Climate control and all that…
I think climate control should be a bipartisan concern: we’re now ruining the planet for future generations, so it should be the number one concern that goes beyond election cycles and partisan politics. What we’re doing now is an evil worldwide attack on Gaia, but certain countries are guiltier than others, especially industrialized nations who are dependent and continue their dependence on fossil fuels without remorse. The melting glacier on the bio page of this website symbolizes all that.
While these themes sporadically occur in my fiction (dikes on NYC’s Hudson and East Rivers, toxic mining residues, dependence on fossil fuels, water shortages, endangered species and extinctions, etc.), I usually don’t make a big deal out of them. Frankly, they ARE a big deal, so I shouldn’t have to mention them at all!
My new novel The Last Humans (Black Opal Books, March, 2019) considers water shortages and steps to prevent them. That was the main theme in what started as a short story, but it was reduced to weaving in and around only one of main character Penny Castro’s many adventures in that novel, leading to a climax. My very first novel, Full Medical (Xlibris, 2006, now with a 2011 ebook second edition from Carrick Publishing), mentions the dikes on the Hudson and East Rivers. Later books, for example, Soldiers of God (Infinity, 2008, now with a 2014 second edition from Carrick Publishing), mention the perfidious influence of fossil fuels.
Only one novel, though, Gaia and the Goliaths (Carrick Publishing, 2017), makes environmental concerns a main theme. Many readers know that Gaia is the Greek goddess representing Earth and her name is often used to indicate that our planet is a living organism that deserves to survive—no, she must survive if human beings are going to survive! In my novel, Gaia is also the name of an environmental activist who becomes a homicide case for my two detectives, Chen and Castilblanco. Yes, I intended her murder to be symbolic (the working title while I wrote the novel was Killing Gaia).
One thing the pragmatic progressive Castilblanco defends both literally and philosophically, much to the consternation of his conservative partner Chen, is nuclear power (yes, a wee bit of role reversal!). His arguments are better stated in the NY Times Sunday Review article “Nuclear Power Can Save the World” by Joshua Goldstein et al (4/7/2019). The argument made there is so scientifically convincing and so succinct that I won’t try to summarize it here. Everyone should read it.
I’ll only emphasize that the article does mention how France and Sweden, by championing nuclear power, have greatly reduced their carbon emissions from fossil fuel use without hurting their economies. That didn’t happen overnight, of course, but it does show how myopic some countries are being, among them the US. And it does point to a path forward far more effective than hydroelectric (most dams have already been built), solar, and wind energy sources for other countries (neither of which are efficient energy producers like nuclear reactors).
In the novel, an American petroleum company conspires with a Russian oligarch to undermine France’s revolution in using nuclear power reactors so that the French will become consumers of fossil fuels again, something that interests the Russians, of course. Several European countries like Germany have already fallen into that trap. You’ll have to read the novel to see how it all turns out.
My novel is but one example of how a general theme can inspire and wind into and around a plot to make it more interesting. The themes often come first to me as part of a what-if, then the plot, and finally the characters who carry the plot forward. Chen and Castilblanco often do a good job in the latter.
I don’t know why I waited so long to consider climate control as a major theme. For years I’ve realized it’s the most important problem that human beings now face. We might have already gone beyond the tipping point now. I hope not. We need all the non-fossil-fuel energy sources we can get. Frankenstein-like fears of nuclear energy as a boogey man are misplaced. As France and Sweden have proven, power reactors are safe as long as those who build and run them aren’t incompetent. ‘Nough said.
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Comments are always welcome.
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