Artists for the earth
Literary Arts
Climate change presents a problem in that as a phenomenon it seems vast, complex, and its immensity too difficult to contemplate. And while science can explain it factually, to the average person it still seems distant and abstract – not infiltrating normal daily life.
FICTION
In 2007 writer Dan Bloom coined the term “Cli-fi” to describe fiction dealing with climate change.
Through their narratives, writers are personalizing the conflict that global warming poses. In their stories, climate change causes particular dilemmas, and through the characters’ struggles to deal with their altered world, the immensity of climate change takes on a human scale and the abstraction gives way to an emotional landscape readers can relate to and empathize with.
Through the arts, and particularly fiction that can portray the psychological, social, political, and cultural impacts of climate change, a consciousness can be raised, and then a consensus brought about to resist the status quo and force civic processes to reach agreements on how to proceed.
Cli-fi is an essential tool that constructs meaning in the age of climate change. It brings scientific facts to life and without that, our behavior and politics cannot change.
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
This is a novel about how people feel about climate change. When a shocking thing happens in nature, it can be beautiful but frightening. She writes about how people either believe and absorb or deny the same evidence.
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
Ghosh believes that to treat the effects of climate change as surreal is to rob them of what makes them compelling – that they are actually happening.
Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich
A central message of Rich’s book is that we cannot afford to believe that catastrophic events caused by climate change will be exceptions to the rule, but the new reality.
Nothing Is As It Was edited by Amanda Saint is a collection of short stories about climate change – the profits of which are donated to Earth Day Network. 
The Lamentations of Zeno by Ilija Troganow
Troganow’s novel explores the existential threat of the collapse of Arctic glaciers through the eyes of his protagonist, a glaciologist.
The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer
Vandermeer’s trilogy are the books Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance which explore issues of ecology and global warming through the lens of a mysterious territory called Area X, a wilderness area separated from the rest of the world.
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
The novel takes place on Mercury which is built on giant tracks in order to for people to live in the habitable zone. The heroes must uncover a plot to destroy the planet. They are also involved in trying to re-wild a planet Earth that has been ravaged by climate change by returning species kept temporarily in space-based temporary environments to their home environments. 2312 explores the detrimental, long-term effects of climate change which include food shortages, global instability, mass extinction, 7-metre (23 ft.) sea level rise that has drowned many major coastal cities.
The Water Knife by J. Paolo Bacigalupi
The Water Knife explores environmental collapse and what would happen without water. It takes place in the American Southwest where, due perpetual drought, water is scarce and has come under the control of robber barons.
POETRY
The Romantic poets, often writing about beautiful rural landscapes as a source of joy, made nature poetry a popular poetic genre.
Distinct from nature poetry, environmental poetry explores the complicated connections between people and nature, often written by poets who are concerned about our impact on the natural world.
Poets today are serving as witnesses to climate change while bringing attention to important environmental issues and advocating for preservation and conservation.
Rise: From One Island to Another
Two indigenous poets, one in the Marshall Islands, and the other thousands of miles away in Greenland came together to recite the poem they had written via internet correspondence. For Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, rising water from melting glaciers threatens to inundate the islands of her homeland, while at the opposite end of the earth Aka Niviâna, an Inuk poet, watches her country’s ice sheets melt into the sea. Their poem, Rise, was filmed standing side by side on a melting glacier – two seemingly disparate communities woven together in a story of connectedness and universal truths
Here: Poems for the Planet edited by Rita Indiana
An anthology of contemporary poets writing for a planet in crisis, speaking in diverse voices from praise to witness to grief―and into action.
Freddy Fjellheim is a Norwegian poetry and prose writer and essayist. In 2013 he directed the initiative group The Norwegian Writer’s Climate Campaign. 
Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology edited by Melissa Tucker
Ghost Fishing is a collection of poetry that explores the links between culture, the environment, and social justice.
Holy Heathen Rhapsody by Pattiann Rogers
The poems in Holy Heathen Rhapsody express the creative power of life forms. Rogers is the recipient of the John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry, “in recognition of the power and permanence of Rogers’ entire body of work.”
Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, edited by Camille Dungy (author of Trophic Cascade, a collection of poems about environmental loss)
Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole.
Robert Haas
Hass was a U.S. Poet Laureate, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and won the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. Hass cofounded River of Words, an organization that teaches ecoliteracy through multidisciplinary, interactive curricula. In 1998 he started the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival.
Annie Finch
A strong current in the work of Annie Finch stems from a spiritual connection to the natural world and self as part of nature. Finch is the author of 5 books of poetry. One of her poems, Earth Day, was set to music by Dale Trumbore commissioned for an Ithaca College Composition Festival.
Are you an Artists for the Earth?
Share your stories and poems with us!