Mainstream culture is no longer quiet about climate change, insists cli-fi arts and culture maven Lucy Jones in the UK

Lucy Jones, the arts and culture reporter for the Independent newspaper in London, offers a very important statement: "In the wake of the massive devastation caused by hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts, heat waves worldwide over the past few years, mainstream culture is finally waking up now about the risks of runaway climate change."

Her thought is big wide global wake up call!

For example, a new concept album from the 20-something artsy cutesy Ukrainian-Canadian singer/songwriter ''Grimes'' (Claire Boucher is her real name) and many new new novels suggest we are be entering a new era of climate-related stories about this time we live in. And cli-fi novels and movies are leading the way.

*Case in point: the popular American TV quiz show "Jeopardy" hosted by Alex Trebak recently used the cli-fi term as a clue for on its quest panel questions. It went down like this on the March 20 show, archived as Episode 57 for 2019:

Clue:  ''The planet's in trouble in the novel "New York 2140" by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is part of the ''cli-fi'' subgenre; what is this term short for?''

The correct answer was "climate fiction." Panelist Lindsey answered it correctly.

The subject of climate change in novels and movies is ripe for Hollywood movies and stories of corporate derring-do, according to Lucy Jones. And as the impact of a changing climate accelerates and millions of young people mobilize in school strikes, music and television and film and fiction are starting to capture the zeitgeist of ecological and climate anxiety, according to The Cli-Fi Report.

Jones cites examples of environmental art such as of Hollywood cli-fi thrillers (Waterworld, The Day After Tomorrow), novels (Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake; John Lanchester’s The Wall), songs (Anohni’s “4 Degrees”, Radiohead’s “Idioteque”, and Pixies’ “Monkey Gone To Heaven”).

The songwriter Toby Gad, who co-wrote the charity single “Love Song to the Earth” with artists including Paul McCartney, Natasha Bedingfield and Sean Paul, talked retrospectively about the challenge of writing about the environment without sounding “preachy” or too “doomsdayish.”

While we don’t yet have the vocabulary to express what is happening to humanity and planet Earth at this point in history, cli-fi novels are getting there. And "Earth Emotions," a new book by this blogger's Australian friend Dr Glenn Albrecht, speaks to this need for a new language to tell ecological stories. He coined the term "solastalgia" 20 years ago and it has made its mark.

Albrecht is most known for the concept of solastalgia, which means “the pain and distress caused by ongoing loss of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory.” Albrecht offers a framework within which to understand and acknowledge the dissociation of humans from the living world. With a new language and means of expression, a wider array of cli-fi stories from diverse voices can hopefully be heard.

So yes, cli-fi novels and movies, within popular culture east and west, in dozens of languages,can serve a wake-up call to this planet where we all now sing the climate protest anthem "We All Live in the Yellow Anthrocene." And yes, stories, music and art can move us in a way that hard facts don’t, according to the Cli-Fi Report.