We need cli-fi novels to help re-imagine "culture" in the face of global warming impact events (and this must happen BEFORE macroeconomic or political change). Start your engines, cli-fi writers of the world!

What is the goal of cli-fi? The follwing oped outlines the goal of cli-fi novels and movies. Read this post slowly and underline every word. We need cli-fi novels to help re-imagine "culture."


In a recent interview with Lisa Hymas at Media Matters, climate activist Bill McKibben spoke about his new comic cli-fi novel "Radio Free Vermont" and touched on the role of the media in helping to raise awareness worldwide of the risks we face as ''humankind VS global warming.''


"Climate change "is undoubtedly the biggest story of our day," McKibben told Lisa, but "the news media doesn't seize onto" that (he emphasized). "Every single day, there's something more dramatic happening than climate change. But every single day, there's nothing more important happening than climate change." So when disasters hit, media need to report on how extreme weather is linked to climate change, [he emphasized]. "When we have the opportunities to foreground that story, to make people understand the stakes, we should definitely be taking them."


So true. And yet most likely Bill's words will fall once again on deaf ears. The media gatekeepers at the New York Times and Boston Globe and even the Guardian are more interested in building traffic and catching eyeballs with news item about various distractions, cat videos and Vanity Fair gossip.


Media failing us. Bill will say it again and again and nobody will listen, as always. Why? because it's BAU, business as usual.


But there's a news item that everyone should be paying attention to. PLEASE KEEP READING:


What is the goal of cli-fi? This is the goal of cli-fi novels and movies. Read this slowly and underline every word. We need cli-fi novels to help re-imagine "culture."


"And far from being a petty distraction from the world's problems with global warming impact events, 'aesthetics' are a crucial part of the solution. Cultural change must precede macroeconomic or political change, and cli-fi novels and movies are our best tools to reimagine culture," according to two Australian literary critics, Greg Foyster and Samuel Alexander at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute.


AGAIN: We need cli-fi novels to help re-imagine "culture."


And far from being a petty distraction from the world's problems with global warming impact events, 'aesthetics' are a crucial part of the solution. Cultural change must precede macroeconomic or political change, and cli-fi novels and movies are our best tools to reimagine culture.


So neither macro-economic change nor political change is going "change" anything vis a vis climate change. We need CULTURE to work its magic first, and that will be through cli-fi novels and movies.


That has always been my mission with The Cli-Fi Report and its accompanying PR campaign worldwide. We need CULTURE to work its magic first, and that will be through cli-fi novels and movies.


And I am looking forward to the new cli-fi novels and movies that will be appearing worldwide over the next 100 years. The trend has already started. There's more, much more, to come.