<
https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/ep-21-doing-your-part-in-the-climate>
"Today we’re going to talk about the “easy to say, hard to do” concept of doing
your part in the climate fight. It’s been a few weeks since my last podcast
because I’ve been running around the country (in my EV), teaching solarpunk
classes, launching hopeful climate fiction collections, giving panels on the
complexities of writing those kinds of stories, and meeting a range of people
doing amazing things in the climate fight.
All of that has been both incredibly generative and also has illustrated how
difficult it is to manage everything at once: there is perpetually more to do
than can be done, and prioritization can feel existential, not only to getting
the most “important” work done but also staying healthy and not burning out in
the process. This is a very familiar struggle for activists everywhere.
As a novelist, I find it vexing precisely because writing requires enormous
amounts of quiet time devoted to the creative act. Writing—especially writing
climate fiction—has this built-in contradiction where it simultaneously
requires that you be informed by the current events of the world while also
requiring you to sequester away from the world to perform the act itself.
I jokingly say, “This novel isn’t going to write itself!” But the struggle to
create while being immersed in an urgent worldwide crisis alongside everyone
else is real.
As a sidebar, I am aware that the joke about the novel not writing itself hits
differently in the age of AI, and I fervently wish AI companies would stop
stealing artistic labor and proceed to fuck off into the sun. But it’s doubly
ironic given AI is trained on the corpus of stories that have come before, and
writing hopeful climate fiction is challenging precisely because it’s the
opposite of that. I discussed this in my classes—it’s difficult to untrain our
minds and our expectations, which have likewise been immersed in the corpus of
stories that have come before, to create something that not only shows a
blueprint for a better world (rather than reinforcing the status quo), but also
buttresses the kind of hope that inspires, that says the future is worth
fighting for. This is impossible for chatGPT, but more importantly, it is
necessary for us."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
