Climate Short Stories for Teaching

Below, we share a list of short stories that you and your class can use to engage in reading, writing, and discussing climate fiction. These stories take a positive, visionary approach to the subject of climate change, focusing on fighting and adapting to climate change.

Through envisioning cultural tools and social strategies for transitioning to a post-carbon world, these stories offer inspiration and guidance for how we might address our very real problems—not just through magical new technology, but through cultural shifts that make use of the technology we already have.

These texts could be used for whole-class reading, and could enrich a larger unit on climate change or even lead to students researching and creating their own artistic explorations of futures altered by climate change. Questions for discussion follow each listing.

For more see:

• Climate Change Fiction: An Updated Annotated Bibliography
• Climate Poetry for Teaching
• Climate Short Stories for Teaching
• Climate Novels for Teaching
• Climate Fiction: Dystopias and Allegories
• Climate Movies
  
   

The collection, Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors (2025, published at Grist magazine) includes stories in which intersectionality shapes hopeful visions of a more sustainable world. 
 

“This View From Here” by Rich Larsen follows a young woman torn between her love for her ecological work in the city and her love for her family home in the Appalachians. 

• Questions for Discussion: What details show us how Vivian feels about her home? Have you ever felt torn between leaving or staying? Whose perspective makes more sense to you: Vivian’s or her pa’s?

In “The Ones Left Behind” by K.J. Chien, Grace runs a silkworm restaurant in flooded Chinatown. She misses lost family members and worries about the water supply. 

• Questions for Discussion: Why is it important to Grace to preserve her family business? What factors make it challenging for her? What connections do you make to this story? 

“Our Continuity, Each of Us Raindrops” by Parker M. O’Neill portrays how an upstate New York community copes with the legacy of past efforts to make rain.

• Questions for Discussion: What might this story suggest about the value of collective effort vs. individual heroism?

“The Isle of Beautiful Waters” by Lily Séjor combines legends and oral histories into the story of a Caribbean family preparing for yet another hurricane. 

• Questions for Discussion: How has the community adapted to their circumstances? Why are stories so important to Ma Nee in particular?

The 2024 collection, Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors at Grist includes several standout stories, depicting positive adaptation strategies to the climate crisis:
 

“Cabbage Koora: A Prognostic Autobiography” by Sanjana Sekhar examines generational patterns of food, technology, and love, as a woman in L.A. reaches out to relatives as a daughter, as a mother, and finally as a grandmother herself. 

• Questions for Discussion: What changes over the course of the main character’s life? What stays constant? What does this story make you consider about family? 

“To Labor for the Hive” by Jamie Liu follows a woman caring for bees as her village in China adapts to rising temperatures. 

• Questions for Discussion: What can humans learn from bees? When is new technology good and when is it harmful? How are humans like bees? What does it look like not to leave anyone in a community behind?

In “Seder in Siberia” by Louis Evans, a holiday meal in an Arctic settlement turns tense when the family’s history of climate breakdown is revealed. 

• Questions for Discussion: Why did the family originally think their father left Texas? What do they learn from Jonathan? How do the words and stories from the Seder ceremony connect to the experiences and moral dilemmas created by climate change?

“The Last Almond” by Zoe Young tells the story of two floods in California, past and present, showing how drought and rain change lives and livelihoods.

• Questions for Discussion: Why is the deliberate flooding of the farm necessary? What small details in the story stand out to you the most?

“The Food Fighters” by Prashant Vaze (2024) was published in Anthropocene magazine as part of their ongoing Climate Parables series. In this story, two brothers take opposite approaches to farming their land in India.

• Questions for Discussion: Which solutions in this story seem most exciting? Valuable? Achievable? Which farm would you rather live or work at? Why?

“When We Are Ruins, Dance on Us” by M. Jesuthasan was one of the 2023 editors’ picks at Grist. The narrator is the old Supreme Court Building of Singapore, carrying all the old perspectives of colonial power as it critiques the emerging worldview of human survivors of cultural and climate changes. 

• Questions for Discussion: What parts of the building’s perspective surprised you? What is your perspective? How is it similar or different?

The 2022 collection of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors was published at Grist. These four would be excellent stories to contrast with one or two other more dystopian futures to ask students to argue for which versions of the future seem most likely to come true and why. 
 

“Benni and Shiya are Leaving” by Jerri Jerreat is about a mother moving for a new job and renegotiating her relationship with her child. It also introduces us to solar trains, rewilding projects, and communes of a new world. 

• Questions for Discussion: What are the challenges Benni and Shiya face in adapting to a new community? How has their world adapted to the challenges of climate change?

   

“A Holdout in the Northern California Designated Wildcraft Zone” by T.K. Rex is a humorous story of the burgeoning friendship between a forest hippie and an ecological management drone assigned to remove her.

• Questions for Discussion: Why is the drone supposed to remove humans from the wilderness? Do you think the drone made the right decision at the end of the story? Why or why not?

“Seven Sisters” by Susan Kaye Quinn explores the everyday struggles of running a tea farm in an unstable climate.

• Questions for Discussion: What are the positive and negative aspects of this story’s world? How do the “sisters” care for each other amidst the stress of their situation? What would you do in this situation? Why?

“The Florida Project” by Morayo Faleyimu imagines how a post-flooding Florida could become a wilderness area, replanted with native vegetation by those whose history on the land gives them a special appreciation for it. 

• Questions for Discussion: Why do Tray and Cora decide to go back to Florida? What are connections you can make between the family relationships in the story and the land they live on?

“Those They Left Behind” by Jules Hogan, in Everything Change Volume III, edited by Angie Dell and Joey Eschrich (2021, published at Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination). This story contrasts the privileged who depart a dying Earth with those who, by force or by choice, stay behind. Whether through art, agriculture, or science, those who stay find a purpose in working to remedy the damage created by their ancestors. 

• Questions for Discussion: Why did some people leave Earth? What are some positive things people lost by leaving? Would you have left on the Ascents? Why or why not?

The 2021 collection of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors was published at Grist. Here are four exemplary stories:
 

“The Cloud Weaver’s Song” by Saul Tanpepper imagines a futuristic city above the Horn of Africa, where the desert drought has forced its inhabitants to build towers in the clouds where they harvest water. 

• Questions for Discussion: How do the story’s characters respond to the idea of change? Which ways of responding to change do you think are healthier and which are less so?

“Tidings” by Rich Larson strings together five vignettes, imagining how our descendants might use technology to renew and reconnect with the natural world rather than destroy it. 

• Questions for Discussion: In what ways has the world in this story become a more dangerous, damaged place? In what ways has it become more beautiful and connected?

“A Worm to the Wise” by Marissa Lingen. In a decaying near-future world, a young journalist works to reclaim and nourish the soil in a demolished housing development. l. 

• Questions for Discussion: Why does Augusta, initially, choose to work at the soil reclamation farm? What new reasons does she find for working there by the end of the story? 

“El, the Plastotrophs, and Me” by Tehnuka Ilanko depicts a communal household living in Aotearoa (New Zealand), practicing “devolution” as they use indigenous practices to lead to a more sustainable future. Conflicts between heritage and belonging, ideals and the necessity for compromise animate this story. Note: Maori vocabulary might challenge students. 

• Questions for Discussion: What does it mean to belong to a community whose heritage you do not share? To what extent can we live with imperfection in our quest for balance and sustainability?

“Factory Air,” by Omar El-Akkad, is one of four climate fiction stories in the 2019 Climate Fiction issue of Guernica. Of those stories, it is the one most concerned with the problem of how to fight the large-scale economic structures causing climate change. 

• Questions for Discussion: Why does Cassie decide what she does at the end of the story? Would you make the same decision? Why or why not?

The Weight of Light, edited by Joey Eschrich and Clark A. Miller (2018, published at Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination). The four short stories in this collection envision the social possibilities and challenges of different kinds of solar power.
 

“For The Snake of Power,” by Brenda Cooper, explores the conflict between one young woman’s work at a public solar plant and her origins in the low-income community her company serves. 

• Questions for Discussion: How might climate change affect the gap between the rich and the poor? What does fair energy distribution look like? What can individuals and communities do to make sure energy is fairly distributed?

“Under the Grid,” by Andrew Dana Hudson, is set in a decaying city under an Emergency Government, where solar infrastructure is funded by foreign investors and local collectives manage people’s compliance with new energy laws. 

• Questions for Discussion: As we make the collective transition to green energy, is there still room for individual freedom and choice? What are the advantages and disadvantages of individually owned solar in the story? How does the story represent the US economy compared to China?

“Big Rural,” by Cat Rambo, explores a rural community’s challenges when coal mining jobs disappear and a new solar plant arrives, bringing few new jobs and altering the landscape. 

• Questions for Discussion: What unique cultural and economic challenges do rural communities face when transitioning away from fossil fuels? Who should make major energy decisions such as whether to build a huge solar facility in a particular area: corporations, the federal government, local communities, or some combination of the three? What are the pros and cons of each?

“Divided Light,” by Corey Pressman, is a story about two competing communities in a desert after the end of fossil fuels. 

• Questions for Discussion: What might be the artistic, cultural, and practical merits of these two different communities’ approaches to powering our lives?

“Sunshine State,” by Adam Flynn and Andrew Dana Hudson, in Everything Change Volume I, edited by Milkoreit, Martinez, and Eschrich (2016, published at Arizona State University's Climate Futures Initiative). This short story imagines a secret solarpunk collective in the Everglades, working to adapt humans and ecosystems to climate change as the next big storm hits Florida. 

• Questions for Discussion: What legal, social, and economic barriers might exist when transitioning away from our current fossil-fuel system? What tools and strategies helped overcome those barriers in this story?

“Elves of Antarctica,” by Paul McAuley, in Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond, edited by Jonathan Strahan (2016), stands out for its exploration of the tradeoffs of climate mitigation. The story is set within the next century, after much of the Antarctic ice sheet has melted and drowned coastal and island cities. 

• Questions for Discussion: Is there a conflict between using technology to slow climate change vs. accepting the beauty of the natural world even amidst its unnatural changes?

Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction, edited by John Joseph Adams (2015) includes two dozen stories exploring the social causes of climate change and the efforts to stop it.
 

“The Precedent” by Sean McMullen (2010) is a dystopian story about how the post-tipping-point generation takes revenge on those responsible. Be aware: This story depicts torture and graphic execution. 

• Questions for Discussion: How should we balance individual and collective responsibility for climate change? Who is responsible for the suffering of future generations? Should those held responsible be punished? What are some alternatives to conflict, revenge, and violence?

“Truth and Consequences,” by Kim Stanley Robinson (2015), excerpted from The Green Earth a.k.a. the Science in the Capital trilogy, shows scientists and politicians working to fight climate change after natural disasters strike the world. 

• Questions for Discussion: What would it take for our government and industries to make similar changes today? Do these fictional tales inspire us to act or lead to complacency and indifference?

“Entanglement” by Vandana Singh (2014) is a novella consisting of five interconnected stories about people in the near future fighting climate change in various ways.

• Questions for Discussion: Can small actions create significant results in the world? How is this novella like an ecosystem itself?

“The Day It All Ended” by Charlie Jane Anders (2014) is a satire of consumer culture in which a hip tech company has a secret plan to save the world without anyone noticing. 

• Questions for Discussion: Do you think people would be more likely to spend money on frivolous gadgets than carbon-capture technology? How, or why, might that happen?

“The Tamarisk Hunter” by Paolo Bacigalupi (2006) is also at High Country News. The story is about rural life in a water-starved and futuristic American Southwest. 

• Questions for Discussion: How do Lolo’s motivations and actions conflict with the collective goals of those paying him? Is that conflict inevitable? Why or why not? How are conflicts over water rights already shaping people’s lives today?

“Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet” by Margaret Atwood (2009) is also at The Guardian. This 2-page letter from an extinct human race offers no explicit strategies for averting climate change, but its brevity serves as a quick in-class read. 

• Questions for Discussion: In the story, what is the significance of the gods having horns, beaks, or feathers? How did money become a god? Why did humans create deserts? What real-life economic, cultural, or spiritual changes would need to occur for us to prevent the outcome in this story?