The novels on this list 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 Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins (2023). This YA novel follows Emi as she navigates a near-future world in which society has responded to the devastations of climate change by relocating cities, reimagining the economy, and moving on from the past. This book is ambitious in its world-building, imagining a hopeful mutual-aid utopia that is also far more approachable for teenage readers than the more intricate versions from authors like Kim Stanley Robinson.
- Questions for Discussion: In this fictional future, what are the ideas, values, or behaviors that appeal to you? How did the characters in this story achieve it? Who is right about the best way to deal with those who profit from destruction— Kristina or Larch? What is relatable to you about Emi’s experiences?
Down Came the Rain by Jennifer Mathieu (2023). This YA novel is a thoughtful exploration of teenage anxiety and grief related to climate change, structured as a gentle romance. Eliza and Javier meet when their high schools merge locations after a hurricane. The book explores conflicts between different forms of activism, such as taking immediate action or taking time to process, as well as the intersectional experiences of different economic classes regarding the same natural disaster.
- Questions for Discussion: Why is it difficult for Eliza to listen to Javier’s perspective? How does her protest method at the end of the book affect others, especially Javier? What kinds of activism seem most meaningful to you? Why?
The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow (2023) follows an idealistic teenager in 2050s California. A community of builders, refugees, and activists help him fight for a better world. More compelling than the plot is the solarpunk atmosphere, which is joyful and casually visionary: Homebrewed kombucha, bike share apps, decentralized social media, prefabricated building panels, self-driving taxis, and mutual aid job lists add colorful detail to the fictional world depicted. This book is recommended for students who are ready for something more challenging than Dry.
- Questions for Discussion: What parts of the world in this book seem realistic? What parts seem harder to imagine actually happening? Why? What specific actions do characters take that are effective in creating change? Multiple characters in this book use the metaphor of a lifeboat to describe resources for survival. If someone has a lifeboat, what is their obligation to others who are outside of the lifeboat? How is the eventual fate of Burbank important to the message of the story?
The Future by Naomi Alderman (2023). In this near-future story, fictional versions of Facebook, Apple, and Amazon become emblems for technological anxiety eating away at our ability to relate to other humans and to reality itself. This book highlights the paradox of our search for artificial intelligence while we destroy the flora and fauna already populating our planet.
- Questions for Discussion: Is progress a myth? What technological and cultural ideas do you think preserve? What technological and cultural ideas should go? Why?
Two Degrees by Alan Gratz (2022). Non-stop cliffhangers animate this middle school novel that many highschoolers will also enjoy. It follows three four adolescent characters who flee from flood, fire, and a starving apex predator.
- Questions for Discussion: What parts of the story surprised you the most? How does each character mature over the course of the story? What do they each learn?
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton (2022). This novel explores the devastation resulting from hurricanes, floods, and the loss of civilization. The story works on three levels: It is a plot-driven survivalist adventure, a psychological exploration of the balance between loneliness and love, and a speculative vision of an emerging relationship between humans and the land to which they belong (a vision which, as noted in the author’s acknowledgments, owes a debt to the Indigenous tribes of Florida who lived on it first.) The book’s intention is not to rally civilization to fight climate change, but rather to imagine how survivors of these changes might relate to nature in a different way.
- Questions for Discussion: How do the different characters (Frida, Kirby, Phyllis, Lucas, Corey, Bird Dog) respond to climate change? What are the key factors that help Wanda survive? If you had to survive in your local area without modern technology, what would you eat and drink? What other needs would you have? How would you attempt to meet them? What do you think would change the most about your life? What would remain the same?
The Deluge by Stephen Markley (2022). This novel balances six narrators, each responding differently to the climate crisis spanning from 2020 to 2040. These narrators convey the emotional weight of different paths taken to mitigate the effects of a changing world. The book also explores the ways class, gender, race, and political identity shape our responses to climate change. Be aware: Depictions of drug abuse, violence, and sex.
- Questions for Discussion: What do you think makes some people respond to disasters with despair and others with determined energy? What l sacrifices do various characters make to preserve humanity’s future? Do you think they were worth making? Why or why not?
Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North (2021). This novel begins in a post-apocalyptic utopia where our heroes consider some technology (bicycles and Kindles) ordinary and other modes (tanks and stock trading) heretical. This book’s key insight is grounding our understanding ecology in religion may be the only way to transform our present culture of destruction.
- Questions for Discussion: Which world would you rather live in: Ven’s world or our own? Why? Why do you think people are drawn to the Brotherhood? How are the characters’ religious beliefs similar to or different from your own?
Glimmer by Marjorie B. Kellogg (2021). The novel’s protagonist, Glimmer’s storm-induced amnesia renders her a sympathetic guide of the disintegrating New York City she inhabits. Tribal ‘dens’, scavenging and growing food in the crumbling buildings of Manhattan, struggle to survive and evade human selfishness and depravity. By Be aware: This book includes scenes of torture.
- Questions for Discussion: What do you think would be the greatest adjustment, or challenge, when living in Glimmer’s New York City? Which “den” would you be most drawn to join or would you choose to live on your own? Why is working together so difficult in this novel? Why is this important?
The High House by Jessie Greengrass (2021) tells the story of a group of adults thrown together in a coastal summer house to raise a child as the world collapses around them. In this meditative and absorbing portrayal of daily life, the ordinary losses of growing up and aging illuminate the stranger losses that climate change inflicts.
- Questions for Discussion: Do you agree or disagree with the parents’ decision to leave Pauly with Caro? What effect does Pauly have on the rest of the people in the high house? What are the biggest surprises that the characters in the story experience? What do these teach us? Do you think building a high house is an effective response to the threat of climate change? Why or why not?
Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson (2021). Adventurous, ironic, and lighthearted despite its subject matter, this novel follows wildly disparate characters, including the Queen of the Netherlands, a Texan hunter of wild hogs, and a Sikh martial arts kid. Their lives intersect in intricate and surprising ways as each becomes involved with a businessman’s plan to go rogue on climate change by geoengineering the stratosphere. (Read an excerpt of this section here.)
- Questions for Discussion: When considering how to be safe in a rapidly changing world, do you think Uncle Ed is correct that “it was better to live somewhere obviously dangerous, because it kept you on your toes” (534)? Why or why not?
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (2020). This novel imagines life in the 21st century as the effects of climate change-- starting with a deadly heat wave in India-- slowly begin to change the social order. In startling detail, the book imagines how the world might reverse its current course. Though this is a doorstop of a novel, the haunting tour-de-force of Chapter 1 could stand alone as a text for discussion as can this section on glacial water pumping.
- Questions for Discussion: What response could or should a country like India make to climate change in light of its experiences in this book? Is violence in defense of the climate justified or not? Which of the solutions or actions to fight climate change as described in this book are the most plausible?
The Disappearing Shore by Roberta Park (2019). This is a short and mystical novel about our present and future. In short vignettes, farmers, activists, lawyers, and rock stars meditate on the natural world and humanity’s emotional inertia as climate disaster approaches.
Questions for Discussion: Which of the characters’ stories in Part 1 do you most identify with? Why? Which perspectives seem most odd or confusing to you? What changes have happened to humans between Part 1 and Part 2 of this story? In what ways might those changes be negative? In what ways might those changes be positive? What has stayed the same?
The Survival Game by Nicky Singer (2018). This YA novel follows a young woman heading home to Scotland as the borders close due to climate change. Mhairi’s language and internal symbolic world are carefully drawn and help students internalize the experience of climate refugees.
- Questions for Discussion: Do you think the Scotland in this book has a just society? Why or why not? What does Mhairi mean when she says there are words that “slide”? What choices have helped Mhairi survive? What choices have made her survival more difficult? Why does she make different choices over time?
Dry by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman (2018). This powerful YA dystopia follows a group of California teenagers as their lives suddenly become a horrifying fight for survival.
- Questions for Discussion: What are some of the ways t the lack of water changes life for the characters in this story? What are some of the reasons people survive or don’t survive in this story? What advice do you think the characters at the end of the book would give their past selves at the beginning of the book? What advice do you think the characters would give us today?
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson (2017). This novel imagines New York after rising seas put Lower Manhattan underwater, and creatively) explores the ways that buildings, food, transportation, politics, and economics might change in a post-carbon world.
- Questions for Discussion: How does our economic system encourage climate change, both in real life and in this novel? What do you think it would take to enact the renewable energy changes in the novel sooner? In what ways is life in this novel like life today? How is it different? How would your life change if the sea rose fifty feet? Would you be willing to live in such a world? Why or why not?
Exodus (2002), Zenith (2009) and Aurora (2011) by Julie Bertagna form an accessible YA trilogy set around 2100, when rising seas have submerged much of the world, sending refugees in search of a new home. The series explores the tension between technological and natural ways of living in a changed reality and highlights the value of compassion in a harsh world.
- Questions for Discussion: Why do the privileged hoard their material resources for themselves rather than sharing with others? What are the advantages and disadvantages of technological escapism vs living in the “real world”?
The Carbon Diaries 2015 and The Carbon Diaries 2017 by Saci Lloyd (2009-2011). This humorous YA novel and its sequel depict a teenage girl and her family dealing with electricity rationing and carbon taxes in London post-extreme global weather events.
- Questions for Discussion: How would similar laws to the ones in this book change your life? What would you spend your carbon points on? How bad do you think climate change would get before politicians would enact such laws in the present day? What would it take to convince the public to accept them? A discussion guide from the publisher is here.