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New Climate Fiction Author Sarah Ruiz-Grossman’s Favorite Cli-Fi Books

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Friday, April 5, 2024

This story and interview originally appeared in HuffPost’s Books newsletter. Sign up here for weekly book news, author interviews and more.In January, the European climate agency Copernicus reported that the Earth was on track to break annual global heat records, the latest undeniable symptom in the climate crisis. One month after this report, Sarah Ruiz-Grossman released her debut novel, “A Fire So Wild,” adding to the vital voices in climate fiction, a literary genre marked by notable works such as Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 “Parable of the Sower.”As a former HuffPost reporter, this isn’t Ruiz-Grossman’s first foray into writing about the environmental predicament and, more specifically, about how climate change affects the population unequally and leads to further social injustices.Informed by this breadth of knowledge, “A Fire So Wild” tells the story of a wildfire overtaking Berkeley, California. We observe the Bay Area city through the perspective of characters who possess vastly different socioeconomic statuses and access to resources, yet are interconnected in some way. As the blaze transforms homes and precious wildlife into ash and the city’s residents are left with the scorched aftermath, readers truly understand that natural disasters, though indiscriminate, never hit everyone the same way. Shortly after the book’s release, I had the opportunity to hear Ruiz-Grossman talk about her novel alongside the creator and host of “The Stacks” book podcast, Traci Thomas, at Skylight Books in Los Angeles. Appropriately nestled in front of a live tree growing at the shop’s center, we listened to Ruiz-Grossman explain the ways that works of fiction like hers can impart necessary commentary on the climate crisis in ways that nonfiction cannot. Here is some of their conversation, followed by a few of Ruiz-Grossman’s recommendations on climate fiction. As a HuffPost journalist, you reported on the climate crisis. How was this transition into writing something fictional? I was feeling the call to have a project outside of my journalism as I was isolating, not socializing with anybody, so I started working on fiction. And this felt like the only story I could tell. It was that fifth year of seeing the fires get worse. And just this past summer, I went to New York, which is my hometown, and there were orange skies blanketing our city for the first time. There was just no closing your eyes to this anymore. What I was able to do with the fiction that I couldn’t do in my reporting is that, in your reporting, you’re telling a very narrow story. It’s the story of this one fire and this one community. These stories are important, and sticking to facts are important, but there’s a lot more truth you can get in fiction in the ways that you thread in the relationships and the lives of people, and how those are impacted not just on this one day and the aftermath and the policies, but who are they as people before leading into a disaster like this, and who do they become on the other side of that? Because that’s going to be all of us at some point, affected and changed by this. I just read a piece by Matt Salesses in Literary Hub about climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” that the genre has been heralded as this tool for kind of sounding the alarm on what would come. He goes on to say how we’ve had time for these warnings, and now cli-fi needs to serve a new purpose because the future we’ve been warned about is already here. So I’m wondering what you think about your work entering that space? There’s a fine line when you’re writing something that’s both present day and dystopian. I found it hard not to be too heavy-handed with the politic because so much of it you want to feel infuriated and moralistic or self-righteous, and I don’t think that makes for good fiction or good politic. I hope that this book doesn’t feel like it comes in from on high as though I figured out what it is that we’re supposed to be doing or how we’re supposed to live our lives in this moment. I think what I hope it does is puts questions into all of our minds of how we’re supposed to live, how we can be our best citizens in this moment, knowing that we are making decisions every day that put our comfort ahead of what is best for the planet. When you’re writing, are you writing toward a question? Or how does the question come to you in the creative process?I think I’m always writing toward the same question, which is, how are we supposed to live this short, precious, insane existence in this really fucked-up society? And I think that question never gets answered by the work, but it is a way of being in community with other people and with other questioners and examine how the characters [in the book] are put in the world to see what decisions they make and see how that shakes out. Because that’s all we can do, right? Be community with each other and struggle to do our best.In the book, you write from different character perspectives, about seven or eight characters. Why did you choose to do that?I was really uninterested in writing a climate story from just one perspective. I feel like the story shouldn’t be what happens to this one family. It’s about how are the structures of our society baked-in so that even though the effect of the disaster is indiscriminate, the aftermath and recovery is. And that is all pre-existing historical and ongoing structures of inequality, race and class and how we create our cities and who gets placed where and who has access to insurance that places them in a hotel after a fire and who has nowhere to go and gets stuck in a shelter. So I didn’t ever consider telling the story from just one of those perspectives. The story that’s worth telling is one in which we’re all complicit in the society that we accept. The politicians, we continue to vote for who just keeps the status quo in which those inequities are what’s going to happen on the other end of each one of these disasters every single year.HuffPost and its publishing partners may receive a commission from some purchases made via links on this page. Every item is independently curated by the HuffPost Shopping team. Prices and availability are subject to change."Olga Dies Dreaming" by Xochitl GonzalezXochitl Gonzalez’s debut novel, “Olga Lies Dreaming,” quickly became a New York Times bestseller after its release in 2023. This beautifully written romantic comedy is expertly woven to include the political and cultural effects of capitalism and our self-preservation. Olga is an influential wedding planner for the elite in Manhattan, and her brother Pedro Acevego is a congressman. The two siblings were raised by their grandmother in Sunset Park, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, after their mother abandoned them and became a radical activist fighting for Puerto Rico’s independence. They seemingly have enviable lives, given their proximity to power and wealth, but the siblings each grapple with internal struggles. Pedro’s votes are being compromised by a real estate developer who’s in possession of photos depicting his closeted affairs, and though Olga may be an expert at weddings, she’s unable to find love for herself. And now their mother has suddenly come back into their lives. The drama is pushed to a crescendo with the arrival of one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria. The multitude of threads and themes combined with Gonzalez’s vibrant writing make for an absolutely unputdownable story."Land of Milk and Honey" by C Pam ZhangIn C Pam Zhang’s 2023 book, “Land of Milk and Honey,” a smog that began in a rural part of Iowa eventually blankets most of the world, eviscerating the planet’s crops and dramatically altering available food sources. Our nameless narrator is a prestigious chef who, while the final ingredients for her pesto disappear, decides to leave the restaurant she works at for a new opportunity — one that promises to replace powdered peas with fresh ones. Her new position is as a private chef for an elite research community lying in the mountain border area between Italy and France. It’s here in this blissful land where she’ll rediscover the flavors she’s lost and learn who continues to hoard them."Birnam Wood" by Eleanor Catton“The Luminaries” author Eleanor Catton wrote this psychological eco-thriller that the publisher calls “Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are.” Mira Bunting is a horticulturist by training and the founder of a sometimes vigilante environmentalist collective known as Birnam Wood. She, along with a group of activists, commit guerrilla-style gardening by planting trees and crops on plots of land with and without consent. But when Mira discovers a seemingly perfect property to grow and develop, she learns that she's not the only one with her sights set on the land. A billionaire by the name of Robert Lemoine wants the property not for the purposes of trying to slow the progress of climate change but to use it as the location of a post-apocalyptic bunker. Robert takes an interest in Mira, and suddenly the activist is enticed to put aside her anti-capitalist ideals for a utopia — and it’s here Catton shows us how there are consequences to every choice, even ones we believe to be inconsequential."Migrations" by Charlotte McConaghyCharlotte McConagy’s climate thriller takes place across two points in time: the protagonist Fanny’s tumultuous past and a present when climate change has led to a mass extinction of animals and wildlife. Fanny is a wanderer, unable to commit to any one person fully, wild in her compulsions and a deeply unreliable narrator throughout the book. She decides to leave her life behind by convincing a fishing crew to let her board their boat. She claims to be a scientist studying the migration patterns of the Arctic tern, a bird that migrates as far south as the Antarctic. She assures the team that by following the tern they will be led to fish, and so they agree to let her come along. But since childhood, Fanny has lived closely with violence, deceptive habits and heartbreak, which have only carried on into adulthood. Readers come to learn that her escape south is really an effort to flee from her past as much as her present.

This Earth Day, settle into "A Fire So Wild," Sarah Ruiz-Grossman's debut novel about the societal impacts of climate change.

This story and interview originally appeared in HuffPost’s Books newsletter. Sign up here for weekly book news, author interviews and more.

In January, the European climate agency Copernicus reported that the Earth was on track to break annual global heat records, the latest undeniable symptom in the climate crisis. One month after this report, Sarah Ruiz-Grossman released her debut novel, “A Fire So Wild,” adding to the vital voices in climate fiction, a literary genre marked by notable works such as Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 “Parable of the Sower.”

As a former HuffPost reporter, this isn’t Ruiz-Grossman’s first foray into writing about the environmental predicament and, more specifically, about how climate change affects the population unequally and leads to further social injustices.

Informed by this breadth of knowledge, “A Fire So Wild” tells the story of a wildfire overtaking Berkeley, California. We observe the Bay Area city through the perspective of characters who possess vastly different socioeconomic statuses and access to resources, yet are interconnected in some way. As the blaze transforms homes and precious wildlife into ash and the city’s residents are left with the scorched aftermath, readers truly understand that natural disasters, though indiscriminate, never hit everyone the same way.

Shortly after the book’s release, I had the opportunity to hear Ruiz-Grossman talk about her novel alongside the creator and host of “The Stacks” book podcast, Traci Thomas, at Skylight Books in Los Angeles. Appropriately nestled in front of a live tree growing at the shop’s center, we listened to Ruiz-Grossman explain the ways that works of fiction like hers can impart necessary commentary on the climate crisis in ways that nonfiction cannot.

Here is some of their conversation, followed by a few of Ruiz-Grossman’s recommendations on climate fiction.

As a HuffPost journalist, you reported on the climate crisis. How was this transition into writing something fictional?

I was feeling the call to have a project outside of my journalism as I was isolating, not socializing with anybody, so I started working on fiction. And this felt like the only story I could tell. It was that fifth year of seeing the fires get worse. And just this past summer, I went to New York, which is my hometown, and there were orange skies blanketing our city for the first time. There was just no closing your eyes to this anymore. What I was able to do with the fiction that I couldn’t do in my reporting is that, in your reporting, you’re telling a very narrow story. It’s the story of this one fire and this one community. These stories are important, and sticking to facts are important, but there’s a lot more truth you can get in fiction in the ways that you thread in the relationships and the lives of people, and how those are impacted not just on this one day and the aftermath and the policies, but who are they as people before leading into a disaster like this, and who do they become on the other side of that? Because that’s going to be all of us at some point, affected and changed by this.

I just read a piece by Matt Salesses in Literary Hub about climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” that the genre has been heralded as this tool for kind of sounding the alarm on what would come. He goes on to say how we’ve had time for these warnings, and now cli-fi needs to serve a new purpose because the future we’ve been warned about is already here. So I’m wondering what you think about your work entering that space?

There’s a fine line when you’re writing something that’s both present day and dystopian. I found it hard not to be too heavy-handed with the politic because so much of it you want to feel infuriated and moralistic or self-righteous, and I don’t think that makes for good fiction or good politic. I hope that this book doesn’t feel like it comes in from on high as though I figured out what it is that we’re supposed to be doing or how we’re supposed to live our lives in this moment. I think what I hope it does is puts questions into all of our minds of how we’re supposed to live, how we can be our best citizens in this moment, knowing that we are making decisions every day that put our comfort ahead of what is best for the planet.

When you’re writing, are you writing toward a question? Or how does the question come to you in the creative process?

I think I’m always writing toward the same question, which is, how are we supposed to live this short, precious, insane existence in this really fucked-up society? And I think that question never gets answered by the work, but it is a way of being in community with other people and with other questioners and examine how the characters [in the book] are put in the world to see what decisions they make and see how that shakes out. Because that’s all we can do, right? Be community with each other and struggle to do our best.

In the book, you write from different character perspectives, about seven or eight characters. Why did you choose to do that?

I was really uninterested in writing a climate story from just one perspective. I feel like the story shouldn’t be what happens to this one family. It’s about how are the structures of our society baked-in so that even though the effect of the disaster is indiscriminate, the aftermath and recovery is. And that is all pre-existing historical and ongoing structures of inequality, race and class and how we create our cities and who gets placed where and who has access to insurance that places them in a hotel after a fire and who has nowhere to go and gets stuck in a shelter. So I didn’t ever consider telling the story from just one of those perspectives. The story that’s worth telling is one in which we’re all complicit in the society that we accept. The politicians, we continue to vote for who just keeps the status quo in which those inequities are what’s going to happen on the other end of each one of these disasters every single year.

HuffPost and its publishing partners may receive a commission from some purchases made via links on this page. Every item is independently curated by the HuffPost Shopping team. Prices and availability are subject to change.

"Olga Dies Dreaming" by Xochitl Gonzalez

Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut novel, “Olga Lies Dreaming,” quickly became a New York Times bestseller after its release in 2023. This beautifully written romantic comedy is expertly woven to include the political and cultural effects of capitalism and our self-preservation. Olga is an influential wedding planner for the elite in Manhattan, and her brother Pedro Acevego is a congressman. The two siblings were raised by their grandmother in Sunset Park, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, after their mother abandoned them and became a radical activist fighting for Puerto Rico’s independence. They seemingly have enviable lives, given their proximity to power and wealth, but the siblings each grapple with internal struggles. Pedro’s votes are being compromised by a real estate developer who’s in possession of photos depicting his closeted affairs, and though Olga may be an expert at weddings, she’s unable to find love for herself. And now their mother has suddenly come back into their lives. The drama is pushed to a crescendo with the arrival of one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria. The multitude of threads and themes combined with Gonzalez’s vibrant writing make for an absolutely unputdownable story.

"Land of Milk and Honey" by C Pam Zhang

In C Pam Zhang’s 2023 book, “Land of Milk and Honey,” a smog that began in a rural part of Iowa eventually blankets most of the world, eviscerating the planet’s crops and dramatically altering available food sources. Our nameless narrator is a prestigious chef who, while the final ingredients for her pesto disappear, decides to leave the restaurant she works at for a new opportunity — one that promises to replace powdered peas with fresh ones. Her new position is as a private chef for an elite research community lying in the mountain border area between Italy and France. It’s here in this blissful land where she’ll rediscover the flavors she’s lost and learn who continues to hoard them.

"Birnam Wood" by Eleanor Catton

“The Luminaries” author Eleanor Catton wrote this psychological eco-thriller that the publisher calls “Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are.” Mira Bunting is a horticulturist by training and the founder of a sometimes vigilante environmentalist collective known as Birnam Wood. She, along with a group of activists, commit guerrilla-style gardening by planting trees and crops on plots of land with and without consent. But when Mira discovers a seemingly perfect property to grow and develop, she learns that she's not the only one with her sights set on the land. A billionaire by the name of Robert Lemoine wants the property not for the purposes of trying to slow the progress of climate change but to use it as the location of a post-apocalyptic bunker. Robert takes an interest in Mira, and suddenly the activist is enticed to put aside her anti-capitalist ideals for a utopia — and it’s here Catton shows us how there are consequences to every choice, even ones we believe to be inconsequential.

"Migrations" by Charlotte McConaghy

Charlotte McConagy’s climate thriller takes place across two points in time: the protagonist Fanny’s tumultuous past and a present when climate change has led to a mass extinction of animals and wildlife. Fanny is a wanderer, unable to commit to any one person fully, wild in her compulsions and a deeply unreliable narrator throughout the book. She decides to leave her life behind by convincing a fishing crew to let her board their boat. She claims to be a scientist studying the migration patterns of the Arctic tern, a bird that migrates as far south as the Antarctic. She assures the team that by following the tern they will be led to fish, and so they agree to let her come along. But since childhood, Fanny has lived closely with violence, deceptive habits and heartbreak, which have only carried on into adulthood. Readers come to learn that her escape south is really an effort to flee from her past as much as her present.

Read the full story here.
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Matt Hancock gives evidence to Covid inquiryWe will carry on reporting tributes to John Prescott as the day goes on, but there is other news happening today too and soon I will switch to the Covid inquiry, where Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, is giving evidence from 10am. He has already given evidence to the inquiry before, but the inquiry is now on module 3, focusing in particular on the impact of the pandemic on the NHS, and Hancock will be talking about that.We have also got John Healey, the defence secretary, giving evidence to the Commons defence committee from 10.30am this morning.Matt Hancock arriving at the Covid inquiry this morning. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/ShutterstockShareUpdated at 04.49 ESTKey eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureWe are inviting readers to share their memories of John Prescott. You can do so via this page.Matt Hancock gives evidence to Covid inquiryWe will carry on reporting tributes to John Prescott as the day goes on, but there is other news happening today too and soon I will switch to the Covid inquiry, where Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, is giving evidence from 10am. He has already given evidence to the inquiry before, but the inquiry is now on module 3, focusing in particular on the impact of the pandemic on the NHS, and Hancock will be talking about that.We have also got John Healey, the defence secretary, giving evidence to the Commons defence committee from 10.30am this morning.Matt Hancock arriving at the Covid inquiry this morning. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/ShutterstockShareUpdated at 04.49 ESTThere's no paywall hereApologies for the brief interruption. We hope you’re appreciating these factual, verified, up-to-the-minute news updates provided by our expert reporters.You won't find a paywall around our live blogs – or any of our news, because the Guardian believes that access to trustworthy information is vital for democracy.In a time of increasing misinformation spread by bad actors, extremist media and autocratic politicians, real, reliable journalism has never been more important – and we’re proud to be able to make ours free thanks to the generous support of readers like you. By helping fund the Guardian today, you can play a vital role in combating the bad faith and self-interest of a powerful few who spread lies to undermine our democracy, enrich themselves, and stoke division between Americans.Before you get back to reading the news, we would be grateful if you could take half a minute to give us your support. Any amount helps. Thank you.Peter Mandelson says Prescott was 'the cement that kept New Labour together'Peter Mandelson was one of many people in the Labour party who feuded with John Prescott at various times when they were in government, and at one memorable photocall in the summer of 1997 Prescott compared him to a crab. Today, speaking on Sky News, Mandelson played down the extend of their disagreements, and pointed out that Prescott had supported his application to become Labour’s communications director in 1985 – the job that turned out to be the launchpad for Mandelson’s career.Mandelson said it was wrong to say Prescott was not New Labour. Some people say sometimes that he wasn’t New Labour. But that’s not true. He was New Labour. He was one very essential part of New Labour. He basically kept us anchored in our working class roots, our trade union history. And he was the bridge, essentially, between that and the modernisers in the Labour party, Tony, Gordon, me and the others. And he always wanted that project to work. It’s not as if he was standing outside it and peering in. He was on the inside and making it work. He was, in many respects, the cement that kept New Labour together. Asked what he was like to work with, Mandelson replied: He was absolutely impossible. When I say he was sort of courageous, he was. When I say he was loyal, he was. When I say he was determined, he was. He was always determined to get his own way on any particular issue at any given moment. Right up until the point he’d say, ‘OK, I’ll do this for you. You do this for me. As long as you cover this off I’ll happily go along with it.’ So he was a negotiator. He was a trade union negotiator. He was a broker. But at the end of the day he wanted it to work and the way in which he made it work was by being incredibly difficult for days on end and then finally sealing it, making work, agreeing it and off we went. Mandelson also recalled a surprise conversation earlier this year he had with Prescott. I was at home on a Sunday morning and the phone went and then suddenly I put it on and it was the face of John Prescott on my phone FaceTiming me from Hull. I mean, no advanced warning. No how do you do. It was, ‘Hello, is that you?’ ‘Yes John it is me. What do you want?’ He said ‘I just want to say that I know it was difficult and we were bloody awful to you at times and I was, but actually you did good and I want to forgive you.’ What am I being forgiven for here? It was just, ‘I want to forgive you because you did good. And I know it wasn’t easy at times and I know it was rough and I know I didn’t help but now I understand.’ And I said, ‘John that’s very kind of you. How do you suddenly understand this?’ He said, ‘Oh well somebody gave me this book of yours. I didn’t read it before. It looked very boring. But I’ve looked at it, I’ve dipped into it and I’ve seen what you went through … I feel rather sorry for you actually. And anyway, thanks very much.’ It was a few minutes more … but that was it. That was the last time I spoke to him. Here are more tributes to John Prescott from Labour figures on social media.From Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s communications director in No 10 JP RIP … there was nobody else like him. Tony could not have had a better deputy. Labour could not have had a better campaigner. The government could not have had a better negotiator and - yes, often, peacemaker. Hull could not have had a better MP. Of course he was combative but he had an enormous heart and a great capacity for friendship. Even with his horrible illness in later years, the old JP was always there. Love to Pauline, Jonathan and David and nothing but fond memories of a total one off who will be missed by so many. From Yvette Cooper, the home secretary Such sad news about John Prescott. A campaigning Labour hero & a remarkable minister who transformed lives - upgrading millions of council homes, coalfield regeneration, tackling climate change. Fierce & warm hearted - there was no one like him. Thinking of Pauline & family today From Ed Balls, the former adviser to Gordon Brown and later secretary of state for childrenFrom Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader I am really sad to hear that John Prescott has passed away. John was a huge figure and personality, from his seafaring union days to the highest offices in Government. I will be forever grateful for his personal and political support in the 2017 and 2019 elections. His endless warmth and iconic wit were loved on the campaign trail. My deepest sympathies to John’s family at their loss. He will be greatly missed. From Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary 1/2 John Prescott was a political giant who made a unique contribution to the Labour and trade union movement he loved so deeply. Authentic, funny, tough, highly skilled and, at times, unpredictable, he often used the phrase “traditional Labour values in a modern setting”. 2/2 In doing so, he would reassure and inspire Party members with whom he had a great bond. He will be much missed. All our thoughts are with Pauline and his family on this very sad day. From David Lammy, foreign secretary John Prescott was one of the giants of our party. Committed, loyal, Labour to his core. A relentless champion of working people who never forgot who he came into politics to fight for. Full of good humour and blunt common sense. Rest in peace Angela Rayner pays tribute to Prescott, saying he was 'inspiration to me'Angela Rayner is often compared to John Prescott. They were both brought up working class, became Labour MPs after working in the trade union movement and have been frequently patronised or demonised by Tories and the media, partly on the grounds of class snobbery. And both ended up deputy PM.Here is her tribute to Prescott. Through his half a century of public service and a decade as deputy prime minister, John Prescott was driven by his Labour values to serve working people. Fiercely proud of his working class and trade union roots, he never lost sight of who he came into politics to serve. He used the chance he was given to change the lives of millions of working people. A giant of the labour movement and loyal friend, he will be remembered with huge fondness by all those who knew him. John was not only a Labour legend but an inspiration to me, and always so generous with his time and support. We will miss him greatly. Our thoughts and prayers are with Pauline, David, Johnathan and the rest of the family. ShareUpdated at 04.06 ESTPrescott's family ask people not to send flowers but to donate to Alzheimer's Research UK insteadHere is the full statement from John Prescott’s family announcing his death. Prescott was living with Alzheimer’s in his final years and his family have asked wellwishers minded to send flowers to donate to Alzheimer’s Research UK instead.They say: We are deeply saddened to inform you that our beloved husband, father and grandfather, John Prescott, passed away peacefully yesterday at the age of 86. He did so surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery. John spent his life trying to improve the lives of others, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment, doing so from his time as a waiter on the cruise liners to becoming Britain’s longest serving deputy prime minister. John dearly loved his home of Hull and representing its people in parliament for 40 years was his greatest honour. We would like to thank the amazing NHS doctors and nurses who cared for him after his stroke in 2019 and the dedicated staff at the care home where he passed away after latterly living with Alzheimer’s. In lieu of flowers and if you wish to do so, you can donate to Alzheimer’s Research UK. As you can imagine, our family needs to process our grief so we respectfully request time and space to mourn in private. Thank you. Here is a John Prescott picture gallery.Gordon Brown pays tribute to PrescottGood morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Caroline Davies.The former prime minister Gordon Brown has just been on the Today programme paying tribute to John Prescott. He said: John was a friend of mine, he was a colleague, but when you think of him, he was a colossus, he was a titan of the Labour movement. John Lennon talked about working class hero. It’s difficult to fit that term, but I think John would like that. You’ve got to look at his achievements. He was probably the first government minister to see the importance of the environment. Kyoto, that environmental treaty in 1997, you’ve got to attribute that to John’s hard work with Al Gore. Then he saw the importance, and he was a pioneer of regional policy. So the fact we have devolution and mayors owes a great deal to what John was thinking right throughout the 1980s and 90s when I was working with him. And then we mustn’t forget that one of the great achievements of John as environment secretary was the repair and improvement of housing, 1.5m houses which would not have been repaired without John’s determination that the social housing stock had to be remodernised. So you’ve got to look at the practical achievements of someone who possibly surprised himself by the way that he managed to become deputy prime minister, but actually made a huge difference. Yorkshire has “lost one of its great political heavyweights,” said Tracy Brabin, mayor for West Yorkshire. In a post on X she said: Deeply sad news to hear of John Prescott’s passing. Yorkshire has lost one of its great political heavyweights. A true Northerner with unwavering authenticity. John’s record speaks for itself: tackling regional inequalities, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment. We must all now build on his legacy and work tirelessly, as he did, to create a country that works for all. ShareUpdated at 03.44 ESTLord Prescott’s wife and two sons said he had been in a care home recently living with Alzheimer’s. Hilary Evans-Newton, chief executive at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: It’s heartbreaking to hear that former deputy prime minister, Lord John Prescott, one of the most prominent political figures of our generation, has died with Alzheimer’s. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time. It’s tragic how many lives are being lost to dementia, the leading cause of death in the UK. We’re incredibly moved by Lord Prescott’s family, who have asked for donations to Alzheimer’s Research UK, in lieu of flowers. As the UK’s leading dementia research charity, we’re accelerating progress towards a cure, so no one’s life has to end this way.

Climate
Government
Social Justice

The climate crisis is a big problem. Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is dreaming of even bigger solutions.

Here’s an exercise for you: Imagine the trajectory of our current climate crisis.  You probably don’t need to imagine very hard what this future looks like because we’re seeing it play out in the present: towns torn apart by massive hurricanes, thousands displaced by wildfires, lives taken by extreme heat. All of it is enough […]

Here’s an exercise for you: Imagine the trajectory of our current climate crisis.  You probably don’t need to imagine very hard what this future looks like because we’re seeing it play out in the present: towns torn apart by massive hurricanes, thousands displaced by wildfires, lives taken by extreme heat. All of it is enough to make a person freeze with fear. But there is a flip side to this terror.  Such an all-consuming problem inherently requires innovative solutions and adaptations of epic proportions. So here’s another exercise: Close your eyes and think, what could a world that hasn’t just taken the climate crisis seriously but also risen to the challenge look like? Envisioning a better future in the face of serious climate threats might seem like lofty daydreaming, especially when we take into consideration our world leaders’ inaction. But Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and climate policy wonk, has spent much of her career dreaming and coming up with climate solutions — and she knows that nihilism and avoidance won’t get us anywhere. In her recently published book, What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, Johnson tackles how we can transform our ways of being, thinking, and doing to stop the worst of climate change. She expertly intertwines her conversations with scientists, artists, and activists to create a practical and accessible guidebook for a more just future brimming with possibilities — a salve for even the most environmentally anxious.  “Peril and possibility coexist,” she writes in the book. Of course, she’s well aware of just how big of an environmental mess our world is in, but you won’t catch her dwelling on the worst-case scenarios for long. “We’re pretty fucked,” Johnson said in her September interview on Vox’s The Gray Area, “but there’s a lot we could do to have a better possible future.”  Johnson is particularly adept at speaking to those who know the climate crisis is real but have the instinct to bury their head in the sand at the thought of such a massive existential crisis. Though she is frank about the state of our world’s environmental health, she speaks and writes with an energizing clarity — whether it’s conversing with climate advocates for her book tour or breaking down big environmental questions as a co-host of the podcast How to Save a Planet. It’s Johnson’s understanding of our instinct to flee the climate problems that has made it essential for her to explore the possibilities to address it and take action that goes beyond protesting or voting. These are important measures, Johnson believes, but also broad ones that aren’t necessarily fine-tuned to our individual experiences, skills, and interests.  For Johnson, a Brooklyn native who calls the ocean her love before it became her career, that looked like co-founding Urban Ocean Lab (UOL) in 2018. The nonprofit think tank specializes in researching coastal cities in the United States — places that one in five Americans call home and are often vulnerable to some of the worst environmental disasters — and developing equitable, pragmatic policy recommendations for these regions.  One such recommendation is UOL’s climate readiness framework for coastal cities. It’s a comprehensive collection of over 70 actions that coastal communities can apply to better adapt to current and future climate risks, such as working with community-based organizations to strengthen disaster preparedness plans and developing home relocation programs for low-income residents and people of color living in climate-vulnerable places.  The Caribbean region in particular has a special place in Johnson’s heart — her late father hailed from Jamaica, whose waters have suffered from pollution and overfishing. “To me, ocean conservation is in part about cultural preservation,” she writes after reflecting on her father’s life between Jamaica and New York City. “We are losing something more fundamental than a meal: a way of life.” It makes sense that Johnson has also worked to improve the waters surrounding these islands. Prior to founding UOL, she led an ocean management policy project called the Blue Halo Initiative at the Waitt Institute, where she served as executive director. Starting in Barbuda in 2013, Johnson focused on engaging with the community, interviewing hundreds of fishers and residents to develop policy recommendations for better preserving the waters and the species within it. Just a year later, the Barbuda Council signed into law a set of ocean zoning policies to protect underwater ecosystems and ensure sustainable fishing. These efforts were soon replicated in Montserrat and Curaçao. Johnson’s reverence for the ocean and the career she’s made out of it has made its way into the American political sphere, too. Back in 2019, the Green New Deal, a set of proposed progressive climate policies, was supported by left-leaning candidates up and down the ballot. Johnson had just one issue with it: It left out our seas almost entirely. “I was feeling bummed about the ocean getting short shrift in the Green New Deal Resolution — just a single, vague reference to the ocean,” Johnson wrote in What If We Get It Right? That summer, Johnson co-authored an op-ed in Grist about this big blue gap and what solutions to fill it with. Within that year, Johnson was contacted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign to help write what would become the Blue New Deal, an official policy platform for the Warren campaign. It was an extensive list of actions, like expanding marine protected areas, building climate-smart ports, and holding Big Agriculture accountable for water pollution. When Johnson later met Sen. Warren, she wrote in What If We Get It Right? that “[Senator Warren] told me it was the plan that got the most excited mentions in her selfie lines.” And while Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination and the election, his administration became the first to put out a federal Ocean Climate Action plan — which included similar elements to the Blue New Deal — after dozens of businesses and organizations (including UOL) pushed the White House to do so. There are a lot of studies that show engaging with nature helps our physical and mental well-being, so it’s not surprising that conserving our environment is important for many people. One word that Johnson often uses and embodies is “biophilia”: a love for nature and life, and in her words, “a powerful driving force for conservation.” With this in mind, I have one more exercise for you: Think of moments you’ve felt biophilia. Maybe you once walked through a lush forest, swam in a pristine lake, or witnessed snow-capped mountains up close. Perhaps you’ve encountered one of the millions of amazing creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But how can one hold onto this sense of biophilia if much of our ways of life are destroying the very essence of it?  It’s all the more reason not to let our worries immobilize us and instead try to get it right, just as Johnson has done. Her wide-ranging expertise on climate policy; deeply empathetic and inclusive lens for climate solutions; and her unwavering, contagious biophilia has made her a bold visionary to follow in the climate space.  How apt that a lover of the ocean is making waves. —Sam Delgado

Climate
Crisis
Agriculture

Denmark is tiny. Its ambition to make its food system more climate-friendly is huge.

Climate scientists agree on at least one necessary change to our food system: People, especially those in rich countries, ought to be eating more plants and fewer animals.  Globally, livestock production accounts for some 15 to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and accelerates a host of other environmental problems, from deforestation to freshwater depletion […]

Climate scientists agree on at least one necessary change to our food system: People, especially those in rich countries, ought to be eating more plants and fewer animals.  Globally, livestock production accounts for some 15 to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and accelerates a host of other environmental problems, from deforestation to freshwater depletion to air pollution. And yet virtually all Western governments have designed their food policy to churn out more and more meat, milk, and eggs.  The idea that we need to eat more, not less, meat is also baked into many nations’ cultural psyches, with both subtle and overt messages that meat equals masculinity and prosperity. Meat has been dragged into many countries’ culture wars, stifling civil discussions over how to make food systems sustainable. One country, though, far more than any other, has heeded the climate scientists’ advice: Denmark, the small Scandinavian nation of 6 million people known for its intensive factory farming system and resulting pork and dairy exports. In 2021, the Danish Parliament and government made a deal to shift its food system in a more plant-based and organic direction, and has set aside around $200 million US to do it. About $85 million is going to farmers who grow plant-based foods. The rest is being used to fund new projects, like experimenting with “nudge theory” — redesigning cafeterias to subtly encourage consumers to choose more plant-based options — and launching a startup incubator for plant-based companies at the Technological Institute of Denmark.  Many people have labored to turn these ideas into policy, but Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl, the secretary-general of the Vegetarian Society of Denmark, has unquestionably been the leader. Dragsdahl became the society’s first employee in 2016, when he went unpaid for the first year or so. Since then, the organization has grown to employ 22 staff members.  How exactly did a tiny organization with little political clout blaze a trail toward a more sustainable, humane food system? I spoke with Dragsdahl last month to find out. His secret, it turns out, is diplomacy.  Dragsdahl and his vegetarian society colleagues spent years building a coalition of farmers, scientists, and organic food advocates, emphasizing shared values — sustainability and food innovation — instead of differences, like the merits of vegetarianism. This big-tent approach appealed to politicians, including not just members of left-wing parties but also politicians on the right, one of whom called the country’s plant-based action plan an “intelligent idea,” according to Dragsdahl.    “That, I think, shows the fact that we and other stakeholders have somehow managed to mainstream this,” he told me. “There are still ideological battles and clearly we’re not done, but we have to a large extent managed to get many people to see that this should also be a part of Danish agriculture and that it should be stronger. That there’s actual potential in this. That there’s no need to fight over more plants.” My conversation with Dragsdahl has been edited for length and clarity. What role does meat play in Danish society? It’s really a centerpiece of food culture, of Danish culture. There are many social events, whether it’s football events — people will have their hot dogs — and when they’re grilling in the summer.  Apart from food culture … Denmark is a very agricultural nation. We are the most cultivated country in the world, together with Bangladesh, in terms of the [percentage of the] surface of the land being cultivated, because the country is very flat, so you can say it’s suitable for this.  Even though the country might be suitable, you can over-cultivate it. And that is the problem — we have severe biodiversity loss here, severe eutrophication. … So it’s definitely damaging the local environment here. But for many decades, it has been difficult to do anything about it because at least some people have felt we are an agricultural nation. It’s in our blood, that’s who we are. And livestock is an integral part of that.  So there are things here, both culturally but also politically. And there’s this universal pride for people — that Danish dairy, Danish butter, is being exported to the whole world… But also, of course, bacon and pork products. But that has been increasingly questioned in the last 10 years.  What happened to lay the groundwork for the plant-based action plan? In 2019, we got the idea to start something we call the Danish Network for Plant Proteins. You make such a network, really, to make people feel welcome no matter where they’re from. … We had hard-hitting scientists, we had inspiring startups, we had interesting content — but always in a friendly and warm and pragmatic tone. And that meant that even the farming association [the Danish Agriculture and Food Council] attended. They later came back to us a month later and told us that they liked our approach. We don’t agree about scaling down livestock production, but they did agree that we could work together on how to look more into plant-based [food production] to diversify Danish agriculture.  When they did that, it almost immediately eliminated any opposition from a large part of the political spectrum. So maybe some of the resistance in the right wing became neutral, and some of the hesitance among the parties in the center of Danish politics became slightly positive. And that was extremely helpful because you move the entire playing field. And then, of course, the parties which are even more progressive on the center and center-left wing, they can push even harder for it and get the middle parties on board without the right wing making a big fuss about it. And the farmers’ association was definitely important for that. I think we have really successfully been insisting that plant-based is both the whole foods plant-based and the processed [foods] and everything in between. And by insisting on that, we’re getting less opposition between the people who just want everything to be home-cooked and believe children should be taught how to cook their own vegetables again. These solutions are both needed, and there [are] also places in between. There might be processed products that imitate meat but that are processed in milder ways. I think many of the Danish startups in this space are actually trying to find these kinds of solutions. So that has been a way to get many different kinds of people on board.  What kind of plant-based projects have been awarded funding?  So far, around 35 projects have been granted [in each of two rounds].  In the first round, the Hospitality School of Copenhagen got funding for a vegetarian chef’s degree. They got the funding for developing a curriculum that the government could then approve as acceptable for a new chef’s degree — which does not have any meat — and that degree becomes part of the government system, so it becomes a formal government education. But they could not have done it without getting funding to develop the curriculum. In the second round, some [agricultural] schools applied for funding for developing a curriculum on legumes, but also to teach the professionals in the kitchens at the farmer schools how to include more legumes in the foods eaten by the young farmers. What else should people know about Denmark’s efforts to build a more plant-based food system? Denmark is not paradise. [People] will have this excuse — they’ll say, “This is just Denmark, Denmark is always ahead on everything.” But that’s not the full story. And I think that’s the important part to be told here. This happened in the country with the largest livestock production per capita and with a very powerful livestock lobbying sector. So when we can succeed on that in Denmark, there will be pathways to that in other countries. And for me, that is a really important message that we should not give up — that there is actually hope.

Climate
Food
Forests

“Absolutely devastating”: Climate change is pushing coral reefs to extinction, experts warn

Coral reefs have experienced four mass bleaching event in 18 months, with no sign of stopping

The Chagos Archipelago is one of the most remote places on Earth. Smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the collection of more than five dozen tiny islands are mostly uninhabited, due in no small part to the United States and United Kingdom expelling the Indigenous Chagossians in an ethnic cleansing from 1967 to 1973. For decades only a single atoll, Diego Garcia, has had any inhabitants. Yet as coral reef ecologist Alexandra Dempsey explored the atolls’ beautiful coral reefs in 2015, she nevertheless found signs of human pollution. “While we were there, we witnessed the very first stages of a bleaching event,” Dempsey said, referring to when coral becomes dead and white due to stress. Dempsey recalled "the scale at which these 100-year-old corals were just stressed. They were paling. The cotton candy colors paling is definitely an indicator of an ecosystem that is extremely stressed.”  Even the supposed “crown jewel of the reefs” looked bleached because of temperatures upwards of 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. As CEO of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Dempsey often thinks about how to protect coral reefs from human activity, yet is now presented with evidence that even the most remote locations cannot be entirely protected. One big reason? Few things, if anything, will be unaffected by global heating. “No matter how much protection and how much due diligence goes behind trying to keep humans and people away from the reefs, the effects of climate change are just absolutely devastating to these ecosystems,” Dempsey said. Bleached Corals, Cenderawasih Bay, West Papua, Indonesia (Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images)Similarly, if coral reefs go extinct, it won’t just be the diversity of the ocean that will suffer — many people will too. Approximately 3.3 billion people rely on aquatic foods for nutrition, which accounts for almost 20% of the average per capita consumption of animal protein. If the reefs collapse, so will some bigger fish stocks, like tuna and groupers. Marine fisheries ecologist Khatija Alliji, from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, has personally seen humans tampering with coral reefs while exploring them, and from that observation points out that it is not merely our greenhouse gas emissions that harm coral reefs and underwater ecosystems. "We are clearly challenging coral’s natural capacity for adaptation." “Currently coral reefs face many threats, including (but not limited to) biodiversity loss, water quality, climate change, disease, predation, coastal development, litter, marine traffic and pollution,” Alliji explained. Because reefs are so complex, scientists still do not fully understand all the interlocking parts that make them work. Even the recent Red List assessment that found over two-fifths of coral reef species threatened with extinction added there are some species where data is so deficient that a risk category cannot be assigned. “Advancements in coral taxonomy using DNA has led to the discovery of new species of coral and better taxonomic definition,” Alliji said. “But there is still lots to investigate and this is both exciting and terrifying given the many threats listed above.” For all of the mysteries that remain about coral reefs, though, experts agree that climate change is an undisputed threat. Indeed, our planet is already in the middle of its fourth global coral bleaching event in 18 months largely due to climate change, which experts predict will worsen as we surpass 1.5º C of global temperature rise. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter Lab Notes. “Locally, some reef regions surpassed 1.5º C in the last year, but it takes a global average over 20 years to calculate the threshold; it is highly likely temperature levels will exceed even 2º C globally before a turning point is reached,” David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, told Salon. “Scientists recently shifted the estimated critical range for corals from 1.5º to 2º C warming to [between] 1º and 1.5º C warming. And as with many things with climate change and the Anthropocene, severe and compounding impacts are being observed earlier than predicted.” "The ocean has no boundaries and therefore a collaborative approach is required to ensure coral survival and guarantee their future." Aldo Croquer, a marine conservation program manager for the Central Caribbean in Nature Conservancy, said that coral reefs have weathered many cataclysmic events in Earth’s history, but they may not survive humanity. “Corals have evolved facing great challenges and they have managed to survive, even to massive global extinctions,” Croquer said. “Their capacity to adapt to environmental change and to come back from disturbances is indisputable, at least at evolutionary time scales. However, the changes that we are seeing today occurred at the scales of decades. This is unprecedented. Thus, we are clearly challenging coral’s natural capacity for adaptation.” To protect coral reefs from rising temperatures and other human activity, it is critical for local communities to work together with global authorities so they can salvage what they can. “Climate change is a global issue and will need both local and global management and solutions to ensure we protect our natural ecosystems and resources,” Alliji said. “The ocean has no boundaries and therefore a collaborative approach is required to ensure coral survival and guarantee their future.” Obura added, “There is a localized commitment to enabling the sorts of changes that can reduce local pressures, which revolve around promoting circular economies, less destructive economic and development practices. To some extent the problem is these are pitched as ‘local’ problems for local authorities to act on, but often the broader national and international contexts don’t facilitate this by continually incentivising more growth, more resorts, more fishing, more goods and services, etc.” Yet even if all of those changes are made, scientists like Jason Spadaro from the Coral Reef Restoration Research Program in Florida's Mote Marine Laboratory still expect more depressing journeys like one he recently took to the Florida Keys. “When I started my career back in 2006 or so, coral reefs in the Florida Keys in particular had about maybe a little better than 10% of their surface covered in live coral,” Spadaro said. “Today we've got somewhere less than 2%, as well as a fourfold decrease in the living tissue color cover of our coral reefs in the Keys. That's due almost entirely to things like climate change.” Read more about our oceans

Climate
Extinction
Conservation

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LEAVES

An academic woman in Texas becomes concerned when a massive red oak in her backyard seems to be ailing, though she isn’t sure why it bothers her so much. At the same time, in her small cottage, her attention to her work is distracted by news reports she sees and hears. They tell in graphic terms of the out-of-control forest fires up and down the West Coast. Her attention is further pulled in the direction of other stories about the worsening conditions of the world’s rainforests which she discovers are disappearing at the astounding rate of 200,000 acres a day. Suddenly such stories are all she seems to hear and see on the radio or television or on her computer. But when she hears/sees a science report about how trees actually communicate with each other, she begins to realize there may be a connection between her tree and what she is learning from the news. She begins to recall a strong connection she herself has with that tree and allows that connection to regrow…..

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Climate
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Total Disaster

Armed with realistic bird puppets, trickster environmental activists pretend to be oil company Total—staging a satirical press conference to introduce "RéHabitat," a program to rescue animals from the East African Oil Pipeline by relocating them to “more sustainable” habitats. Using humor and mischief, they expose a deadly ecological disaster in a zany effort to help #StopEACOP.

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A Low Carbon Future for China’s Furnace Cities

China’s economic development and rapid urbanization has led to a dramatic rise in energy consumption due to excessive heating and air-conditioning causing carbon emissions of immense proportions. China’s government has set the ambitious target of reducing CO2 emissions by 40–45% by 2020 against the 2005 baseline. A UK/China-funded team working on how to solve the problem in some of the most extreme climate regions in China. The team discovers groundbreaking solutions using computational-fluid-dynamics simulations.

CO2
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Climate

Crossing the Divide

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Inspirational
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