2038. A group of pilgrims are guided by a botanist named Jake through the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral on an island off the British Columbia coast. In this exclusive ecological resort, tech giants, celebrities, and investment bankers gather to see one of the last remaining old-growth forests on the planet and interact with the otherwise-nearly-extinct nature.
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This is how the story of Greenwood, Michael Christie’s novel, opens.
After the environmental crisis known as “the Great Withering,” much of the world is a dust bowl; climate refugees trek across the continent as children die of a horrifying new strain of tuberculosis called “rib retch.” With aquifers drying up in the United States, Russia under totalitarian rule, and even New Zealand experiencing a coup, “water- and tree-rich Canada has become the global elite’s panic room.” The Canadian prime minister is the most powerful politician in the world.
For those who love to read science fiction stories about climate change, which has become increasingly known as “cli-fi” this will be a familiar scene. But while other cli-fi stories ironically plunge its readers into despair instead of empowering them into action, Michael Christie’s novel gives us another perspective to this kind of scenario, and his novel gives us what others seem to forget: hope.
Know more about cli-fi and why we should stop obsessing over the end of the world, over at The Walrus.
(Image Credit: Gellinger/ Pixabay)
Source: neatorama