Climate Change Fictions in Context: Socio-Politics, Environmental Discourse and Literature
Focusing on American climate change fiction, Chap. “Climate Change Fictions in Context: Socio-Politics, Environmental Discourse and Literature” briefly outlines the socio-politics of climate change and explains its highly controversial role in the United
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SOCIO-POLITICAL CLIMATES Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. (Mark Twain, 1897) The American way of life is not open to negotiation. (President George H.W. Bush at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992)
In his 2013 inaugural address, President Barack Obama stated, “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations” (“Inaugural Address by President Barack Obama | The White House”), thereby announcing a change of direction in US politics and prominently affirming the overwhelming evidence by climate scientists of the reality of global warming. Climate change, according to the United Nations Framework Convention, describes a “change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” (United Nations, “Article 1: Definitions”). Due to the increase of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since preindustrial times, atmosphere and ocean temperatures have warmed significantly, polar ice has melted, and sea levels have risen (IPCC, Climate Change 2013 2).1 The main atmospheric GHGs that critically endanger the balance between input from energy of the sun and loss of that energy into space
© The Author(s) 2016 A. Mehnert, Climate Change Fictions, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40337-3_2
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(i.e., the planetary energy budget) are carbon dioxide (emitted in burning fossil fuels), methane, and nitrous oxide (emitted in modern agricultural production) (Boykoff 2011, Lever-Tracy). According to a 2013 report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global warming is likely to continue, and even if emissions are significantly reduced, many aspects of climate change will persist for centuries (25).2 Impacts of future climate change on ecosystems (biodiversity loss), resources (food and water crises), and on settlements and society (displacement) are projected to be severe. When talking about climate change, the United States occupies a central position, not only because it is annually the second greatest producer of CO2 emissions (until 2009 it was the first) through its domestic and international industries, but also because the climate change debate has experienced an unprecedented fervor and a high level of controversy in the US. Furthermore, though it consumes 25 percent of global energy annually, the US has so far been a laggard concerning federal or even international climate change policy and commitments (Giddens, The Politics of Climate Change 87). Yet, on a municipal and state (as well as recently on a federal) level, there has been significant progress in climate policies over the past years, and the variety and strength of environmental groups in the United States and their push for action on climate change is noteworthy. Since this publication focuses on US climate change fiction, and presuming that literat
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