In the Steep Climes Quartet, my literary climate fiction series that spans from 2026, 2029, 2035, and 2047, one important focus is imaging how we get from where we are with climate change today to where we want to be. I’m mainly talking about how we reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the energy, transportation, and buildings (heating and cooling) sectors that are considered the easiest sectors to reduce emissions.
The Present State of World: Them and Us
If you follow the news (ha!), you know that reducing emissions is far harder these days in the United States, thanks to Big Oil throwing pin money around to buy political influence that includes that industry acquiring President Big Oil Stooge, the man who claims that every revolution of a wind turbine costs $1000 and whose administration, through Lee Zeldin, is at this very moment killing EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding. This latest effort is designed to dismantle major climate regulations, including vehicle tailpipe standards and power plant emission rules. Clearly, optimism in climate progress has taken a hit in the U.S. Of course, the very continuation of America as a democratic entity is taking a hit, too.
On the other hand, market forces are pushing clean energy forward faster and faster. There’s a simple reason why clean energy is having its day in many other parts of the world and led by China. The reason is that clean energy is now cheaper, in and of itself, and even cheaper for undeveloped countries that may have a limited ailing grid system but can now directly build ubiquitous microgrids. Global South countries can “leapfrog” the large and capital-intensive centralized grid infrastructure. So, yes, grounds for optimism for reducing emissions are to be found in many parts of the world. China and India—not exactly small polluting players—both show signs of coal use plateauing, hence the plateauing of carbon emissions. Many other nations provide good instances for optimism, too.
Unfortunately, petrostates, among which America can be considered current King, are playing hardball. The anticipated AI boom, with its attendant needs for data centers, is seen as argument for adding hundreds of new gas electricity generation plants over the next decades. Trump and his minions are keeping coal plants active despite their absurdly higher costs. The quickest and cheapest way to expand electricity capacity is to update the grids to better manage the excess capacity that currently exists, but somehow new gas plants and building out new grids are the order of the day, while future nuclear reactors the order of tomorrow. Windfarm projects get shut down and solar and battery projects go to the back of the interconnect queue, as we are told to dream of fusion and pretend that natural gas is a “clean” fuel.
How the Story is Shaping Up
Writing the American perspective about where we’re headed to address climate change is depressing at the moment. In fact, Kill Well, the first book in the series and published in the second half of 2023, takes place in 2026, but it had to be revised away from the initial rosier picture of continuing Biden-type climate and clean energy actions. The revision was to accommodate the shocking taking of the White House and Congress by Trump a little more than a year after the original publication date.
Dear Josephine, taking place in 2029, is the second book of the Steep Climes Quartet. This book was meant to be published in the Fall of 2024, but the necessary Trump-caused rewrites pushed publication to Spring 2025. The good news (fictionally speaking) is that Trump’s reign was soundly repudiated in the midterms of 2026 and election of 2028, and by 2029 the new administration is working furiously to get back on track. Of course, the timelines for legislation are long and progress slow. I’m writing fiction, not fantasy, after all, or at least that’s my fervent hope.
In Dear Josephine,the nation experiences a terrible blow when Florida’s Gold Coast, home of Miami, is largely destroyed by a monster hurricane hitting at the worst time and under the worst circumstances. Despite this, America rallies. Heck, even Davin, the somewhat hapless series’ main character who lives in the Berkshires, manages to help out in his modest way. The expectation that people will be inclined to help is no stretch: what we’re seeing from the communities in Minnesota, among other places, revives our understanding that we must all work together.
Of course, underlying the Dear Josephine story are a couple of assumptions. The first assumption is that America avoids collapse as a democracy, rallying to excise the current fascist cancer. The second assumption is that Big Oil’s thumb is taken off the scales and the ecological and economic benefits of the clean energy transition are ever more attractive. This second assumption doesn’t mean that Big Oil capitulates, to absolutely no one’s surprise. Big Oil keeps fighting, but their day in court is approaching. Unfortunately, the frustrations engendered by the Trump second term and the ascendancy of the Oligarchy and the long-running pushback against clean energy gives rise to a climate action terrorist group calling itself No One is Safe, which makes sure that they are true to their word when it comes to oil executives and Big Oil’s infrastructure not being safe.
By 2035, when Over Brooklyn Hills takes place, there’s been a lot of progress on The Electrotech Revolution (thanks, Ember!). But the consequences of climate change advance as well. There’s a horrible and long heatwave that blankets NYC and parts of several Eastern states and the relatively cool green hills of the Berkshires finds itself with too many young people up from the city and everything is already booked. If you’re wondering if this story line is climate migration writ small, give yourself points. In the background of the book some big trouble is brewing with huge numbers of climate migrants around the world, including at our southern border. Our southern border is now militarized against the cartels and their various violent trades that embrace smuggling people. NOS shows up down Mexico way in a tight story line, but you’ll have to buy and read Over Brooklyn Hills when it publishes this Spring. I ain’t saying nothing.
Where the Story is Going
I have lots of notes for Farm to Me, the fourth and final book in the series, but I can’t tell you how the story plays out. I can tell you that Farm to Me takes place in 2047 and there’s a question of whether emission reductions are keeping pace against climate change problems. I’m not sure exactly how slowly, but we are all sure that we’ve moved too slowly and that the future days will see extreme weather events due to further increases in average global temperature. I’ll let you know that by 2035, in Dear Josephine, the average may be as high as 1.7 degrees centigrade, although there are those who say it’s lower and those who argue the average global temperature is higher. By 2047 the temperature will be higher yet, although I haven’t done my due diligence to come to the amount of increase.
We’re already locked into negative climate change consequences for many decades to come, and, yes, I’m being very conservative. What I know is that in this final book, droughts and water scarcity have collapsed or badly hurt some of America’s best food production areas. I’m looking forward to diving deeper into regenerative agriculture and describing how agriculture—think truck farms—has again come to the Northeast, where, all around New England, we can still find the stone wall traces of the area’s rich agricultural past.
Of course, there’s a murder from an effort to extort consolidation of competing food distribution companies. Of course, the rest of the world is heard about from the news. Of course, progress in decarbonizing the economy continues, even while other economic engines emerge for resilience and adaptation. Of course, the problems inherent in human society continue and the world of 2047 therefore is not all that different from today.
I’m writing fiction, not fantasy.