We asked Dan Bloom, pictured above, who has been busy promoting the literary genre of cli-fi since 2011 and who has had a dedicated website since 2013 called ''The Cli-Fi Report'' at www.cli-fi.net if given his background and heavy personal investment in the genre, if, in his opinion, he thinks Cli-Fi Novels and Movies Can Save the Earth from Future Impacts of Runaway Climate Change. His blunt and perhaps surprising answer was a simple two-letter word: ''NO!'
NO? We sat down with Dan to find out why he of all people would answer the question that way. Here is our conversation, edited for clarity. What he says might surprise you.
QUESTION: Well, after all your work 24/7 promoting the genre in media outlets in over 12 countries, why do you say ''no'' to that question? [Can Cli-Fi Novels and Movies Save the Earth from Future Impacts of Runaway Climate Change?]
DAN BLOOM: You asked me for an honest answer and that's my honest answer. In my own personal view of things, and I've thought about this a lot, humankind is not going to make it past the next 500 years or so, maybe the next 1000 years maximum. Okay, maybe we have another 5000 years or even 10,000 years. But it's going to be a miserable, pitiable, subsistance kind of life on a radically changed planet and all our cli-fi novels and movies of the 21st century and 22nd century could not change a thing. Art is wonderful, language matters, words are important, storytelling is vital, but in the end all the cli-fi novels in the world cannot stop runaway global warming. Just books, stories, movies. Interesting to read and see, but in the end, useless at stopping climate change.
Things are not going to get bad in 12 years, as AOC and the IPCC say. Things are not going to get bad for another 30 generations, at least 500 years. Then, oh boy!
QUESTION: So why then did you spend so much energy and put so much effort into promoting the cli-fi term and monitoring its use in media aorund the world?
DAN BLOOM: I was drawn to it, and I still am. But as I monitored how people were reacting to the rise of cli-fi novels and movies, and how the *term* was mostly being *ignored* by scientists and politicians -- and even ignored by very aware and clued-in climate reporters and activists like Nathaniel Rich and Naomi Oreskes and David Wells-Wallace and Naomi Klein and George Monbiot and Mark Lynas and Bill McKibben and Amitav Ghosh -- I realized that nobody really gives a shit. They're all invested in their own careers, they own bylines, their own speaking fees, their own TV appearances and conference appearances.
So that's it. We're doomed. Novels and movies cannot change a thing, but they can make us think and that's still a good thing. So I am still promoting cli-fi and I will continue writing about it and promoting it until the day I die, but I know deep down that all this has been for naught. Nobody really cares. Nobody can really get over the hump. Nobody can accept that fact that we're doomed, doomed, within the next 30 generations. People just ignore me when I say that in my blogs and opeds. Nobody responds.
So I give up. I've led a useless, meaningless life, naively thinking that literature and cinema might matter in the global fight against climate change. I was wrong. These modern contrivances of art and storytelling don't matter at all, in the big picture of things.
QUESTION: So are you saying that cli-fi is a useless and meaningless genre?
DAN BLOOM: Yes. Sad to say, but that's my conclusion in 2019. Check back with me in ten years, in 2029. Let's compare notes then.
