Another solid post from The Eco-Revolution. The title is “Stop Talking About Net Zero: How the right wing is weaponizing climate costs to scare voters and how to combat them.”

Definitely worth the read.

The Net Zero argument is an aspirational one, but from a practical perspective it raises a lot of questions and, as the above-referenced post points out, net-zero has been weaponized as an attack point on the affordability issue. “If only you didn’t have a net-zero mandate,” the argument goes, “things would be less expensive.”

Of course, we want to get to the point where we have far lower GHG emissions. The point is, as this post argues, that the energy generation and use sectors can be shifted to clean energy today to stop producing GHG emissions. This is the obvious and most direct solution to addressing climate change. By the way, we can expect continuing progress on the hard-to-mitigate industrial sectors, too. All the other approaches—carbon capture and offsets and other schemes—are sleight of hand maneuvers and surprisingly expensive ones at that.

Shifting to Clean Energy is an Investment

But here’s what we climate progress/clean energy proponents don’t talk about: the shift to a new energy system is expensive. Sure, in the longer-term, clean energy is the least expensive energy production system human’s have come up with, and less expensive by an impressive margin. For example, capital costs—the money needed to build—is similar for a solar farm to the cost of building an equivalent electricity output natural gas generator plant, but gas plants represent much higher operation costs, mainly because you have to keep buying natural gas fuel over the plant’s operational lifetime, plus other operational costs are higher, since gas generators have higher maintenance and operational personnel costs.

What isn’t more expensive, from a capital cost basis, is an existing gas generator plant versus building a clean energy electricity plant, because, of course, the capital money for the existing plant is already spent. The problem of costs comes to the fore when building new clean energy production systems (i.e., solar, wind, BESS, digital grid and demand and DER management, etc.) to replace existing (and global-warming producing emissions) fossil fuel energy production systems. Long term, clearly, renewables are the better deal in all sorts of ways, including reducing the amounts of direct subsidies to fossil fuel corporations by governments around the world through tax, accounting, and other legal mechanisms, along with outright grants. The bigger hidden costs addressed by replacing fossil fuel generation systems, however, are fossil fuel externalities, which is all the money spent each year to address fossil fuel pollution health consequences and climate change consequences caused by the production and use of fossil fuels. These externalities, according to the International Monetary Fund, have the world paying to address the negative consequences of the production and use of fossil fuels, and, together with the direct fossil fuel subsidies, reaches somewhere in the $5-7 trillion range, every year. These “indirect” subsidies are costs largely hidden from the public understanding, mainly through long-standing industry and special interest efforts keeping these costs from public knowledge and political debate.

Still, most people intuitively understand that building out new energy production systems to replace fossil fuel-based energy production systems represents additional costs, at least over a relatively short time, although replacement clean energy production systems prove cheaper over time since we stop the ongoing purchase of fossil fuels and have lower spending addressing externalities because of lowered emissions. But most people think of costs on short-term bases. The future investment argument, while very compelling, isn’t what most of us think about when faced with higher costs upfront.

The effort to establish the Electrotech Revolution means gaining the public’s interest and support for the Electrotech Revolution and that means we need to own the argument that this is a great investment, with lower costs over time, as one outcome. But we also need to be clear that the transition will impose short-term higher costs as we replace the dangerous and expensive fossil fuel energy production systems with more buildout of solar, wind, BESS, etc., as we decommission the polluting old systems as soon as possible.

These days, the best argument is to keep from building new fossil fuel energy production systems and only build renewables-based energy production facilities and to exploit the digital management technologies that expand the efficiency and capacity of our current electrical grids and distribution infrastructure. I imagine that once these clean energy systems are more ubiquitous the lower-cost arguments will be more widely understood as advantageous mainly through lower energy bills, but this takes time.

I’d love to see much of the cost of decommissioning fossil fuel energy production placed upon the fossil fuel corporations and their shareholders, but, of course, that presents the challenge of stranded assets for the companies themselves and the institutional investors such as retirement funds. I’d love to see this burden placed on the fossil fuel corporations, but I’m guessing that if people’s retirement funds take a sharp hit because of lost value due to stranded assets, this very active voting bloc will be made unhappy. Therefore, the more compelling argument to large investment funds is for these institutional investors to move away from new fossil fuel investments such as fossil fuel generators. This is the real threat of net-zero mandates to Big Oil: if a new gas plant violates a net-zero mandate, then the likelihood of the new gas plant being build fades.

Externalities ‘R Us

There is also the very real issue of fossil fuel externalities being put back on the fossil fuel corporations as public awareness grows about how much nations—and us, through taxes and assumed personal household costs—cover these businesses’ avoided expenses, whether through these corporations’ sweetheart leasing deals, extraction shortcuts (just the methane leaks alone!), plethora of deregulations, intrinsic refinery-related pollution, court battles against being named liable parties, and all the other forms of externalities.

Unfortunately, the clean energy movement has been largely unable even to get the issue of the cost of externalities to be part of the public discourse. I wrote a post about this issue titled “The Challenge of Conveying Climate Change Information in Climate Fiction,” which starts this way:

I think this is the exact quote: “You have thirty mentions of externalities! Cut that by at least half!”

I will keep the name of this beta-reader to myself, so to avoid an uncomfortable paparazzi-crushing lifestyle change for him, thank you very much. He was talking with me about Dear Josephine, my second book in the literary climate fiction series The Steep Climes Quartet. He was referring to the number of times the term that stands in for all the external costs the use of fossil fuel shifts to the public and thus not counted among the producers’ costs in fossil fuel production.

Externalities: You know, things like health problems that are attributed to pollution and particulates.

The post goes on to define externalities and discuss fossil fuel subsides and then the issue of conveying climate change facts within climate fiction.

Let’s Take Ownership of the Arguments on Energy Affordability

We’ve been letting the fossil fuel industry—Big Oil—dictate the terms of discussion, including their attempted ownership of the affordability issue, even while clean energy actually owns the argument of more affordable electricity. Substackers like The Eco-Revolution, Bill McKibben, Sam Matey-Coste, and David Roberts continue to educate us on this larger discussion.

The remaining problem to address is the short-term costs for clean energy investment. It’s a challenging argument because most people are worried about next month’s rent, not the promise that energy costs will indeed come down in a year or two or three. Most of us have difficulty with long-term investments for the future.

But no one is saying that the clean energy transition is easy, as far as I know.

A lot of people are saying its goddam important, though, and my hand is up, too.

The post The Short-term Costs of Clean Energy and the Long-term Affordability Advantages first appeared on David Guenette.

Here’s my favorite line from the  Kirkus review of Over Brooklyn Hills:

Guenette’s attention to the ways in which climate change may affect communities at the local level makes for a compelling read, and the writing is zippy and clean.

On the other hand, the Kirkus reviewer chose to highlight the review with the following quote:

A few too many ideas prove distracting in this otherwise prescient and compelling near-future climate exploration.

A mixed compliment, seems like, but overall the review was a good one. You can judge this for yourself, reading the review in full:

OVER BROOKLYN HILLS, THE STEEP CLIMES QUARTET, BOOK THREE

A few too many ideas prove distracting in this otherwise prescient and compelling near-future climate exploration.

The post Kirkus Weighs In On Over Brooklyn Hills first appeared on David Guenette.

A long review appears on Goodreads recently and, if I do say so myself, this review is yet another that speaks well for the latest The Steep Climes Quartet title, Over Brooklyn Hills.

Here the Goodreads review, by Katie Meyers, just published and in full:

Over Brooklyn Hills is an ambitious and thought provoking installment in The Steep Climes Quartet, offering readers a vivid vision of a near future world grappling with the ongoing realities of climate change. David Guenette skillfully combines environmental, political, and personal narratives to create a story that is both intimate and expansive.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its realism. Rather than depicting climate change as a distant catastrophe, the story explores its gradual but relentless effects on daily life, public policy, migration, housing, infrastructure, and community relationships. This approach makes the future portrayed in the novel feel plausible and deeply relevant.

The character of Davin Caine serves as an effective anchor for the narrative. Through his work, creative pursuits, and evolving personal relationships, readers experience the human side of a changing world. His life reflects both the challenges and adaptations required in a society navigating environmental uncertainty.

The heatwave that drives large numbers of people into the Berkshires creates a particularly compelling conflict. The resulting tensions between residents and newcomers highlight issues of scarcity, housing, social cohesion, and community resilience. These local struggles mirror larger global challenges unfolding throughout the novel.

What makes the book especially engaging is its ability to connect personal stories with global developments. Climate migration, geopolitical instability, energy transitions, and environmental activism all intersect within a narrative that remains focused on individual lives and relationships. The result is a novel that feels both expansive in scope and emotionally grounded.

The worldbuilding is detailed and thoughtful, presenting a future shaped not by sudden collapse but by ongoing adaptation, compromise, and conflict. This nuanced perspective distinguishes the novel from more conventional dystopian narratives.

Over Brooklyn Hills, Book Three of The Steep Climes Quartet, is now available. You can find Over Brooklyn Hills—Kindle and paperback—of The Steep Climes Quartet through Amazon, or order it through your favorite bookstore or in ePub format.

Learn more about Over Brooklyn Hills here.

The post Another Review of Over Brooklyn Hills first appeared on David Guenette.

Here’s a quote from the review that captures, I think, what I’m trying to do with the series The Steep climes Quartet:

I felt less like I was being shown a future world and more like I was being asked to notice the one already forming around us. That’s unsettling. It’s also the book’s strength.

I’ve been writing a lot about climate fiction and what makes a story or novel climate fiction, and the reviews coming in are helpful articulations of this question. Of course, my pending interview with them will force me to articulate my view on this question of what makes fiction climate fiction.

You can buy the latest title in The Steep Climes Quartet from many places, including through your local bookstore using Bookshop.org or by simply asking your favorite bookseller to order Over Brooklyn Hills. Or Amazon, too, Kindle or paperback. Or ePub format.

This review copied below is from Literary Titans, which describes itself as “an organization of professional editors, writers, and professors passionate about the written word. We review fiction and non-fiction books in different genres, conduct author interviews, and recognize talented authors with our monthly Literary Titan Book Award. We are privileged to work with so many creative authors around the world and help them promote their work.” 

With the advent of independent publishing, there’s been a slew of such services, but Literary Titan has managed to be early in and is well regarded. Plus, their review is quite good of my recently published Over Brooklyn Hills, the third book of The Steep climes Quartet, so that speaks well of them, I’d say. Well, of course I would say this, but you can read what they say about my newest book in the four-book series:

Over Brooklyn Hills by David Guenette is a literary climate fiction thriller set in 2035, where climate change is no longer a warning on the horizon but a daily pressure shaping politics, money, migration, housing, violence, and ordinary private life. The story follows Davin Caine, now seventy, as he moves through a Berkshire County strained by rising costs, climate migration, and civic unease, while larger threats involving fossil fuel interests, international tensions, and the climate terrorist group No One is Safe push the novel into darker territory.

Guenette isn’t just interested in disaster as spectacle. He’s interested in the way disaster becomes routine. A hot spell, a housing meeting, a town budget, a person trying to keep a home, a young worker needing air conditioning, a local government trying to respond without losing its soul. These details give the novel its weight. I felt less like I was being shown a future world and more like I was being asked to notice the one already forming around us. That’s unsettling. It’s also the book’s strength.

The writing has a restless, observant quality that I found both engaging and, at times, intentionally uncomfortable. Guenette moves between characters with a wide lens, and his choices make the book feel crowded in the way real life is crowded. Davin’s reflective passages slow the story down in useful ways, giving the thriller elements more moral texture. Then the violence and conspiracy threads cut back in, sharp and ugly, reminding me that this is still a thriller with real stakes. I appreciated that balance. The book doesn’t let anyone stay clean for long, not activists, not politicians, not industries, not regular people trying to get through the week.

I would recommend Over Brooklyn Hills to readers who like climate fiction with a political pulse, especially those who want a thriller that thinks as much as it moves. It will appeal to readers who enjoy near-future stories grounded in realistic social consequences rather than end-of-the-world spectacle. If you like fiction that blends suspense, civic anxiety, personal reflection, and big-picture questions about responsibility, this book has plenty to offer.

Rating: 5

The post Another Editorial Review of Over Brooklyn Hills first appeared on David Guenette.

Over Brooklyn Hills is my third novel in a four-book series, The Steep Climes Quartet, and it is coming out on June 15.

My interest was piqued by the recent post Neurodivergence as a Blueprint for a Solarpunk Future by N.E. McMorran, on Climate Fiction Writers League, published on June 2, 2026. I’ve been wrestling with the question of what climate fiction is and how climate fiction is different from other forms of fiction. Just a couple of weeks ago, I posted a long piece on my website titled “A Fantastic Essay about Climate Fiction but Still a Lot of Fantasy,” with a shorter Substack version called “Why Fantasy Climate Fiction is Lazy (And Why Realism is Harder), and this is hardly the first such effort on my part. I’ve posted many comments about climate fiction on Substack’s Climate Fiction Writers League, for example. My quick glance back shows I’ve penned a dozen articles about climate fiction, and then there’s even more in the way of reviews of climate fiction.

The guest poster is introduced thusly:

Today we have an essay by N.E. McMorran, the author of the children’s adventure trilogy Moojag, a quirky mystery for readers 10 years and up. When Nema and her friends discover a hidden sugar-hooked society holding lost kids, they find their perfect world in danger.

In the first paragraph of the post, the reader finds out that the author experienced a “late autism diagnosis.” The first sentence of the second paragraph notes that it was this revelation that became “the heartbeat of my cli-fi trilogy.”

So, yeah, the question of what is climate fiction is of interest to me.

What is Climate Fiction?

I’ve long followed Climate Fiction Writers League (CFWL) and I look at most every post. I’ve studied this Substack looking for trends and opinions and theories of climate fiction. Unfortunately for me, all my attention to CFWL has produced greater confusion rather than clarity on the issue of climate fiction.

This recent post by N. E. McMorran is a good example of this confusion-generating effect. I’ve been making the argument that using some reference to climate change as a story premise is not the same thing as climate fiction. A premise is a foundational statement or assumption used as the starting point for a conclusion, argument, or story (yes, I just cribbed this).

A premise is not what the story is about. For example, a good number of apocalypse stories work from a premise that merely set the stage or conditions of the story. Consider the vast majority of post-EMP survival stories that were rampant for a few years. These stories use the event of wide-scale electromagnetic pulses—typically from some sort of attack by enemy countries or terrorists or extreme solar storms that crash the world’s power grids and destroy advanced electronics, overthrowing modern civilization and bringing chaos. These stories don’t have much to do with power grids or the nature of digital devices based on today’s endemic integrated chips that are particularly prone to burnout from EMP. Typically, the stories are survivalist in nature and don’t revolve around larger issues such as fragile supply chains, lack of infrastructure redundancy or resilience, or what happens to the weak or vulnerable in times of crisis—you know, real world questions—but instead concentrate of the hero getting guns and ammo and the girl. Throughout the 1970s and into Reagan’s years of the 1980s, the version of the “guy-gets-gun-and-girl” stories were often post-nuclear holocaust stories. The death of hundreds of millions or even billions of individuals from nuclear weapon exchanges was the premise(!), with the story subject being lone-wolf survival. Most of such stories weren’t concerned with the consequences of the premise, instead treating potential human extinction as a story’s starting point, in what has always struck me as a bit cavalier.

My argument is that climate fiction is fiction that carries useful knowledge of the issue of climate change in the hope that readers will be more conscious of the circumstances of climate change and more thoughtful and engaged toward solutions to ameliorate climate change. This definition reflects one of the trends in climate fiction that is sometimes called “Thrutopia,” where readers not only better realize the climate crisis but also wrestle with how we may get to solutions from where we are today. Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future” is perhaps the prime example of this type of climate fiction.

Like all categories, Thrutopia tends to broaden toward uselessness. For some authors, Thrutopia can mean more simply a rejection of climate apocalypse stories. For me, I use the old Downeaster joke “You can’t get there from here” and apply it to climate fiction, where paying attention to what we know about climate change and its causes and how we might indeed make our way toward climate progress is the subject of climate fiction. Note that I’m not arguing that climate fiction, in this definition, must be about getting to successful solutions for climate change amelioration, but only that climate change is the pervasive subject of the story, not simply the premise or starting point.

While we are on the subject of climate fiction definitions, a mention of Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement must be made. Ghosh argues that all fiction is effectively climate fiction because the defining reality of the Anthropocene shapes every setting, economy, and human experience. He also argues “…that contemporary literary fiction suffers from an imaginative failure. Historically, serious novels have dismissed unpredictable, catastrophic climate events as too “improbable” for realistic fiction. Because our modern literary traditions were built during an era of stable, predictable weather, authors have struggled to conceptualize humans as planetary forces.” Basically, Ghosh believes that any fiction of today must consider climate change when addressing contemporary stories. I like to point to Weather, by Jenny Offill—a product of the MFA Writing-Industrial Complex—as a solid example of a literary climate fiction work, and I recommend her book highly.

Why am I Grumpy about What Gets Called Climate Fiction?

If you’ve noticed the pedagogical use of the Socratic Method in the above heading, you may already understand why I find fiction that uses climate change simply as a premise not to be climate fiction. Take the example of Moojag, as described the author:

The seeds of Moojag were planted during a period of intense climate anxiety…. My manuscript began as an environmentally charged fantasy but quickly transformed into a neurodivergent Solarpunk “dystopia-versus-utopia” that asked: What if we got it right? What if we could live together peacefully as ourselves, accepted and celebrated for who we are?

In the post-climate-catastrophe Surrey Isles, technology is an extension of the ecosystem. Cephalopod-inspired, full-bodied electronic sensory-powered skins allow the “Real World” community to live outdoors, protected from all weathers, danger, and disease. No more buildings, no homelessness, no money, no disease, no refined sugar. The characters live in a state of high-tech harmony with nature….

If you think “Thrutopia” is vague, I see “solarpunk” as being another too-broad category, and one also often used to define a story as climate fiction. Please note that I’m not judging the quality or value of any particular work of “solarpunk” fiction, but I am trying to explore what makes a short story or novel climate fiction.

By the way, N.E. McMorran’s climate anxiety is a perfectly fine reason to write a book, and “Cephalopod-inspired, full-bodied electronic sensory-powered skins” may be a nifty concept and the idea of everyone living in “a state of high-tech harmony with nature” is a good one on general principle. But what does this have to do with climate fiction? It seems to me that climate change is little more than premise, and a bit like writing a book about paradise regained but not mentioning somewhere in the book that once paradise was lost and not referencing all the juicy details of the matter. Moojag is set in a post-climate-catastrophe, so there might be lessons to be learned, but the starting point already literarily distances the readers from the world within which they live, which is the one within which readers are most likely to identify themselves. Please note that I’m not suggesting Moojag is not interesting or will fail to engage readers, or that there cannot be readers who identify with characters or drama in the book.

But what I am wondering is whether Moojag is climate fiction. I am wondering if there’s any practical difference between climate fiction and other kinds of fiction.

Why I Write Climate Fiction

The reason why I’m writing climate fiction is that I’m interested in living in and understanding the world today and exploring how we humans might keep this world from turning more hellish. I could, of course, write a non-fiction book that explains the contributing factors of climate change and the various ways to reduce carbon emissions and slow—even eventually correct—climate change. I do write about this and related topics on my website, in large part because writing about a subject is the best way of learning about a subject, at least short of teaching a subject. There are many excellent books, Substacks, videos, and magazine explainers published about climate change and the methods and strategies and technologies to ameliorate it.

But fiction does something for many people that non-fiction often fails at. Fiction has the greater capacity to make people identify with the subject through narrative—story—and therefore more likely engage readers more directly in actions that might address the subject. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is a famous example of this potential effect: There were thousands upon thousands of nineteenth century Americans who thought slavery evil, but Uncle Tom’s Cabin, not abolitionist pamphlets, helped more readers feel the insult of slavery and motivated significant political will against it.

I’m not concerned that people—let’s use Americans, even, since I am one—are unaware of climate change. There’s plenty of polling that shows large majorities of people across many countries are concerned about climate change. But what percentage of Americans believe that they can do something about climate change? What do people believe are the actions that they might take? I asked Gemini AI:

According to long-running polling from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) and George Mason University, public sentiment centers around a few core metrics regarding agency and action.

The Percentage: Can We Do Something?

To understand if Americans think they can combat climate change, researchers look at two distinct dimensions of agency: collective efficacy (what we can do together) and individual efficacy (what I can do alone).

• • The Optimistic Majority (Collective Action): Roughly 63% of Americans explicitly reject the idea that “it’s already too late to do anything about global warming.” The vast majority believe that humanity still possesses the window and capability to change the trajectory of the crisis.
  • The Personal Sense of Responsibility: About 59% to 62% of Americans state that they feel a personal sense of responsibility to help reduce global warming.
  • The Individual Skepticism Gap: Despite feeling a personal responsibility, Americans are split right down the middle when it comes to their own impact. 53% disagree with the statement “the actions of a single individual won’t make any difference,” meaning just over half believe their solo choices matter. Conversely, a massive 47% feel paralyzed by individual insignificance, agreeing that one person’s actions ultimately make no difference.

For me, the “paralyzed by individual insignificance” result is the most interesting, and I suspect the 47% figure represents a large undercount (you know, polls and the way they ask questions and all that). The same Yale program also looks at the actions people believe they can take to address climate change, and the AI Summary to the query reports that action categories break into three areas: “personal lifestyle adjustments, consumer behavior, and civic/political action.” Here’s another interesting quote from the Summary: “…there is a massive gap between the actions people support conceptually versus the actions they actually take.”

Is that gap a gap of imagination? Can climate fiction stories help close the gap?

Consumer activism ranks high on the list of actions supporting climate progress, and this includes buying from eco-friendly businesses and boycotting companies that deny or oppose climate change, and then there’s the enthusiasm for political efforts like 2022’s IRA and energy efficiency-related and tax rebates. Still, Trump’s gutting of these programs illustrates, through falling EV sales to name only one example, that the just mentioned enthusiasm may be in large part because of good deals and less about being driven to address climate change. People may still want to be more energy efficient and less carbon polluting, but we’re typically more immediately concerned with today’s bottom line in our household economics.

On the other hand, according to the Yale program, political and civic actions have even lower follow-through. Supporting solar and wind projects ranks high and large majorities believe corporations should do more, but less than half take any targeted consumer activity, and boycotts and favored climate-friendly goods don’t seem all that effective. Of course, Yale also reports that while 64% of those polled report that they are worried about climate change, of this set only 20% discuss climate change with friends and family regularly. “44% of Americans report that they never discuss [climate change] with family or friends” and assume others care less about the subject, “leading to social silence.”

I believe that political action is the best and bigger lever for moving climate progress forward, and the IIJA and IRA of 2021 and 2022 support this belief despite the setbacks. I believe that more talk, more news, and more stories about climate change may relieve people of suppressive social silence, and the more stories about climate change that people can identify with the better. Fiction, with compelling and identifiable characters, builds connections, empathy, relatability.

That’s why I write climate fiction. Moving stories help break such silence and sense of isolation.

Of course, potential effect is not the same as achieved outcome.

Fiction is Fun or Entertaining or Mesmerizing Stories Told, Right?

Another big topic in climate fiction is the dreaded “info-dump” or dragging a story into service of pedagogical goals. “There will be a quiz” presentation undoes reader enthusiasm, I’m pretty sure.

The point is that fiction about climate change is climate fiction that describes the days we’re living and seeing the world heating up and resulting extreme weather events, droughts, fires, and floods, and increasingly, the migration of humans (and fauna, flora, and diseases) due to the changing climate. There are tipping points galore, too, like a horror movie setting up for any number of sequels: Drought!, Fire!, Flood!, Run Amoc!, The Invasion of the Clathrates!, The Rising Seas! We know that there are solutions, including the switch to clean electricity for buildings and transportation. We know there are competing economic interests and clashes of empires. We read about various policy fights and politicians and corporations caught up in political dance. Heck, the Pope weighs in.

Climate change—and what we should do—is confusing, and part of the story is murkier and more confusing, as dark money sloshes about buying regulatory agencies, lawmakers, Trump, and even SCOTUS. And all this time, for most of us in the developed world, mostly all we hear about climate change is in the news. Unless, of course, it is your house that gets washed away in a hurricane or your city that burns in a wildfire.

Climate change is complicated, too, and expensive, and, it goes without saying, we’re still primarily worried about paying next month’s power bill or car payment or rent. For me, this is the climate story to tell today: a snapshot of where we are in regard to climate change, even as we’re mostly thinking about that odd comment the wife made at breakfast, or the kid’s soccer game this afternoon, or whether you can stand your boss for another day, or worrying about your best friend’s recent diagnosis. You know, climate change as subject within the days of our lives.

If we want the challenge of climate change to be real for people—and we do, since that makes it more likely more people vote for the right candidates to fight the mega-wealthy and corporate self-interests—then we need stories that show real people (well, fiction’s substitute of compelling “real” characters) living with the issues of climate change today. The problem with apocalyptic fiction and stories featuring magical creatures or new-and-improved humans in the future is that such stories are escapist. Sure, I was an English Major, and I know about metaphor, allegory, parables, and the Hero’s Journey. I’ve studied Norman Friedman’s 14 types of stories he believed all literary works are shaped by. I know that stories come in all forms and sizes, and that applies to climate fiction, too.

But the premise of climate change—the “what if”—is not the same as the subject of climate change. The subject of climate fiction is climate change and how we got to where we are and how we can do what needs doing to get to where we’d rather be. These days, where we’d rather be is a world where our changing climate is less destructive rather than more destructive.

Isn’t that an interesting story?

The post What is Climate Fiction? first appeared on David Guenette.

The Steep Climes Quartet is a literary climate fiction series.

Why “literary”? Because the emphasis is on deeply drawn characters with which readers can identify across the many aspects of their own lives.

Why “climate fiction?” The series’ local characters live in a world with a changing climate across a two-decade-plus timeframe:

• Kill Well takes place in 2026
• Dear Josephine takes place in 2029
• Over Brooklyn Hills takes place in 2035
• Farm to Me takes place in 2047

Is climate a primary concern for the characters? Like most of us today, many of the characters aren’t thinking all that much about climate change. We know about climate change and see that this is a problem, but we mostly go about our quotidian lives focused on work, family, friends, and paying the next bill. But climate change is happening and affecting the whole world, just in different degrees of vulnerability and challenge. We don’t escape its effects entirely now, even in the relatively resource-rich part of the world in which we live.

Here in the developed world—the series’ through characters live in Berkshire County, Massachusetts—climate change remains more abstract: reports in the news, connection to political issues, and cautionary stories about extreme weather, such as droughts, deluges. storms and hurricanes, diseases, and heat. Climate change is a real problem that is catching up with us all, and actions that combat climate change early on—today!—helps reduce the devastating problems later. Within this infosphere that is today’s pervasive static, unsettling studies on the problems and hope-engendering developing solutions leak through. Of course, working toward progress creates ever-shifting forms of opposition from entrenched interests. 

Each book carries one or more specific themes.

In Kill Well, that theme is the malfeasance of the fossil fuel industry that infiltrates every aspect of society, even seeping into quiet places and small towns. There’s a thriller subplot, welcome humor, and a wide range of characters, including a killer for hire. In 2026, most people are aware of climate change, but it remains abstract and far off seeming, and household economic concerns get the greater attention. But people, knowing or not, are already experiencing the fact that climate change is expensive and the re-ascension of Trump itself extracts a cost.

Dear Josephine looks at the carry-over consequences of extreme weather in the form of a massively destructive hurricane that hits Florida’s Gold Coast, devastating Miami. This book imagines the emotional effects of such an event even at remove, while also following a nefarious scheme by monied interests trying to shape an act coming up in post-2028 Congress in order gain control of the potentially staggering large budget, even while American society further frays under the carryover effects Trump, Big Oil, and the billionaires who have become the target for one or more people going around the country, murder list in hand.

Over Brooklyn Hills looks at climate migration, and for Berkshire County it is climate migration writ small as young people from New York City seek relief in the relatively cool hills of the Berkshires from a socked-in urban heatwave, even as on the international stage large-scale climate migrations develop. The main through-character Davin, at 70 years of age, has finally become an active supporter of climate change politics and the proud owner of solar panels and batteries and his membership in a VPP. And then there’s a domestic climate terrorist group in the news; No One is Safe, first introduced in Dear Josephine, now playing a far more dangerous game.

Farm to Me, an in-process manuscript of the 2047 story with a target publication date of Spring 2027, sees a world where rising average global temperatures are changing things consequentially, including food yields, with expanding Northeast farms taking on more agricultural production as Western farmers suffer chronic droughts. There’s a local murder mystery, too, in which the main through character Davin, now 82 and fixating on getting older, finds himself in the middle.

You can find the first three books—Kindle and paperback—of The Steep Climes Quartet through Amazon, or order it through your favorite bookstore or in ePub format.

The post Over Brooklyn Hills is Now Available first appeared on David Guenette.

From the very first sentence she had my interest:

There is a reason so many people can imagine ecological collapse more easily than regenerative economies. A reason burnout feels more believable than collective care. A reason dystopian futures dominate films, books, media narratives and political discourse, while genuinely transformative futures are often dismissed as naive, unrealistic or impossible before they are even fully articulated.

I’m the author of The Steep Climes Quartet, what I call a literary climate fiction series. The definition of “climate fiction” obsesses me, understandably.

Vasileva posits that dystopian literature is ascendant in today’s world because of social conditioning that she refers to as “the colonisation of imagination.” She writes that happens when dominant systems become so embedded in everyday life that their logic starts to feel inseparable from reality itself. Economic systems, technological systems, educational systems and cultural narratives do not only organise institutions. They also shape perception. They influence what people expect from the future, what kinds of change feel achievable, and which possibilities appear serious enough to pursue collectively.

She describes herself in her Substack’s “About” information this way: “I guide people and organizations through transitions. By uncovering the stories and patterns shaping them, I help them let go of what no longer serves, imagine alternatives, and design practices that bring their next chapter to life.” Sounds like intriguing and difficult work.

The colonization of imagination is an interesting concept, and she makes a good argument for this as a factor in our difficulty in imagining different collective futures. A look at much of what falls into climate fiction supports her argument, what with the storylines of desert landscapes, or boundless deadly storms, or flooded worlds where suffering, scarcity, and strife abound. But the answer to this question may be answered far more simply: disaster stories—at least the form most common in the climate fiction literature—are easier to write.

The World is Complicated and so are Social and Economic Relationships

One of my pet peeves is climate fiction stories that imagine futures that are so discordant from today’s world and thus prove difficult to relate to.

I’m a big fan of Grist, and for those of you who don’t know, this organization describes itself as:

…a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change. Since 1999, we have used the power of journalism to engage the public about the perils of one of the most existential threats we face. We seek to document the often unequal impacts of climate change on communities in the United States and globally—as well as to show the promise of equitable climate solutions.

Supporting Grist makes a lot of sense.

One of the draws I have toward Grist is their ongoing “Imagine 2200” contest, which publishes climate fiction short stories. The last couple stories recently published were both entertaining and provoking. “Forty-Seven Vacant Floors of Ur,” by T. K. Rex, extrapolates San Francisco a few years ahead, when AI has pushed many people in the former high tech land of opportunity into a universal basic income world of homelessness; no grand climate solutions to the climate crisis are offered here, but what’s on tap is an effective human story that makes one think. The other story, “Sandbag Squid,” by Ashlee Lhamon, offers some similarities, including the near-future setting—a recognizable future—and like “Forty-Seven Vacant Floors of Ur,” this story presents the perspective of a single character: “On a cold, damp beach in Louisiana, Henry Block is counting down the days until his Conservation Corps work ends and he can get back to building his digital world.“ Other stories offer more fantastical premises: an android, a spirit in a field, an urban planning group communicating with mycelium. Still, my sense is that Tory Stephens, Grist’s Climate Fiction Creative & Brand Partnerships Manager, who runs the short story contest, has been growing more inclined to real world near-future stories and away from the allegorical or fantasy stories.

Anyway, why do I mention Grist climate fiction, or the work of many writers  on Substack’s Climate Fiction Writers League, and my disappointment with climate fantasy and apocalypse stories? It’s simple: I want to see, by way of a writer’s imagination, how we get to where we need to be in relation to the climate from where we are. You might be interested in checking out a couple other of my posts about climate fiction: “A Fantastic Essay about Climate Fiction but Still a Lot of Fantasy” and “Climate Fiction and Myth in Climate Fiction.”

Simple Climate Fiction versus Complex Climate Fiction

Just to establish a metric, I think of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future as complex climate fiction. First, the scope of the book is worldwide, and second, the book incorporates a wide range of characters and subjects, including the bureaucratic maneuverings of the United Nations, international monetary policy bodies, and major banks. This book also includes factors like politics and elections, technological developments, glaciology, and throws in a major extreme weather event, along with a climate action terrorist group that grows out of it. The novel begins more or less in the present (albeit pre-Trump the Second) and extends for decades beyond. Some readers don’t care for the book, in part because it delves into things like fiscal policies, but the strength of the book—besides Robinson being an excellent writer—is that the story wrestles with real world issues, and wrestles well, entertainingly, and effectively. The Ministry for the Future has been referenced among many climate working groups and policy groups because many of the climate proposals and solutions in the novel are so well thought out that the book provides a starting point for serious people trying to think through real solutions.

Of course I love The Ministry for the Future. That book does what I’m trying to do with The Steep Climes Quartet, although my series focuses on the issues of climate change challenges and solutions from what can be described as the hyper-local and hyper-personal fronts. Kill Well, the first book, takes place in 2026; Dear Josephine in 2029; Over Brooklyn Hills—now on pre-order, with a publication date of June 15, 2026—takes place in 2035; and the final book, Farm to Me, is set in 2047, although at this point in the manuscript’s writing, it is anybody’s guess as to publication date. In this final book of the series, I am exploring regenerative agriculture and its emergence in the Northeast as some of the major agriculture areas in the U.S. and elsewhere suffer productivity losses because of chronic droughts tied to climate change.

While I love bandying about terms like “hyper-local” and “hyper-personal,” all I really mean is that the through characters of the series live in Berkshire County in Massachusetts and that readers experience how these characters think or don’t think about the climate crisis. One big shocker is that even those dedicated to fighting climate change more often think about crushes or ponder therapy-valid thoughts, or worry about paying bills or getting a job, or focus on problems of aging. For those not dedicated to the fight, climate mostly appears as a creature of the news and infosphere, unless, of course, a specific character happens to have, for example, his vegetable garden brought down by a big storm. There are a range of themes throughout the series, including the malfeasance of Big Oil and how dark money works behind the scenes. There is a fair amount of climate change information, including on policies and politics, but this is mainly from characters caught up in the fight, but even with such characters, their inner lives and personal challenges are forward.

It would have been easier to write a climate disaster book where the hero gains guns and gals amid the floods or heat, but I don’t find that as interesting as imagining what our society and culture can do to make things better in terms of the climate challenge and how people may come to join such efforts. Hint: joining in is less typically marching under banners and more in the choices—political, economic, and social—we make.

Solutions R Us

We have met the climate crisis solutions and they are us.

Heather Cox Richardson often makes the point that the United States of America doesn’t need new laws to combat Trump and Trumpism (i.e., corruption, racism, anti-democracy), but rather we need to enforce the laws that already exist (one example is the Emoluments Clause, but the Republicans, in their blind obsequious posture toward Trump, continue to shirk their Constitutional Oaths). Likewise, when it comes to climate change there are already laws passed and regulations that help, but, again, with Trump allowed to be lawlessly corrupt, such laws—like IIJA and IRA—have been nullified and climate-positive budgets withheld. And then there are also laws of the marketplace which should tilt our economy toward clean energy because the existing suite of technologies now represent the cheapest and quickest energy sources to build, right along the digital revolutions that can more efficiently harness the existing grid, but, alas, Trump has his thumb on the scale. In the end, the biggest law Americans can uphold right now for the sake of climate progress is the Constitution, and we’ll see where the midterms lead us, but that’s another story.

The fact is that while we’ve been slow to act and have fossil fuel interests combatting our efforts toward progress on climate change, we’ve already entered a time of peril. The story today is not that we can stop climate change and all its many negative consequences, but that we can continue moving forward and keep the very worst of climate change consequences at bay in the decades and centuries ahead. To me, this is the real exciting story about climate change.

Realism Itself Functions as a Political Force

I haven’t forgotten Elena Vasileva’s post. In fact, the title of this section directly quotes her.

Vasileva says, “The word ‘realistic’ is not neutral. It carries hidden assumptions about whose futures deserve legitimacy, which systems are allowed to continue unquestioned, and what forms of life are considered practical, responsible or mature.”

Really? Of course, but I’m writing climate fiction, not taking a seminar on deconstructivism.

She continues:

People start adapting to systems they no longer truly believe in, while struggling to envision coherent alternatives. Exhaustion becomes normalised. Endless growth becomes treated as inevitable. Competition becomes framed as human nature. Hyper-productivity becomes associated with value, morality and worth….

At the same time, radically different ways of organising society often appear emotionally or politically unintelligible, even when current conditions are visibly failing.

Right. Got it. The more interesting point Vasileva makes is that the colonized imagination collapses “collective imagination,” as she writes:

Imagination is often framed as something individual, almost decorative, as though it belongs mainly to artists, writers or children. In reality, imagination is deeply social. Every institution, economy, law, city and technological system first existed as an imagined possibility before it became material reality.

Societies require the capacity to imagine differently in order to evolve.

Or, as we used to say in the Counter-Culture, reality is a shared hallucination, man.

Imagination as Transformation

Vasileva argues that our current culture is aimed at optimization and away from transformation, and so people “become highly informed about collapse while feeling increasingly incapable of imagining transformation.”  She targets algorithms as a mechanism for the optimization slant today, and as a former Facebook user, I know what she’s talking about. She names narrative lock-in that not only supports misinformation but imaginative limitation.

But is “imaginative limitation” the cause of so many shallowly fanciful treatments of climate change in fiction? I consider that the scope of story can be responsible for imaginative limitation, because to imagine a whole world, with all its complications and contradictions, rather than a simple subset, is hard work. It is easier to imagine people who develop physic abilities to talk to plants or a class of humans who now have gills than it is to imagine the world with all its complexity moving forward toward climate progress, with all attendant set-backs, disagreements, mixed motives, and other confusing Hobbesian or Lockean beliefs about mankind.

Vasileva talks about “transformative futures” that ask more of people emotionally and culturally, and politics—as one example—is an important element in our culture, so perhaps we might say that political forces function as a shaper of reality.

In fact, we agree on a lot, although not on the use of the Oxford comma. She goes on in her post about Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler as examples of storytellers of speculative fiction that holds transformative potential:

Stories do far more than entertain. They shape emotional possibility. They influence what people perceive as imaginable, desirable, ethical and attainable. Stories rehearse worlds before societies build them materially.

Speculative storytelling creates enough distance from dominant assumptions for people to question systems that previously appeared fixed and permanent. Science fiction, speculative fiction and futures storytelling all expand perception by revealing that social structures are constructed rather than inevitable.

I agree, but her statement that “Reclaiming imagination requires more than individual creativity. It requires rebuilding cultural spaces where experimentation, uncertainty and alternative futures can be explored collectively,” seems like a restatement of what art and imagination does. It seems to me that this doesn’t have to get more complicated than that.

What is rightly complicated are stories that deal with the complex challenges, barriers, and human shortcomings that keep us from building our Eden.

But then again, living in Eden? What’s the fun, the challenge, the interest in that? I can’t imagine.

The post Climate Fiction Featuring Far Futures, Dystopia, Fantasies, and Other Simplified Worlds, is Simply Much Easier to Write first appeared on David Guenette.

I am a student of climate fiction, and not surprisingly so, since I write climate fiction. I’ve long rejected the easy story of apocalypse, and not because such stories are uninteresting or a failure as a fun read, but because such stories most often have little to do with the subject of climate other than as a premise for the crisis. Likewise, I’m not a big fan of far-future stories that show mankind changed in response to the climate crisis, while the stories don’t bother to do the work of showing how the change comes about.

Let’s Set the Stage

Climate change is an astonishing event in our human culture. We have altered the climate of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and have already locked in more changes to the climate over the next many centuries. The reasons for our alteration of fundamental Earth systems make sense in that the fossil fuel-based energy provided to societies and their economies has pushed human development forward even as, supported by the energy abundance, the population numbers have exploded. The combination of huge energy use and ever-larger population numbers over the last two hundred years is the mechanism behind climate change.

It is an impressive achievement, really.

The problem is that the resulting change in the Earth’s climate is itself impressive, but darkly so, since we’re altering the stable climate of the last 10,000 years that supported the dominance of humans. The benefits of such a stable climate are now disappearing, increasingly being replaced by significant disadvantages. We’ve exhausted our species’ advantage from burning fossil fuels to power growth and population. In fact, we find ourselves facing a future that presents growing disadvantages for us in the form of horrendous heat waves, devastating deluges, deadly droughts, surging seas, damning diseases, and massive meteorological disasters.

Another important point to keep in mind is that we’ve known of these consequences for many decades. There’s a report titled The Greenhouse Effect, produced by J.F. Black, Scientific Advisor, Products Research Division, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, dated June 6, 1978. This report closely matches—scarily so—the rises in average global temperatures we’re now seeing and expect to see going forward. This is hardly the first such understanding of the greenhouse gas/global warming effect concluded by the fossil fuel corporations themselves in studies starting back nearly three-quarters of a century ago.

In fact, there are a shocking number of earlier studies on greenhouse gases and warming that began in the 1820s with Joseph Fourier identifying the atmosphere’s heat-trapping “greenhouse effect.” This was followed by Eunice Foote’s (1850s) experiments showing CO2’s powerful heat absorption, and John Tyndall’s (1859) confirmation of gases like CO2 and water vapor absorbing infrared heat. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius first calculated that human CO2 emissions could significantly raise Earth’s temperature, linking industrial activity to climate change, a concept later refined by Charles Keeling’s (1950s-60s) precise CO2 measurements.

Look up “Early 20th century newspaper stories about burning coal and the greenhouse effect.” Here’s the AI Search Summary you’ll find (I’ve left the links live):

Early 20th-century newspapers, notably in 1912, published short, syndicated articles linking coal combustion to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and future global warming. These reports, such as a famous August 1912 piece, accurately predicted that burning coal would act as a “blanket” to raise Earth’s temperature within a few centuries. [1, 2, 3]

Key Historical Clippings

• • 1912 Climate Change Article: Originally published in March 1912 in Popular Mechanics, and later in Australian/New Zealand newspapers (e.g., The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal and Rodney and Otamatea Times) in August 1912, this report was titled “Coal Consumption Affecting Climate” or similar.
  • What it Stated: The 67-word article noted that furnaces were burning 2 billion tons of coal annually, adding roughly 7 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere yearly. It explained that this CO2 acts as a “blanket” that raises temperature, predicting, “This effect may be considerable in a few centuries”.
  • Scientific Context: This was not the first instance of such reporting. It followed pioneering work by scientists like Svante Arrhenius, who predicted this effect in 1896, and earlier studies by H.A. Phillips in 1882. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

Keep in mind that a number of the big fossil fuel corporations had commissioned their own studies in the 1970s and 1980s, although we don’t know the exact count, and probably won’t until the discovery phases of liability cases against the fossil fuel corporations take place and are made public. Unless, of course, SCOTUS rules that fossil fuel companies are protected against liability lawsuits, and remember, SCOTUS has done this for the gun companies.

Climate Change is a Fantastic Story in the Real World

A recent Substack post in Climate Fiction Writers League, “Imagination, Mythology, and the Return to Earth, by Steve Stine, author of I, Enoch, May 05, 2026, is unfortunately typical of what is found in this Substack. The intro to the post is as follows:

Steve Stine talks about mythology in fiction. His sci-fi novel I, Enoch, is about a race to save the world from the prospect of a sixth mass extinction. Enoch embarks on a dangerous mission with the help of ancient patrons and in the company of those with special knowledge of Earth’s hidden secrets. 

The first thing that set me off is Stine’s use of the manned moon mission as an example of the age of science, setting Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon in opposition to mythic storytelling. “And yet, what we gained that day in the annals of space exploration, we lost in the age-old story-telling traditions that bestowed upon the moon a mythic quality. For countless generations and throughout the world, the moon played a lead role in shaping cultures, aligning belief systems, and influencing human behavior.”

Good to know, I guess. It turns out that the moon is made of straw, not cheese, and that it’s the old straw man in the moon. Stine waxes nostalgic on the role the moon once played in human imagination, and bemoans that now, somehow, we’ve lost what for the ancients was the understanding that “…not knowing [is] fertile ground for story-telling.” There’s mention of the Age of Reason, and Voltaire, David Hume, and Thomas Paine come up, along with their complaints about myths. Stine comments, “…[T]he substance and purpose of mythology suffered a full-frontal assault by those bent on placing science at the centre of our cultural transformation.” The straw man argument here is that “not knowing” and science are oppositional, and if not knowing” is essential for story-telling, then somehow, amid all the test tubes and data sets, we’ve lost the ability to tell a story. “Today, the word ‘myth’ is synonymous with a falsehood,” Stine then claims. Well, it can be, but myth has other meanings and hewing only to the falsehood definition is itself false. Let’s turn to a product of science (and imagination!) to test definitions. Here is the Google AI summary of the definition of myth:

A myth is a traditional, often sacred narrative explaining a culture’s worldview, beliefs, or natural phenomena, typically featuring gods or heroes in a remote era. While commonly misconstrued as a “false story,” a myth acts as a symbolic, foundational truth for a community, rather than a literal historical account. [1, 2, 3]

Key Definitions of Myth:

• • Sacred Narrative: A story of ostensibly historical events that explains a culture’s practices, beliefs, or natural phenomena (e.g., creation myths).
  • Cultural Worldview: A story that defines a group’s identity, often involving divine or supernatural beings, which is revered as true and authoritative within that culture.
  • Common Usage (False Belief): A popular but unsubstantiated belief or false notion (e.g., “the myth of racial superiority”). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Key Characteristics:

• • Anonymous Origin: Usually told without a known author, passed down through generations.
  • Symbolic Truth: Myths are often metaphorically or symbolically true, even if factually false.
  • Functions: They serve to answer fundamental questions (creation, death) and justify social systems and rites. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Myth vs. Related Terms:

• • Myth vs. Legend: Legends are usually based on historical figures or events, though often exaggerated, whereas myths operate in a, “primordial,” or non-specific time involving gods.
  • Myth vs. Folktale: Folktales are told for entertainment or moral instruction rather than being considered sacred or strictly true. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Myths, Storytelling, and the Modern Age of Climate Fiction

I understand Stine’s interest in supporting the concept of myth—his book, I, Enoch, presents the following description on Amazon:

I, Enoch is an enthralling journey into a world where ancient secrets and modern ambitions collide. Enoch, the protagonist, stands as a guardian of lost truths and protector of the marginalized, battling against forces that hold dominion over the planet. In a race to save the world from the prospect of a sixth mass extinction, Enoch embarks on a dangerous mission with the help of ancient patrons and in the company of those with special knowledge of Earth’s hidden secrets. As he delves deeper, Enoch confronts not only external adversaries but also internal dilemmas about justice, knowledge, and power. This tale weaves together mysticism with gritty realism, creating a tapestry rich with philosophical questions and the perennial quest for understanding one’s purpose. As Enoch wrestles with his responsibilities and the consequences of his actions, the reader is invited into a vividly crafted universe that challenges the conventional boundaries between history and myth, between what is known and what is imaginable. This book promises to leave readers pondering their own place in the history of humankind and the universe.

To be fair, I’ve not read the entire book, just samples from the book as well as descriptive copy, so maybe I’m using I, Enoch as my own straw man.

Storytelling exists across many modalities, where myth, in the word’s various connotations, is but one. I happen to like Carl Jung’s sense of archetypes within the human mind and Joseph Campbell does a great job tying the history of myths into literature. Heck, I took a course as an undergraduate called “Myth in Literature,” where I got to read Eric Neumann’s The History of Consciousness, for pete’s sake, so I’m no anti-myth guy, honest. I also don’t see myth and science as opposites, not when it comes to human imagination and storytelling. What sticks in my craw is the propensity of novels calling themselves climate fiction that focus on fantasy, and that includes altered species or fairies or demi-gods, or far-future distant or dystopian worlds, or radical changes in human nature often focused on gender issues or BIPOC, all the while too often fitting into hyper-genre writing markets instead of having climate change the central focus. There are many fantasy, romance, thriller, or science fiction novels that have some “climate” orientation or other, but that clearly don’t address the clear issues of climate change, either in cause or solution. We’re burning fossil fuels and heating the planet. Isn’t this time and place of crucial threat to the world an interesting enough story? Who needs allegory when the menace and what needs doing to address it is staring us right in the face?

To be clear, there are many excellent climate fiction works. Think Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future; Nicky Singer’s The Survival Game; Richard Powers’s The Overstory; Jenny Offill’s Weather; Omar El Akkad’s American War; Arthur Jeon’s Snowflake; Nick Fuller Goggin’s The Great Transition; Paul E. Hardisty’s The Forcing; Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife; Stephen Markely’s The Deluge; Chuck Colin’s Altar to an Erupting Sun; and J. Underwood’s The Bell Lap, to name some. But out of the 160-plus “climate fiction” novels I’d noted in building a Goodreads list (an effort I abandoned in late 2024 due to the sheer volume and size of the task), the sort of climate fiction I prefer remains a small minority.

And sure, it is a matter of taste, in part. But what sets climate fiction apart from other categories? Might it not be the topic and focus on where we are now and how we address climate change? Any category that is too inclusive ends up losing value as a category. Novels that turn to deus ex machina may be fun, but there’s not much of a real climate change solution being investigated in such stories. Fantasy can be a fun read and teach the reader about the human condition, but unless it is actively focused on climate change, does it fit into the category of climate fiction? Myths and allegories and social criticism can be edifying, and romances and thrillers and crime novels can be entertaining, but maybe climate fiction should directly address climate change and what we might imagine doing about the problem.

There’s this idea of “thrutopia” in climate fiction which I define as climate fiction that shows where we are in the world of changing climate and how we get to where we’re going. I like to quote the old Down Easter joke, “You can’t get there from here,” but getting from where we are today to the world we are heading to—solutions successful or not—seems likely the real focus for climate fiction.

The post Climate Fiction and Myth in Climate Fiction first appeared on David Guenette.

As an entrepreneur, writer, and climate change activist, I’ve studied climate change science and policies for two decades and believe that the most effective basis for the discussion of the climate crisis is realism, both in science and the stories. I believe climate fiction can be an effective way for individuals and communities to identify with climate change challenges and that climate fiction can inform an individual’s personal actions and a community’s choices. Stories can offer alternative and surprisingly effective perspectives for understanding the climate crisis and on approaches for dealing with climate change. Climate fiction that focuses on the reader’s familiar sense of social order and circumstances and recognizable experiences may better explain the nature of the crisis and foster a more powerful identification with the problems we face.

The Themes, like Climate Change Itself, Have Shifted Over Time

The main theme of The Steep Climes Quartet is our fractured society and the solidarity climate progress requires of us and our communities. This theme, I hate to admit, still carries true.

Even over the course of writing the series—I started in 2015—other themes have evolved and now include some source of hope in the form of an economically competitive clean energy transition. Don’t think I’ve grown pollyannish, though, since important plotlines involve various misdeeds by Big Oil and take into consideration the element of slow progress that typically marks the efforts of political bodies and society at large. Still, by Book Three, Over Brooklyn Hills, 2035 sees that core court cases against Big Oil are finally starting to break for the climate, but then again, these same corporations and their political allies (or to use a more crass appellation, their “bum boys”) have managed to get too many gas-fired generator plants in place, with the net result of slowing progress in carbon emission reductions.

In the first three books, the residents of the Berkshires—a pleasant bucolic place, by the way—don’t have a lot of direct experience with the immediate consequences of climate change, but like most of us, hear about such negative consequences mostly through the news. Kill Well, in 2026, has a big heatwave in the upper Midwest, and the West is experiencing another plague of wildfires, but the Berkshire-based main character Davin, an economically pressed recent divorcee, may have some talking points about the climate down, kind of, and all the right intentions, kind of, but like most others, he’s mostly caught up in worrying about rising costs and his Airbnb apartment and his work. The worst thing that happens to him, climate-effect wise, is that a heavy rain damages a part of the Airbnb apartment on the first floor of his Housatonic house. The character and the much of the nation are still stunned by Trump’s reelection and all the resulting chaos from that clown show. There’s a plot line of a young woman on the run after witnessing her fossil fuel divestiture boss killed on a business trip, which brings her to Chicago, where Davin’s son is living his first year out of college, and the two meet on the train heading toward Boston, and she ends up at Davin’s house, and there’s a contract killer in play, too. A prevailing sub-theme is the widespread economic stress of rising costs and the recession-like state of the nation’s economy that retards, along with Trump, clean energy work.

Dear Josephine is different in that the climate consequence focus is Miami’s destruction by the combination of a powerful hurricane hitting in sync with high ocean surges, and the residents of Berkshires are unaffected directly, of course, although taken up among the multitude shocked by the event, with many trying to figure out how to help. Oh yeah, there’s a guy running around trying to kill billionaires and a guy using Kill the Rich as cover for his own assassinations for fossil fuels think tanks in order to ease some newly inconvenient political ex-allies off the board. And yeah, in Dear Josephine there’s a fair amount of conversation and thinking about externalities, which sounds as exciting to you as a reader and it does to me as the author, right? I think I pulled it off. Does the appearance of a climate action terrorist group make the medicine go down? The sub-theme here is the evil intents of those who run fossil fuel empires and the growing anxiety that their golden egg is hatching trouble. Will Big Oil turn even more savage as the clean energy transition starts to take a bite out of the energy market? I’m pretty sure I nailed this; read the headlines and tell me I’m wrong about Big Oil.

Over Brooklyn Hills, now back from the editor and in the midst of review and then to formatting (and then to proofreading, and then…) is six years after the second book and nine years after the first. MAGA, repudiated in the 2026 mid-term and 2028 elections, has given way to economic reforms and climate policies and America has rejoined much of the rest of the world in making climate progress. The sub-themes include the consequences of choosing violence, as the climate terrorist group now finds itself involved with Mexican cartels and three-quarters of the way toward becoming a criminal organization. The primary theme, though, is about climate migration, and because of a long heatwave hovering over the New York metropolitan area, the Berkshires finds itself with very many more young people (i.e., typically less economically advantaged) escaping the heat and the energy bills demanded for safety, and the towns of South County and the second-homers aren’t enjoying the change in the character of their summer. Of course, the migrant movement at the southern border is a bigger problem, and the violence between parts of Pakistan and India and the portions of their populations on the move from devastating heatwaves is seeing tens of thousands of deaths, largely through paramilitary violence. But up here in the relatively cool green hills, we can be put out by the waves of body odor from those free camping in the woods as we line up at So-Co Creamery to get the kids some ice cream.

Farm to Me, which is mostly a mess of notes and line items for further research, sees 2047 with climate change reducing, due to chronic drought, the yields of some of the once highly productive agricultural areas in the U.S. New England has been experiencing a resurgence of its once dominant industry, agriculture. There’s been some real progress with carbon emission reduction, but climate change is locked in place, albeit at levels that could be worse without modest progress. Resiliency and adaptation programs are the rage, but climate change continues to exert a downward pressure on the economy. It turns out that poisoning the Earth’s atmosphere for centuries has some negative consequences. Who knew?

The fourth book’s themes will include that human nature remains a good news/bad news puzzle, with a murder mystery that may be tied to one ambitious New England food distribution company trying to take over other food distributors. There will be the sub-theme of the angst and agony of the young about the future, where the cumulative effects of climate change pile on. Tipping points, for instance, are getting more attention, but, yeah, a lot less love, that’s for sure.

What It Takes (to Write the Series)

I’d be happy enough to put down my long-running autodidact effort on climate change, but alas, climate models keep getting tweaked and plentiful research continues. Science never sleeps, and all too often, I feel that I need to be on the growing edge of climate change knowledge 24/7, which I can’t be, of course. Currently, for instance, there are new findings and expanded concepts about faster rising temperatures than previous conventional understanding has posited, and I’ve had to make my best guess that 2035 will see the rise of 1.7-1.8 Celsius in the global annual average. By the time I have the fourth book’s manuscript well in hand, I’ll have to best guess about further global annual average temperature rise in 2047, by being as well-informed as I can be to determine that guess.

One objective of the series is to present climate change as accurately as possible and with the best scientific grounding. In this way, readers who may not be similarly inclined to keep up with the science and policies may consider their own understanding advanced, and, yes, this is something of an illusion for those future timelines, but then novels are derived from the creative act of controlled illusion. Yet more speculative, I suspect, will be the political winds and social expectations governing these timelines, made all the more challenging because making assumptions about such trends requires forecasting political and societal developments that march on up and down and sideways.

An example of this challenge of future forecasting happened when I was preparing Dear Josephine for production in 2024.The national election was underway, with Harris and Trump trading leads a number of times. The situation was sufficiently unclear, so I paused in order to suss out which way the wind was blowing. My original working assumption in the manuscript was that Harris would win, and the Biden-era clean energy work would continue, but at times this seemed less or more likely. And then November 7 happened and Trump prevailed, and after recovering from the shock, I was back to work on the manuscript to have the book’s 2029 timeline reflect this dark turn in American politics. Before I shifted the Dear Josephine story to reflect the political reality, there was similar work to do with the already published Kill Well, which has the story taking place in 2026, and so a Trump-ascendent revision was issued. The main thing I got out of this experience was this joke: Who knew that writing near-future fiction wasn’t easy?

There are other problems to solve in attempting to portray the future. These include representations of technology development, but here I think I’ve taken the right approach. Science fiction books tend to over-emphasize technology’s advancement, but for 2026, major advancements were known and other than a few mentions of how AI is becoming part of the characters’ work-a-day worlds. All the surveillance tech that figured into a plotline—things like Ring cameras and ways to hide IP tracking in emails—were already sufficiently prevalent, and a few other cyber-related tech was (one hopes) sufficiently covered by plausible handwaving. For Dear Josephine in 2029, AI is more prevalent, but not by a lot, and, no, no flying cars or major new technological developments, and that’s because human economies and technologies role out more slowly than the sci-fi-inclined often hope. Not just more slowly but also quite unevenly (tip o’ the cap to William Gisbson!), and most of the characters in this series are regular people and not pioneering tech heads.

Jump ahead to 2035, and in Over Brooklyn Hills AI and the spread of some other technologies advance, with smart glasses and haptic feedback and some modest virtual reality interfaces showing up through uneven adoption rates and with varying levels of interest. Davin, a content management systems architect involved with an online “local newspaper,” is a bit tech-forward, but he’s in his early seventies in 2035 and set in his ways, with his biggest tech adoption being a wide-screen interactive monitor that he can gesture at to swipe and select away using haptic wrist bands, but otherwise he’s using his laptop pretty much the way most people today do with keyboard and some voice interface. There’s the 6G networks that provide ubiquitous Wi-Fi.

This challenge of moderating regular people’s interactions with tech changes grows harder the further one goes into the future but faulting on the side of less-is-more is the right bet. For the Farm to Me story taking place in 2047, there’s a part that involves regenerative agriculture, and there are advances in sensor technologies that can accurately analyze carbon sequestration in soil. This sort of development is not a big stretch but rather an incremental improvement in monitoring systems, not doubt aided by AI-based computations. Still no flying cars, at least in any sort of common use by regular people. Improved information search and analysis is to be expected, of course, and this is likely to get some attention, but likely focused on the tension between those who desire better results than the low-hanging fruit of the personalization and prediction engines that typify Spotify and Netflix today. There will be some movement toward direct democracy, although mostly in the form of growing public interest and hardly a done deal. The production and markets for cultured meat and fermentation-based protein are becoming well established. The failure of property insurance and the threat to housing markets in some areas will be leaking into the general economy. There will be some new nuclear reactors, although fewer than one might expect, since such energy production is hampered by high costs and bankruptcies.

In Farm to Me, I’m looking at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, which happens to be based in Great Barrington, and you may remember Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered that was written by the founder E.F. Schumacher. I want to consider what the shift toward a more local economy might look like, especially in response to climate change, although this will be more in the background, I suspect. Did I mention no flying cars?

Of course, I’ve got to write the damn thing first.

The post Writing the Future of Climate Change first appeared on David Guenette.

What I am talking about is the clear identification of the fossil fuel industry—I like the moniker “Big Oil”—as the enemy. Enemy to whom? How about those billions and billions of us alive today and those in the future who directly suffer because of the actions of Big Oil in denying, delaying, and actively opposing the benefits of energy sources and policies that reduce carbon emissions.

The main arguments for clean energy to be the only energy source going forward for electrical generation and transportation are:

1. Clean energy is the cheapest energy resource to build and implement compared to fossil fuel-based energy, making clean energy the affordability winner;
2. Clean energy is the fastest to build and implement compared to fossil fuel-based energy, making clean energy the best choice for meeting growing energy demands;
3. Clean energy significantly reduces health problems tied to fossil fuel use across the world in many ways, including declining asthma and premature deaths;
4. Clean energy reduces geopolitical conflicts based on energy resources, since solar and wind do not rely on scarce consumable commodities but derives energy from the sun and wind available to all.

Fossil Fuels Had Their Day

Every time I mention that Big Oil is bad there will be people ready to jump down my throat with some version or another of “Fossil fuel built our modern economy” or “If we stopped using fossil fuel today, millions would die from starvation.”

This kind of reaction is still all-too common, and my answer is, “Yeah, so stipulated.” An immediate full stop in our use of fossil fuels would be disaster for the world. But replacing fossil fuels with clean energy electricity as soon as possible will go a long way in dropping carbon emissions.

Solar, wind, and batteries are now so low in manufacturing and build out costs that fossil fuels can’t compete. Building out solar, wind, and batteries is the way to go if you want lower electricity bills. Clean energy now makes reducing our economy’s carbon footprint the best choice just on economic basis, never mind the health benefits and slowing climate change. Even if you are part of the small minority that doesn’t care about climate change or reducing environmental pollution, I’ll bet you’re interested in lower electricity bills.

You know who’s not interested in lowering your electricity bill? Big Oil. Big Oil’s business model is to keep selling you oil, gas, and coal for you—well, when it comes to electricity, your utility—to keep burning their products, replacing every volume used with new volume, and on and on until the generation plant gets decommissioned. How long do fossil fuel generator plants last?

Here’s a quick Google AI Overview:

Fossil fuel power plants typically operate for 30 to 50 years, with coal-fired units averaging around 45 years in the U.S. and some lasting over 60 years with maintenance. Natural gas combined-cycle plants generally have a 25 to 30-year design life, though they may operate longer. 

• • Coal-Fired Plants:Often designed for 50 years, many in the U.S. are approaching or exceeding 45 years of age.
  • Natural Gas Plants:Combined-cycle units typically last 25–30 years, while simpler, smaller generators might require major overhauls within 10–20 years.
  • Retirement Trends:While many plants last 30-50 years, environmental regulations and economic factors are leading to earlier shutdowns, with 28% of U.S. coal capacity planning to retire by 2035.
  • Replacement vs. Life Extension:Despite aging, some plants are granted extended lifespans to ensure grid reliability, particularly in areas with high energy demand, such as data centers. 

For every new fossil fuel generator plant built, you and your utility are signing up for buying more natural gas or oil or coal for 25 years or more.

Want to know why Big Oil is fighting so hard to keep solar/wind/batteries from getting built? Big Oil, of course, wants to continue in the business they know and have invested in, which is selling you energy that you burn up and need to buy more of year after year after year. Do U.S. fossil fuel generator plants get to pass on increased costs of fuel?

Here’s another Google AI Overview:

Yes, in the United States, fossil fuel generator plants—specifically investor-owned utilities—are generally allowed to pass on increased fuel costs to customers, often with little to no risk to their own profits. This is accomplished through regulatory mechanisms known as Fuel Adjustment Clauses (FACs) or similar cost-recovery trackers, which are overseen by state-level Public Service Commissions. 

Here is how this process works and its implications:

• • How Fuel Costs Are Passed On:Utilities are permitted to adjust electricity rates outside of formal, lengthy rate cases to reflect fluctuations in the cost of fuel (coal, natural gas) used to generate electricity. If fuel prices rise, the cost is passed to consumers as a surcharge on their monthly bills.
  • “Dollar-for-Dollar” Recovery:In many regions, particularly the Southeast, 100% of these fuel costs are passed on to customers. This means that if a power plant pays more for natural gas, the utility does not absorb that expense; rather, customers pay it.
  • Regulatory Oversight:While these adjustments are often automatic, they are reviewed by state commissions for accuracy. Regulators may disallow charges if they find improper fuel procurement practices.
  • Impact on Utilities vs. Customers:Because these mechanisms exist, utility investors are often insulated from fuel price volatility. Critics argue this reduces the incentive for utilities to seek lower fuel costs or invest in more stable, renewable energy sources.
  • Incomplete Pass-Through:While many utilities pass on costs completely, studies suggest that across the industry, marginal cost pass-through is not always 100%, with consumers bearing between 25% and 75% of the cost increases in some scenarios.
  • Timing Differences:Fuel adjustment charges are often calculated monthly based on costs from previous months, which can lead to a lag in how quickly price increases or decreases are reflected in customer bills. 

Are power utilities motivated to seek the lowest energy cost? Public power utilities are notoriously conservative, not liking change. After all, one of their mandates is reliability of electricity. Of course, solar/wind/batteries are reliable suppliers of electricity and the application of digital management of grid balance and support of distributed energy resources such as demand flexibility make more of the overall capacity of the grid available meet peak demand loads.

According to “U.S. Spending Bill to Grant $40 Billion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies,” originally published in Wired in late 2025, fossil fuels still get billions of dollars in U. S. subsidies each year:

The Trump administration has already added nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025, a report released Tuesday finds, sending an additional $4 billion out the door each year for fossil fuels over the next decade. That new amount, created with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, adds to $30.8 billion a year in preexisting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The report finds that the amount of public money the U.S. will now spend on domestic fossil fuels stands at least $34.8 billion a year.

Keep in mind that the U.S. had already been subsidizing fossil fuels for a century or more. President Biden’s 2021 budget had called for ending tax breaks for oil companies, but these phaseouts were struck down in the Senate and now, with President Trump, new subsidies have been added, including for coal, a favorite fixation of the Trump Administration.

Why Big Oil is the Enemy

Quite simply, Big Oil puts profits over the common good and ignoring the common good in this case leads to disease, death, and the collapse of the climate environment of the last ten millennia that has fostered human development.

Big Oil isn’t doing this out of ignorance, but rather in willful disregard for the physics behind global warming. In short, those leading the corporations that make up Big Oil seem happy enough to forfeit our future and that of our children and their children, down the many generations. Here’s the right analogy: “Big Knives” has employees test the sharpness of their products by stabbing people and children in the street and since Big Knives get paid only when selling knives that are so tested, there are one hell of a lot of bleeding people in every neighborhood, although more so in poorer neighborhoods.

As absurd as the analogy sounds, the correlations are direct. Big Oil produces a product (the knife) that poisons the air we all breathe (people getting stabbed). The question becomes how we shift to clean energy in a way that supports the essential and pervasive energy benefits to people.

Keep in mind that Big Oil plays dirty. Big Oil—along with other big money interests—has purchased much of the federal government, from the Executive branch to many in Congress. What has Big Oil gotten? Here’s a very partial list:

• A DOJ attempting to repress court cases and many states’ legislation against Big Oil corporations, including, most recently, “polluters pay” bills that Trump calls “extortion.”
• The EPA’s recent removal of the endangerment finding that has been a central regulatory enforcement mechanism against greenhouse gases.
• The Executive branch’s overriding of massive Biden-era funding programs (such as IIJA and IRA) for clean energy.
• Outright market interference, such as Trump’s anti-offshore wind projects shutdowns.

Since Big Oil has clearly demonstrated it wishes to continue business as usual—the current efforts to build dozens and hundreds of new gas electricity generators are just the latest example—we see that these corporations stand in opposition to what needs to happen.

Al Gore is right when he says, “They [Big Oil] are much better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions… They are the enemies of progress.”

Bill McKibben is right, when he says, “We have a literal enemy in this fight… The fossil-fuel industry has played the most disgraceful role of any set of corporations in the history of the world. They are Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our civilization.”

George Monbiot, the journalist and activist, puts it this way, “We are not just fighting climate change; we are fighting the people who profit from it. The fossil fuel industry is the enemy of nature and the enemy of humanity.”

Kevin O’Brien, author and ethicist, In his 2024 book Meeting the Enemy, writes, “To make progress on climate change, we must recognize that the fossil-fueled industrial complex is a strategic enemy… treating them as such is a requirement for justice.”

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said, “We are at war with nature, and the fossil fuel industry is the fuel for that fire. We must end this war on our planet… We are seeing a historic battle between those who want to protect life and those who want to protect profits.”

Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator, said, “We are in a battle for the survival of the planet. We are taking on the greed of the fossil fuel industry, and it is a war we cannot afford to lose.”

Jay Inslee, former Governor of Washington, during his presidential campaign, stated, “This is a world war… it is a war of survival against the carbon-industrial complex that has held our democracy hostage for decades.”

Why We Will Win

Despite the decades of Big Oil’s explicit effort to deny climate change and fossil fuel’s contribution to it and the political favors and market advantages bought with a small part of profits, Big Oil has the losing hand. The industry continues to expand its investments when fiduciary responsibilities dictate that a managed drawn down of production is called for to avoid creating stranded assets and further legal liability. Fossil fuels are, simply put, an increasingly bad investment that is now offering “last idiot in” conditions.

Costs

Generating electricity from fossil fuels is more expensive. While the capital investment for solar farms and wind farms together with battery storage may have somewhat higher initial capital costs (i.e., to build), based on 2025 industry data, natural gas peaker plants are generally more expensive than solar plus battery storage systems when comparing the total cost of electricity generation (LCOE) over their lifetimes. While natural gas remains a cheaper option for instantaneous dispatchable power in some specific scenarios, newly build, unsubsidized solar-plus-storage often beats the cost of new-build natural gas, particularly when accounting for the volatility of fuel prices and lower maintenance costs.

Here’s a Google AI Overview:

Cost Breakdown (2025 Estimates)

Key Comparison Drivers

• • Fuel Costs:Solar and storage have zero fuel expenses, providing stable, long-term costs. Natural gas plants are subject to market volatility and rising, unpredictable fuel prices.
  • Capital Costs:Solar + storage has higher upfront capital costs (installing panels and batteries), but lower operating expenses (O&M) compared to the ongoing, high fuel and maintenance costs of gas plants.
  • Battery Advancements:Battery costs have fallen by roughly 89% between 2010 and 2023, making them highly competitive.
  • Subsidies:Even without tax credits, solar and wind are frequently more cost-effective than new-build gas plants. With subsidies, the cost advantage for renewables is even more significant. 

While gas plants are still used for reliable 24/7 baseload power, solar + storage is increasingly seen as a more economical choice for new capacity in many regions, especially as technology improves to handle grid intermittency. 

Legal Position

There are many bases for legal action against Big Oil, including causing harm (pollution and global warming), corruption (dark money and “lobbying” for market advantage), more expensive electricity (the issue of affordability), and many social justice offenses (local pollution and reduced quality of living conditions). There are, as of early 2026, 3,000 climate court cases worldwide, although active litigation targeting Big Oil is a subset.

Here’s what Google AI Overview has to report:

Global Active Cases

• • Total Against Fossil Fuel Corporations: Approximately 86 major lawsuits have been filed specifically against “Carbon Majors” (the world’s largest oil, gas, and coal producers) since 2005.
  • Active Status: As of recent reports (late 2024/2025), over 40 of these cases remain active and pending in courts.
  • Top Defendants: The most frequently targeted companies are ExxonMobil (43 cases), Shell (42 cases), BP, Chevron, and TotalEnergies. 

U.S. Active Cases

• • Concentration: The United States is the primary battleground, hosting approximately 50 of the 86 global cases filed against fossil fuel companies.
  • State & Local “Deception” Suits: There are over 32 active lawsuits brought specifically by state attorneys general (e.g., California, Massachusetts, Minnesota) and local governments (e.g., Honolulu, Boulder) seeking damages for alleged climate deception.
  • 2026 Developments: This number continues to grow. In January 2026, Michigan filed a new federal antitrust lawsuit against major oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute (API), accusing them of operating as a “cartel”. 

Summary of Case Types

The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law categorizes these active cases into three main buckets:

1. 1. Climate Damages (38%): Seeking compensation for infrastructure damage and health costs (e.g., the “Climate Superfund” cases).
   2. Misleading Advertising (16%): Alleging “greenwashing” or false claims about net-zero commitments.
   3. Emissions Reduction (12%): Attempting to force companies to align their business models with the Paris Agreement (e.g., the landmark Milieudefensie v. Shell case in the Netherlands). 

Context: While there are over 3,000 climate-related cases globally (1,900+ in the U.S.), the vast majority target governments over policy failures or permitting decisions, rather than private corporations.

There’s one case getting a lot of attention, since the legal argument is fundamental: conspiracy. In January 2026, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against four major oil companies—BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell—and the American Petroleum Institute (API). This case is groundbreaking because it shifts the legal strategy from “consumer deception” to “anticompetitive conspiracy.”

Here’s what Google AI Overview says about this case:

Core Allegations of the “Cartel” Strategy

The lawsuit explicitly labels these corporations a “cartel” that engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to maintain fossil fuel dominance by sabotaging renewable alternatives. Key claims include: 

• • Suppressing Innovation: The defendants allegedly “acted in concert” to dismantle their own early solar and renewable energy divisions to prevent those technologies from maturing and competing with oil.
  • Hobbling EVs: The suit claims the companies coordinated to block the installation of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructureat their brand-name gas stations to prolong consumer reliance on gasoline.
  • Market Manipulation: By using their collective power to withhold cleaner, cheaper energy options, the state argues the companies artificially inflated energy costs for Michigan households and businesses.
  • Coordinated Disinformation: The Michigan Department of Attorney Generalalleges the industry used trade associations (like API) to exchange sensitive information and coordinate the suppression of climate science as early as the 1950s. 

Legal Framework and Objectives

• • Statutes Cited: The case brings claims under the federal Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Michigan Antitrust Reform Act (MARA).
  • Damages Sought: Michigan is seeking triple damagesand the disgorgement of corporate profits obtained through these alleged anticompetitive practices.
  • Affordability Argument: Unlike previous climate suits focused purely on environmental damage, Nessel has framed this as an “affordability crisis” case, blaming corporate “greed” rather than market forces for high energy bills. 

Industry and Federal Response

• • Industry Denial: Defendants like ExxonMobiland Chevron have dismissed the suit as “baseless” and a “coordinated campaign” to regulate energy policy through the courts rather than through Congress.
  • Federal Opposition: The S. Department of Justice(under the Trump administration) attempted to block the filing, arguing it threatened national security and energy independence, but a federal judge dismissed the DOJ’s challenge in early 2026. 

Marching Off to War

The first shots of the war against Big Oil were fired many decades ago. For decades clean energy skirmishes were small, scattered, and largely ineffective. The clean energy transition has been marshalling an army, though. Significant majorities of Americans—and worldwide—place climate change among top priorities of concern. Costs of clean energy are competitive, thanks largely to all the benefits of scientific and manufacturing learning curves driving down the costs of technologies.

In the fight against Big Oil there are plenty of weapons to be wielded. Here are some of the most powerful actions that can be taken to push back against Big Oil’s power: carbon taxes, carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAM), cancellation of direct industry subsidies, and including the negative externalities that makes the true cost of fossil fuels more evident, thus making clean energy even more competitive.

Many countries in the Global South are accelerating implementation of clean energy, often leapfrogging the old grid-style model advanced nations have long enjoyed. China’s high production of clean energy material and tools are making inroads to the Global South, which not only supports clean energy implementation, but favors China’s domestic industrial base and builds markets. China’s diplomatic advantage, relative to the United States, grows stronger.

Americans are catching on that Big Oil want to keep customers buying their products, even though this raises costs for these customers. Americans are catching on that the higher energy prices can be put to Big Oil’s corruption and influence within the political realm. Affordability is likely to be a major battle ground for fossil fuels and clean energy in the upcoming elections and this is a winning plank for clean energy.

Big Oil’s tricks and lies are becoming transparent to more and more citizens.

The question isn’t whether this war will be won, but how long it will take and whether the world is lit aflame in a pyrrhic victory.

Consider me enlisted.

The post The War on Big Oil first appeared on David Guenette.