richness of humanity. Stories with flawed characters, diverse multiple points of view, a sense of humor, a sense of our interdependence, and an intention of climate justice can lead to affects like compassion and curiosity. And while cli-fi has traditionally been speculative fiction, set in the future or in an apocalypse, the trend is shifting to more contemporary realistic narratives.
Share and create climate stories. It’s up to us to seek these stories out, share them, promote them, or write them ourselves.

What else might we need to know?

We should maintain realistic expectations. Outcomes like behavior-shift or opinion-change could be too much to ask of cli-fi. And art often works best when it exists for its own sake. Or as climate journalist Emma Pattee writes:

The rise of climate fiction isn’t happening in order to make us care about climate change; it’s happening because we already care.

Climate Fiction: A consortium of climate writers devoted to inspiring ‘passion, empathy and action’ in their readers.
Good Energy: Supports TV and film writers integrating climate into their storytelling
NRDC’s “Rewrite the Future”: The Natural Resource Defense Fund (NRDC) started ‘Rewrite the Future’ to support creators in telling stories that reflect ‘our climate-altered world and a path toward a better future’.
The Climate Fiction Prize: A new prize in literature that ‘celebrates the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis’.
Yale Climate Connections: An independent and nonpartisan news service staffed by professional journalists, meteorologists, and radio producers.

Fiction books

A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet, published in 2020 by W.W. Norton
The young people in this novel are mystified by their parents’ inaction on climate. Millet relies heavily on humor and depicts megastorms that reflect our current extreme weather systems.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Salley Rooney, published in 2021 by Macmillan
Through a writer, editor, factory worker, and religious policy advocate, Rooney illustrates how a changing climate and uncertain future manifest in relationships and belief.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, published in 2023 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Eleanor Catton’s novel Birnam Wood is a climate thriller about a group of anarchist gardeners, a tech billionaire, a baby boomer with a big estate, and a cancelled journalist. The novel, adapted from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is multiple points of view, allowing the reader to inhabit all characters—each with their positive traits and major flaws. Catton was committed to writing a nonpartisan novel, where the reader could cast any character in the tragic role of Macbeth. In an interview about writing the book she observed “how quick we are to diagnose Macbeth-like qualities in our political enemies and how seldom we identify Macbeth-like qualities in ourselves.”

How Beautiful We Are by Imbolo Imbue, published in 2022 by Penguin Random House
Multiple POV novel of mostly young characters. All have different responses to the American oil company devasting Kosawa, their fictional African village. Interrogates power dynamics in the small community and large corporation.

North Woods by Daniel Mason, published in 2023 by Penguin Random House
Multiple POV, multiple points in history, on the same patch of woods. Readers bear witness to a timeline of human civilization—from cultivation to destruction. Dynamic characters with ambiguous endings.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, published in 2017 by DCB Young Readers.

The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 2021 by Orbit

While much of Stanley Kim Robinson’s work is set in the future after a destructive ecological event, Ministry for the Future starts in 2024, just four years after the book’s publication. In a
video about the novel, Robinson states that the pace of technological change means “we are living in a science fiction novel that we are all writing together; you can’t describe the present, you have to write about the near future”. This novel centers on a director of a Paris Agreement organization that speaks for the rights of those not yet born and a suffering aid worker who survived a deadly heat wave in India. These voices are punctuated by passages of nonfiction writing, topics like economics, philosophy, and diplomacy. The Ministry for the Future is speculative fiction with ample plausibility—detailing the work of climate movements and governance, with transcripts of meetings and treatises from political action groups. And while the novel starts with widespread climate death and human rights atrocities, the heart of the book is human potentiality. Or in Robinson’s words, ‘making the best of a bad situation’.

nonFiction books

Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age, by Nicole Seymour, published in 2018 by University of Minnesota Press

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates, published in 2022 by Penguin Random House.
Optimistic solutions for clean energy. Identifies complicated problems with precision.

High Conflict; Why we Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley, published in 2022 by Simon and Schuster.
Defines us-versus-them narratives as ‘high conflict’, which lead to simplistic, rigid thinking. Offers alternatives like making space and ‘complicating the narrative’

Essays

Council of the Pecans, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, published in Orion in 2022.

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Council of Pecans comes from her seminal text Braiding Sweetgrass, where she blends scientific inquiry, her Potawatomi mindset of interdependence, and character-driven narrative. The essay ‘Council of Pecans’ describes the ecology of mast fruiting pecan trees, the betrayals of Indian Removal policies, and the struggle and triumph of her ancestors. While detailing the poverty, erasure, and cultural theft, Wall Kimmerer considers all elements through a spectrum—history and present day, wisdom and ignorance, reciprocity and hoarding. While she articulates injustice, it’s not a blame narrative, simply pointing fingers at colonizers or the science community. Nor is it a story of despair. It’s a look back at heartbreak and joy, through the eyes of her grandfather as a young boy and through her own lens today—as a botanist, artist, educator, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

Film, TV & Comedy

Okja, by Bong Joon Ho (Film)

Bong Joon Ho’s film about a genetically-engineered super pig is commentary on industrialized food systems—a major contributor to climate change. The greenwashing CEO Lucy Mirando and her more honestly profiteering twin sister Nancy are the corporate villains. Their sibling rivalry—Lucy trying to prove her worth as Nancy cleans up her sister’s mess behind-the-scenes—is ruthless capitalism comedy. But the heart of the film beats in the child Mija, adoring pet owner of Okja. While trying to save her best friend, Mija has misadventures with the Animal Liberation Front, a motley crew of activists. At first, these seem like familiar tropes—innocent child losing her beloved pet to the slaughterhouse; radical activists prone to infighting. But as the story progresses, the activists distinguish themselves as multidimensional characters—earnest and deceptive, spiteful and forgiving. And Mija’s final rescue of Okja is not a triumph. Just one creature spared from Big Agriculture’s holocaust. The film pokes fun at chaotic social movements and the dishonesty of green marketing. In the face of climate rage and sanctimony, such playfulness is refreshing. And through the bond of Mija and Okja, the film goes deeper than satire. The central narrative—an innocent child’s care for life—is a modern-day fairy tale that draws on our empathy.

Hacks, by Lucia Aniello, Paul Downs, and Jen Statsky (TV series)

The comedy series Hacks follows the intergenerational partnership of gen Z Ava Daniels and baby boomer Deborah Vance. While the show isn’t classical cli-fi, the main characters discuss climate change and exhibit climate emotions like anxiety and denial. Stories that don’t make climate its central plot, but that explore the theme through dialogue or character choices, remind us that all realms of life are impacted. Throughout the series, Debora and Ava disagree along familiar us-versus-them polemics, to comedic effect, yet they have affection for one another. In the third season, with its more explicit climate subplot, Ava calls out Debra Vance’s QVC empire for its climate criminality. There is B-roll of Debra’s lush lawn being watered in arid Las Vegas after being pursued by ‘water cops’. And Deborah continues to blow off Ava’s growing accusations of climate negligence; but their relationship maintains, and after a hike gone wrong, encountering the harsh realities of nature, a begrudging Vance promises the young people rescuing her that she’ll convert her financial portfolio to green investments. And though a comedy, the show is careful not to mock Deborah for her climate denialism. Nor is liberal Ava beyond reproach. At a bar with Marty, a Las Vegas casino owner, Ava reflects on her participation and success in a system she’s historically disavowed:

Ava: Doesn’t capitalism only ultimately benefit evil rich white men, regardless of who heads any one company?… [chuckles] Who am I to judge? I work for a giant media conglomerate. I’m just gonna go live in the woods.
Marty: On stolen land?
Ava: Oh, God.

The 1491s (Sketch comedy / Improv)

The 1491s are a sketch comedy group of ‘indigenous misfits’ who improv heavy topics like residential schools and genocide. Their work is political satire, irreverence and pure silliness that subverts America Indian stereotypes like the wise elder or alcoholic. The members started creating YouTube content, then began live performances, TV guest appearances, playwriting, and acting, writing, and directing for shows like Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Place. Their comedy sketches online include a Native American Men’s Anonymous meeting, A Day in the Life of a Powwow Emcee, and ‘Pipeline Protest’—where members dance in underwear as they rail against a phallic-shaped carnival ride that is ‘having sex with Mother Earth’. Cli-fi comedy like this relieves stress and reminds us to take ourselves less seriously. Or, as 1491s member Sterlin Harjo explains when describing his group’s success:

Extrapolations, Scott C. Burns, 2023. Anthology TV series chronicling interconnected characters on the timeline of 2037 to 2070. The changing climate serves as the major theme, setting, plot, and means for character development.

Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay, 2021. Black comedy with a cast of scientists, government officials, journalists and a tech billionaire, most of whom choose ratings, power, and profit over humanity. Uses a comet headed towards Earth as a metaphor for climate change.

First Reformed, Paul Schrader, 2017. Explores radical environmentalism and the church’s role in the environmental crisis. No obvious villain or simple answers. It depicts a painful crisis of faith and the persistence of hope.

Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin, 2012. Set beyond the levee system in Louisiana, the film portrays climate through fantasy. The protagonist Hushpuppy traverses rising waters with courage and an acceptance of our possible extinction.

Yale Climate Communications’ List of Cli-fi Films. Yale Climate Connections Book Editor Michael Svoboda and Washington Post reporter Amanda Shendruk compiled a list of 100 climate fiction films. All pass the climate reality check.

Articles and Online Sources

African American Communities and Climate Change, published by the Environmental Defense Fund.

Ancient Egyptian Creation Myths: From Watery Chaos to Cosmic Egg, published in Glencairn Museum News on November 5, 2021.

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States: Book Review, published in the Zine Education Project

Cli-Fi Report (CFR), by Dan Bloom.

From Afrofuturism to ecotopia: A climate-fiction glossary, published in Grist on September 14, 2021 by Claire Elise Thompson

Hate crimes are on the rise in the U.S. What are the psychological effects?, published in the American Psychological Association on May 18, 2023 By Amy Novotney

How the World Was Made: A Cherokee Creation Story, published in World History Encyclopedia on 9 April 2024, by Joshua J. Mark

Hydrothermal vents and the origins of life, published in Chemistry World on April 16, 2017 by Rachel Brazil.

Ice Age markings may have helped early ancestors with hunting, published in AccuWeather on January 5, 2023 by Hafsa Khalil

“I’m Not a Criminal… Enbridge Is”: Charges Tossed Against Winona LaDuke & Others for Pipeline Action, published in Democracy Now on September 20, 2023

It’s Time for Environmental Studies to Own Up to Erasing Black People, published in Vice on June 11, 2020 by Wanjiku Gatheru

John Muir in Native America, published in Sierra on March 2, 2021 by Rebecca Solnit

Kids and families: the latest targets of climate denialism propaganda, published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on August 10, 2023 By Keerti Gopal

Learning to love us-versus-them thinking, published in Democracy Now on September 28, 2015, by James K Rowe.

On the False Promise of Climate Fiction: Are We Already Beyond Raising Awareness?, published in Literary Hub on November 14, 2023 by Emma Pattee

Resource extraction, published in Understanding Global Change, University of California Museum of Paleontology

Stress relief from laughter? It’s no joke, published by Mayo Clinic Staff on September 22, 2023.

The Blame Instinct, published in GapMinder

The carbon footprint sham, published in Mashable by Mark Kaufman on July 3, 2020

Theological Themes in Genesis, published in Enter the Bible by Terence E. Fretheim

Trump Clings to Inaccurate Climate Change Talking Points, published in FactCheck.org on September 10, 2024 by Jessica McDonald.

Urgent need to protect young climate activists, published in UNDP on June 13, 2022 by Christophe Bahuet and AnnaMaria Oltorp

What Is Environmental Racism?, published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on May 24, 2023 by Maudlyne Ihejirika

What Is Speculative Fiction?, published in Writers Digest on May 10, 2024, by Michael Woodson

Why storytelling is an important tool for social change, published in Los Angelos Times on June 27, 2021 by Emily Falk

Selected Research/Scientific Papers

Coren, E., & Wang, H. (2024a). Storytelling to accelerate climate solutions. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54790-4

Green, M. C. (2021). Transportation into narrative worlds. Entertainment-Education Behind the Scenes, 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63614-2_6

Hartling, L. M., Rosen, W., Walker, M., & Jordan, J. V. (2000). Shame and Humiliation: From isolation to relational transformation. Work in Progress, No. 88. Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies, Wellesley College. https://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/hartling/HartlingShameHumiliation.pdf

Nanayakkara, L. (2017). Moving the conversation from “us vs. them” to just “US”: Insights from the AAAS S&T Policy Forum. Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin, 26(3), 81–83. https://doi.org/10.1002/lob.10193

Rietdijk, N. (2024). Post-truth Politics and Collective Gaslighting. Episteme, 21(1), 229–245. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2021.24.

Sabherwal, A., & Shreedhar, G. (2022). Stories of intentional action mobilise climate policy support and action intentions. Scientific Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04392-4

Sabherwal, A., Ballew, M. T., van der Linden, S., Gustafson, A., Goldberg, M. H., Maibach, E. W., Kotcher, J. E., Swim, J. K., Rosenthal, S. A., & Leiserowitz, A. (2021). The Greta Thunberg effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 51(4), 321–333. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12737

St. Aubin, C & Liedke, J. (September 17, 2024). Social Media and News Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/

Tiwathia, A., Watamanuk, E., Syropoulos, S., & Thulin, E. (2024). Small screen, big impact: How Madam Secretary boosted support for climate policy and climate justice. Rare Entertainment Lab. https://rare.org/research-reports/small-screen-big-impact-how-madam-secretary-boosted-support-for-climate-policy-and-climate-justice/

Wilson S, et al. (2017). Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture. McGill-Queen’s University Press. https://www.jstor.org/publisher/mqup

Author and version info

Published: March 13, 2025

Author: Maggie Light, Assistant Professor in Liberal Arts & Sciences and the Creative Writing Minor Area Head at Otis College of Art and Design
https://www.otis.edu/faculty/maggie-light.html

Editor: Colleen Rollins, PhD

Climate stories & cli-fi

What are climate stories?

History of climate stories

Types of climate stories & cli-fi tropes

Us versus them

Fossil fuel industry narratives

Speculative fiction

Apocalypse

Newer trends

How do climate stories & cli-fi impact our mental health & wellbeing?

Unequal impacts

Research findings

What else might we need to know?

Further reading

Resources for writers:

Fiction books

nonFiction books

Essays

Film, TV & Comedy

Articles and Online Sources

Selected Research/Scientific Papers

Author and version info

Table of Contents

Climate stories & cli-fi

What are climate stories?

History of climate stories

Types of climate stories & cli-fi tropes

Us versus them

Fossil fuel industry narratives

Speculative fiction

Apocalypse

Newer trends

How do climate stories & cli-fi impact our mental health & wellbeing?

Unequal impacts

Research findings

How can we create, improve, and share more climate stories?

What else might we need to know?

Further reading

Resources for writers:

Fiction books

nonFiction books

Essays

Film, TV & Comedy

Articles and Online Sources

Selected Research/Scientific Papers

Author and version info

Table of Contents