Climate Anxiety in Fiction and Non-Fiction

Bookshelf

Aug 18

The impending effects of climate change and the damage humanity has caused to our planet is a major cause of anxiety for most people under the age of fifty these days. Who can blame us? Everywhere we look, big corporations continue to recklessly lay waste to the world for profit, and while we march and protest and change our individual lifestyles, it seems like nothing we do is enough. No wonder we’re all depressed and perpetually anxious. What more can we do when those with the real power refuse to give up their profits for the good of the planet?

In my own anxiety, I’ve turned – as I always have – to books. Maybe it’s to help myself prepare for a changed world by reading sci-fi that speculates on more intensely climate-affected futures; maybe it’s to feel like my emotions are valid, or simply that there are plenty of others out there who also care about Earth’s future.

What I know, amidst all the reckless selfishness and destruction, is that books still have power. Words have power. There is power in stories, and stories about climate change can motivate and encourage us to action.

The books in the lists below foreground environmental concerns about our relationship to the wilderness and other earthlings, whether human or not. Ecocriticism is arguably the most important area of literary scholarship that researchers can explore today, as the impending effects of the Anthropocene and climate change overshadow all other merely humanist concerns.

These are books that explore our relationship to the land and to wilderness, capitalism’s effect on climate change, our relationship to non-human animals, plans for effectively acting on climate change, our need for harmony with the world around us, and all things in between.

I’ve chosen both fiction and non-fiction for a broader range of resources, depending on your reading preferences. I hope something on this list stands out to you that you can get something out of, whether it’s just some hope for the future, some new knowledge, or simply solidarity within the eco-movement away from Anthropocentrism and materialism.