Lindsay Lerman discusses What “Climate Fiction” Does. (They’re her air-quotes, by the way, although I’m in full agreement with her reasons for using them.)
… it is crucial that we recognize that, ultimately, there is no “cli-fi” and “not cli-fi.” All fiction has to grapple with place or setting in some way, and fiction often gives voice to concerns about place, setting, environment, etc. in ways that stretch our understanding, our imaginative capacity, and even the language we have at our disposal to describe unfolding phenomena. […] We must recognize that the ecological catastrophe increasingly featured in popular fiction is not new and that many bodies have borne the burden or paid the price of [this] catastrophe. Their stories have not often been told; indeed, they have not often been considered worth telling.
[…] we must keep in mind this capacity of ours to think into existence what does not yet (fully) exist. As broadly understood as possible, this capacity is what we call imagination—something that artists and thinkers with “political” interests and concerns have understood well. Imagination can never take the place of policy, but we must ask ourselves whether and how imagination can inform policy.
Very germane to our work in Climaginaries and elsewhere.
