The specter of cataclysmic environmental events has led to a growing need for cli-fi novels and movies to help us conceptualize our changing planet.

"The specter of cataclysmic environmental events has led to a growing need for novels and movies to help us conceptualize our changing planet. And the genre of dystopian climate-based fiction has helped both readers and educators put the effects of climate change into context," Andrew Hirschfeld recently wrote in a news article on the website ''Mic'' that was headlined "How climate fiction is helping people understand the planet's uncertain future."

There are now hundreds of cli-fi courses at community colleges and major universities in the USA, U.K., and Australia, largely in part to how Margaret Atwood has helped propel the genre since a popular tweet she sent out to her followers on Twitter in  2012, Hirschfeld noted.

Atwood has become a major figure across the cli-fi literary universe. She not only helped the term catch on when she tweeted about it in 2012, but her 2013 novel ''MaddAddam'' has been a popular teaching tool which largely summarizes the need for the genre in the first place, Hirschfeld added, sharing: "The book tells the story of a group of environmentalists, known as the gardeners, who rebuild the world after a global pandemic. The novel shows how fragile our global systems are.''


“People need such stories, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void,” Atwood has written. Her book was part of the curriculum for a course on cli-fi at Brandeis University in 2015.

In a recent email, after reading Hirchfeld's essay, Atwood sent this reporter a short email that read: "Yes, cli-fi is now front and center."

Cli-fi courses have popped up at major universities across the United States. The vast majority of young voters see climate change as a major issue -- and young people ssuch as 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg have been at the forefront of major climate movements.

Climate change-themed literature is starting to catch on in K-12 education, too, according to Mic.
"Places like Connecticut and Portland, Oregon are passing laws that would require climate change to be taught as part of the curriculum in public schools -- which would include the use of cli-fi literature in English classes," Hirschfeld wrote.

With the effects of climate change looming, he added, it only makes sense that Americans will need more ways to help them grapple with how the world is changing. We might very well need literary tools that speak to us beyond science textbooks and government charts, which for some readers, just might require a deep dive into the world of fiction.