Climate scientists are often pushed to the forefront of climate movement. If we don’t slow the climate collapse, they are one of the first to sound the alarm.
Their cutting-edge predictions—melting ice, extinctions, extreme droughts, and wildfires—are the best way to communicate real dangers, so the theory goes like this.
But sometimes, the complex computer models created by climate scientists do not provide sufficient guidance.
Creator of Survival Century The game will speak at the future MAPA Zoom event on Friday, July 25, 2021 (Sunday) at 1:00 PM UTC.You can join the event by clicking On this link.
powerful
The possible climate future that awaits us will be a huge and complex chaos of political and social forces interacting with environmental changes. This is difficult to model.
Of course, we still need excellent scientific models to help us understand what the future of the earth might look like. But we also need other tools.
This is where the novel comes in. In recent years, we have seen the rise of climate fiction or “cli-fi”-a sub-genre of mystery fiction that tells the recognition of stories that may happen as our climate changes.
We tested the power of fiction in a new adventure game of choosing your own, Survival Century, Which helps players to vividly imagine a series of climate futures in the future.
The game puts you in the position of a powerful newspaper editor, making daily choices about how you will interpret the events of the next few decades.
Science fiction
Do you call the school strikers a hero or a gangster? With the climate crisis displacing millions of people, do you support corporate visas, harsh refugee camps, or resettlement in richer countries?
These choices affect the reality of what happens next: if you choose the option of paying tribute to the fossil fuel business, you will see the global temperature tracker in the corner of the screen rise faster.
Next to it, when you start posting headlines supporting reckless or authoritarian political leaders, the conflict tracker starts to turn dark red.
The reality of the game is that all of us have some kind of power-a power to deal with stories, not a scientific method. It brings to life the fact that the stories we tell ourselves and others have a very real impact on the future.
The headlines of the game are written by science fiction writers from Finland, India, Qatar and South Africa.
temperature
They help us imagine what might happen: “Versace launched a “cool suit” at Paris Fashion Week, allowing fashionistas to go out in the tropics”; “Japan became the first country powered entirely by hydrogen”; Rebellious climate hacking has led to droughts and crop failures in the northern hemisphere.”
But when the future of the earth is so extraordinary, why turn to fiction?
First of all, this is how humans work. We understand our past, present, and future by telling stories to each other: there are narratives of beginning and end, and important things.
This fills the emotional gap-whether it is the heart or the mind-which is impossible to do with no amount of research evidence. Stories make us feel that we are in the future, not just that we are there.
Second, novels can handle complexity. The future consequences of climate change are often imagined around keeping global warming below certain warming targets: 2°C, 3°C, 4°C.
free
Science can allow us to understand the impact of each situation on the climate-but usually, this means that we imagine a dual future in which a 1.5°C rise is safe and everything else is hell.
But things are not that simple. This is where the novel comes in. The game allows players to create a climate-stable world that is even more unfair than what we live in now-or a fair world that is too hot to survive.
A trend leads us into a hypercapitalist route, where corporate visas control climate-driven immigration and determine global policies, and companies take advantage of the fact that they have climate-ready technologies.
Such a future may eventually be good in terms of temperature, but it will bring challenges in terms of global equity.
Another example illustrates the future of the Global Climate Committee becoming an authoritarian government, keeping the temperature rising at 1.5°C but destroying freedom in the process.
International
At the same temperature, other options will build a healthier world: where citizens are protected, democracy flourishes, and governments work together.
It reminds us that there is no good future and a bad future: on the contrary, there are countless complex futures, and only we can control what we get. Our games help players understand that we can shape our future, not just witness it.
For many people, the sense of control over climate change has disappeared in recent years.
When climate activists saw the progress of inaction stagnating, many people stopped hedging. They presented a clear and unequivocal message: If we do not stop climate change now, we will have no future on this planet.
It allows people to understand the scale of the threat. But this also makes some people believe that they can’t do anything: this is the future of the earth and a large-scale international climate change conference. What they think is more important than me. What is the point of trying to change it?
adventure
Novels—especially choosing your own style of adventure—leave control to the reader.
It reminds them that the important decision is the decision before us, not the decision behind us. In fact, the first question starts today: What title would you write for an article about Covid recovery?
In order to take action on climate change, we must know what science thinks might happen.
But we must also know that feeling the heat of unprecedented bushfires on our skin, the surge of fear when multiple crops fail, or breathing cleaner air in greener cities and preventing the loss of Arctic sea ice may be possible. What it’s like and the joy of living in a fairer society.
Facts keep us realistic. But to truly believe them, we must be willing to deal with fiction.
These authors
Dr. Christopher Trisos and associate professor Dr. Simon Nicholson are climate scientists. Sam Beck Basinger Is a best-selling novel writer.They launched Survival Century: A climate fiction story about choices and consequences, A new interactive online game.
Creator of Survival Century The game will speak at the “Fridays for Future Zoom” event on July 25, 2021 (Sunday) at 1:00 PM UTC.You can join the event by clicking On this link.
