Eco-fiction

Ecofiction

For some of us, the scientific evidence supporting a pending global climate catastrophe is overwhelmingly convincing. For many others, this tsunami of alarming facts and figures, and a grim portent of grave dangers to come, is simply overwhelming. This same evidence leads some of us to make environmentally sound lifestyle choices and others to worry themselves sick over the surfeit of doomsday scenarios being offered to them by the media—global warming, toxic waste, polluted drinking water, deforestation, invasive species, desertification, biodiversity loss, acid rain… “Is the end really near?” they are wondering. It’s a question that scientists can best answer, but scientists generally are not the best communicators.

As a result, a naïve public that does not understand how scientific thinking works is ill-prepared to sort out fact from hyperbole and is prone to suffer from despair. This kind of worry has become common enough to have been given a name by mental health therapists—eco-anxiety. As reported by Justin Nobel in the April 9, 2007 issue of the Philadelphia Enquirer, “Melissa Pickett, an eco-therapist with a practice in Santa Fe, says she sees between 40 to 80 eco-anxious patients a month. ‘They complain of panic attacks, loss of appetite, irritability and unexplained bouts of weakness, sleeplessness and “buzzing,” described as an eerie feeling that their cells are twitching.’”

Eco-educators are reporting that they are seeing what they describe as “eco-fatigue” in their audiences and are seeking new ways to refresh, motivate, and stimulate creative thinking. Dragnet-type eco-education—“Just the facts, ma’am”—seems to be have a numbing effect on students. The problem is that facts are mute. In and of themselves they neither generate the desire to understand nor the judgment to do A instead of B. Actions, whether they are large or small, are taken by human beings—individuals who are living out their own personal stories. Wisely, education experts are recommending that scientific theory and data be embedded in creative stories with explicit values—fiction.

Works of fiction are imaginative stories that often draw on actual events and real people. And, fiction is appealing because of its ability to entertain as well as enlighten the reader by providing a deeper understanding of the human condition. During times of large-scale social, political, and economic upheaval, fiction writers have played an important role in defining and dramatizing modern cultural issues.

That fiction can be a powerful educational and motivational tool has been recognized by numerous advocates for social change. Tony Christini writes that,

“Imaginative writing can be both literary and political simultaneously, and inevitably is, to varying degrees. In its own way, fiction can accomplish something similar to what Noam Chomsky and many other progressive workers try to accomplish through nonfiction: the creation of works that clarify and better the world socially, politically, culturally….

”Fiction can be used to address what Chomsky calls “Orwell’s Problem”: How is it that oppressive ideological systems are able to “instill beliefs that are firmly held and widely accepted although they are completely without foundation and often plainly at variance with the obvious facts about the world around us?” In other words, how is it that people are persuaded to act willingly and willfully against their own best interests and against values regarding themselves and others they otherwise hold dear? Fiction can debunk harmful propaganda and taboos; it can help energize, motivate, inspire and all the while maintain a vital literary quality by staying focused in part on fiction’s core strengths, the plumbing of the depths of the human condition through character—psychology, personality, motivation, mindset….”Such fiction is both intensely personal and social in its exploration of the nature of relations between the private and the public in ways that can enrich and enable our individual lives and society.”

Donna Seaman states that,
“Fiction, a far more popular form [of writing] than nature writing, may be the ideal conduit for introducing ecological thinking to the common reader. In my own reading, I’ve noticed intriguing correlations between what nonfiction writers report from the field and how nature is depicted in contemporary novels and short stories. Many works of fiction either deliberately or intuitively explore our conflicted feelings about the wild in an age in which the profound consequences of our burgeoning population and insatiable appetites are becoming visible to even the most reluctant eyes.”

More and more often, these fictional works, whose themes of interconnectedness between humans and the natural world and the dangers brought upon the world by the continued degradation or destruction of the environment, are referred to as “environmental fiction” or “ecofiction.”