These days it can be hard to write climate fiction. Given the dangerous threat America is under now from authoritarianism, the more pressing action seems obvious: combat our country’s slide toward totalitarianism. The problem of climate change seems secondary to political action that supports the Constitution and the rule of law.
Of course, climate action and political action are not separate pursuits, but rather, in our threatening times, one and the same. The election of Donald Trump in 2024 opened the floodgates of corruption and illegal behavior. Given that the would-be dictator of America can be honestly called “President Big Oil Stooge,” much of this corruption stems from Big Oil’s rearguard actions as the fossil fuel corporations realize that their source of wealth is challenged as renewable energy technologies of solar, wind, and batteries emerge. Big Oil has declared itself a reactionary force against world progress, but then again, the fossil fuel industry has long been at this game and at gaming the system. Bill McKibben’s latest Substack, “Hey Grok, What’s a Waste of Energy?” says, “…one way to look at AI is that it’s main use is as a vehicle to give the fossil fuel industry one last reason to expand.”
Sure, McKibben knows that this sounds conspiratorial, but then he reports that Open AI has just hired John McCarrick to “find energy sources for ChatGPT.” And who is McCarrick? Here’s who:
John McCarrick, the company’s new head of Global Energy Policy, was a senior energy policy advisor in the first Trump administration’s Bureau of Energy Resources in the Department of State while under former Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo.
As deputy assistant secretary for Energy Transformation and the special envoy for International Energy Affairs, McCarrick promoted exports of American liquefied natural gas to Europe in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and advocated for Asian countries to invest in natural gas.
The choice to hire McCarrick matches the intentions of OpenAI’s Trump-dominating CEO Sam Altman, who said in a U.S. Senate hearing in May that “in the short term, I think [the future of powering AI] probably looks like more natural gas.” The biggest problem for Big Oil is that these new less expensive and more quickly built electricity sources better meet the growing demand for electricity as the world moves toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The reason to go with renewables is now not just to reduce GHG emissions to help forestall worse outcomes of climate change and reduce massive pollution harm to human health and environment, but because renewables have become the most economical power generation options.
In may turn out to be that the push for AI and its required data centers backfires on Big Oil if the corporations use the anticipated electricity load growth to be met with new fossil fuel generators. The cost of electricity is likely to be an election issue even as early as 2026 and certainly in 2028, and especially if the Big Oil efforts to build a lot more natural gas generators plays out. In an article in Semafor, “As electricity bills rise, candidates in both parties blame data centers,” by David Weigel, Politics Reporter, and published on October 13, 2025, the reporting of a small-scale election in Gainesville, Virginia paints a common and growing question:
On Friday night, dueling candidates for a board of supervisors seat in this suburban county found a cause that united them: banning new data centers.
“I think we should, personally, block all future data centers,” said Patrick Harders, the Republican running for an open seat on the Prince William County board. George Stewart, his Democratic opponent, agreed that “the crushing and overwhelming weight of data centers” was a crisis, with massive companies “having us, as residents, pay for their energy.”
For America to lead the world in building a less expensive energy supply and more equitable economy, the cry should be “Build, Baby, Build,” and while the question of AI and data center electricity needs more analysis, it is renewable energy systems we should be building. The economies of scales that have already driven the costs of solar, wind, and batteries down and then further down, will continue to drive costs down again and again, and you can’t say that for natural gas generators, even if the turbine supply chain pipeline wasn’t empty until post-2030 or later. The shift in technology toward inherently more efficient and less expensive electrical power is called by many “The Electrotech Revolution,” and Big Oil is doing everything it can to keep this revolution away from energy consumers.
Of course, these days it looks like China is eating America’s lunch when it comes to developing, producing, and selling the electrotech revolution.
Ironies abound.
There’s now a war between Big Oil and the citizens of America, and while we may habitually think of this as the fight for climate action, the more fundamental conflict is against totalitarianism. The fossil fuel industry has managed to co-opt Federal power through both explicit and tacit support to the perverse and Constitutionally groundless “Unitary Executive” Administration, and in doing so, has managed to cancel, delay, or de-permit large numbers of renewable energy projects that are our most likely means of answering the growth in electricity demand. The hypocrisy is staggering (as so much of the current Administration’s actions are), but the call for “free markets,” once the rallying cry of Republicans and American corporations alike, has been drowned out by the expeditious drive to maintain and expand profits of the fossil fuel industry regardless the reality that fossil fuels are an ever-growing expense and risk to the economy of the nation.
Telling the truth is one part of climate action.
One of the great lies these days is the claim by Big Oil that they “are part of the solution.” Another part of McKibben’s latest Substack includes the following:
+If anyone ever tries to tell you that Big Oil is helping with the energy transition, hand them this new study that shows
An analysis of the energy assets of 250 of the largest oil and gas companies finds a marginal contribution to global renewable energy deployment and that renewable generation represents a tiny proportion of the total energy production of these companies. This study empirically legitimizes doubts about the commitment of the industry to transition to low-carbon energy production.
The study McKibben refers to is “Oil and gas industry’s marginal share of global renewable energy,” which also includes some other bon mots in the article summary:
Our results show that renewable energy remains a tiny part of the oil and gas industry portfolio. Indeed, they only contribute about 1.42% to the deployment of renewable power globally, while only 49 of the largest 250 oil and gas companies are found to own renewable energy projects in operation.
…
The discourse to be ‘part of the solution’ is one element of a strategy the oil and gas industry uses to salvage their social and political licenses to operate in the face of pressure to decarbonize the energy system.
Not that this comes as a surprise when talking about Big Oil and what it is doing to stay forever in business, but Liar, liar, pants on fire surely applies.
Telling the truth is one part of climate action.
Climate action is one thing, but climate fiction may be something else. It is easy to find climate fiction that presents future worlds—some near, some far—of post-climate collapse dystopia. But are such worlds effective in helping readers to think of their roles as citizens in today’s America? The answer here is mixed, since such books may serve to help readers with the object lesson of what can happen without timely climate action, but apocalyptic tales serve as allegory, or worse, simple entertainment. Unfortunately, when it comes to fighting for a better America, simple entertainment falls short.
Both our politics and our climate are at a point where actions today will choose our future. Both our politics and our climate are at inflection points when the right action, the right vote, can make the future we want come into being. Today, the big questions are:
- Will citizens make the right choices?
- Do citizens understand that the right choices need to be made right now?
There’s a need for truth through fiction. In the course of the four novels in The Steep Climes Quartet, readers see people like themselves across the span of 2026-2047 in lives with which they can identify. In the course of the four novels, readers can recognize the criminality the country faces today. In the span of The Steep Climes Quartet story, readers can consider right actions, right votes.
Of course, such thoughts, perspectives, and considerations are mixed with many other attentions that can be more pressing at any given moment. Few of us are front-line climate heroes or political actors. Most of us have jobs and bills to pay, kids to raise, friends to see. Nonetheless, for all of us, both politics and climate are central and crucial to our lives, whether or not we pay such concerns much attention.
We are living in a moment of our history where the forces of authoritarianism and reactionary economic forces push to make our country follow Big Oil’s self-serving vision of America. We need fiction that tells the tale of another world where less expensive electricity feeds a healthier environment and a robust economy across the globe. We need fiction to remind ourselves that life is complicated, but we have the capacity to act as agents of our own fate. We need fiction that shows how we cast off the shackles of fossil fuel and the political influence that Big Oil needs to tip the scales back in their favor.
We need fiction to remind us that we are citizens, not consumers, and that we are the stewards of this good green Earth. The fact that The Electrotech Revolution makes energy more abundant, affordable, and more widely shared can be the happy ending.