Should we worry about science fiction’s denial of climate change?

Mark Charan Newton worries about the cult of science fiction and how this influences the debate on climate change:

There’s so little time to hold back anthropogenic climate change (assuming you accept the unequivocal science in the first place). Leave it too long, and it will be too late to bring back CO2 concentrations to the necessary levels, causing a huge variety of issues that I’ve gone on about many times before. Dreaming up science fiction, Big Ideas, will not address the actual problems of dumping huge amounts of greenhouses gasses into the atmosphere in the first place. Moreover, this SF is diverting attention, political and financial resources away from urgent action. What this also does is play right into the hands of corporate lobbyists who will use it as an argument to delay such urgent action even further, usually to the benefit of [insert polluting organisation here].

I do agree with Mark on his broader point, that it is pointless and counterproductive to look for a quick technofix as the solution to climate change, but worrying about the pernicious influence of science fiction in this is worrying about the tail wagging the dog. Yes, science fiction readers and writers alike are constitutionally more keen on technowizardry as the solution to all our woes than the normal run of the population, but we’re not the ones driving the debate. It’s the ExxonMobil and Philip Morris sponsored think thanks we have to worry about, these are the ones that are fueling the deniers.

In fact, what’s so disappointing about those science fiction writers who are in the denial camp is how much they follow the recieved wisdom there, rather than come up with original ideas of their own. See for example Mark’s criticism of Neal Asher’s ideas about climate change and it’s clear Asher has nothing new to add to the debate. It’s all hockey sticks, cherry picking and (deliberate) misunderstandings of what certain scientists mean with “tricks” in the context of statistical analysis. (I’m glad that Asher for the most part doesn’t feel the need to pollute his fiction with such long debunked nonsense. Love his fiction, don’t agree with his politics on climate change, don’t mind at all if these two are kept separate.)

So unlike Mark, I think most prominent climate change deniers in science fiction like Asher are followers rather than leaders, a symptom rather than the disease. We do need to worry about misplaced faith in technological solutions to climate change so that we don’t remain passive while waiting for a cost free, pain free solution, but science fiction is the wrong place to combat it.

4 Comments

  • Rich Puchalsky

    September 17, 2011 at 5:03 pm

    I write about environmentalism and SF here. I agree that ExxonMobil, Phiilip Morris (which is now Altria) etc who are to blame, but I think that you’re letting Neil Asher and other more well-known denialists like Larry Niven off too easily. I know that not all SF is supposed to be hard SF, but it’s supposed to not serve as a platform to catapult anti-science propaganda. I’ve never read any of Asher’s books, but I certainly can’t think that he has any insight worth reading if he can believe the nonsense that he believes in.

  • Martin Wisse

    September 18, 2011 at 3:50 am

    Rich, it’s just that they are vectors rather than originators of denialism, with a limited reach and therefore for the most part not worth too much worrying about.

    The good thing about Asher is that for the most part he keeps his own political convictions out of it; no page long screeds on why global warming is wrong, though there are one or two throwaway remarks here and there. Oviously, his politics does inform his writing, but not to the extent that if you disagree you’ll throw his books against the wall.

    Asher does well written and executed adventure science fiction, has a good eye for ichor and the inherent squickiness of biological life and a tendency to throw everything but the kitchen sink in his stories.

    Whether or not that’s enough for you?

  • Rich Puchalsky

    September 18, 2011 at 9:14 am

    It’s true that they have a short reach, but SF is a small world. You’re quite right that if we’re worried about denialism in the global-effectiveness sense it’s silly to worry about the people within SF who pick up propaganda from outside. But it is our small world, so we have a greater interest in what happens within it. Or something.

  • Alondo

    September 18, 2011 at 2:18 pm

    If you want a really thought provoking take on the effects of Climate Change, try the books of SF writer John Brunner, e.g, “The Sheep Look Up” or “Stand on Zanzibar.” They make excellent and intelligent reading.