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Olduvai III: Catacylsm
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Climate Disaster Is Here—and the State Will Never Save Us

Climate Disaster Is Here—and the State Will Never Save Us

“States demonstrate, again and again, that not only do they not protect the Earth, they facilitate its destruction.” Dean Spade on the promise of speculative fiction and a review of The Ministry for the Future and The Deluge.

The Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana was once 22,000 acres of bayous. Now, less than 2% of it is still above water. In 2016, residents left because of the effects of climate change in what was labeled the “first federally recognized climate-displaced population” in the United States.PHOTO BY CÉCILE CLOCHERET / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Global temperatures have reached new record highsflooding and wildfires reaped widespread destruction this summer, and rainwater was declared, for the first time, unfit for human consumption around the globe. Amid these crises, I delved into two novels portraying our current and developing ecological and societal crises: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson and The Deluge by Stephen Markley.

Reading fiction about ecological crisis and societal collapse — including heavily researched books like Deluge (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Ministry (Hachette, 2020) that aim to realistically paint future scenarios, as well as young adult stories (often with elements of magic or science fiction) — can be useful for combating the persistent culture of denial of current conditions. Seeing how an author imagines emerging conditions also helps me grapple with and digest the difficult-to-comprehend onslaught of daily news.

Even those of us who know that climate change is already killing and displacing tens of millions of people (let alone other species) annually are mostly missing the scale of the impending global collapse.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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