The Blogs: Cli-fi, no lie

Remember this as you go about your daily work chores and your household chores and your internet maintenance sub-chores: “Thou Shalt Not Kill (the Planet).”

That was the headline over a recent climate change risk assessment article in a Norwegian newspaper by a reporter named Monica Bjermeland in Oslo: “Thou shalt not kill (the planet).”

Since the article was in Norwegian, I asked a friend of mine in Norway named Tonje Fjagesund what the article was all about.a few days later, Tonje replied by email.

“Thank you for your email. Cli-fi continues to interest me. I apologise for the late reply, I was away in the mountains without internet connection,” she said.

“The article, and the book it discusses, puts its focus on the language used by climate communicators and academics to communicate climate change and questions whether hard scientific facts should or can be supplemented with more popular and cultural language in order to reach people, and to make them more aware of climate change.”

So we come to today’s headline here: ”Cli-fi, no lie.” It continues where we left off yesterday in my previous post.

Climate change is real, no lie, and the rise of a new literary genre that’s been dubbed ”cli-fi” is no lie, too. Cli-fi is real, and real people are writing it already and more cli-fi novels and movies are on their way in the next 25 years. After that, it’s anybody’s guess how long cli-fi will last. Maybe another 100 years. Maybe another 500 years. If we get that far.

There’s even a hashtag now on Twitter for those writing cli-fi novels and film scripts: #amwritingclifi

So yes, cli-fi, no lie. From musicians writing lyrics about climate change to performance artists staging shows about global warming, cli-fi has become part of the arts now and not just in English-speaking countries, either. The whole world wants in now on cli-fi and everyone is welcome.

When Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released a song titled “Anthrocene” on Youtube earlier this year, it went viral and both the melody and the lyrics were chilling, haunting, mesmerizing.

And when Sting released a song about climate change last year about the disappearance of penguins in the Arctic waters, titled “One Fine Day,” the song also went viral (even though Sting forget that there are no penguins in the Arctic, only Antarctica and Chile: that gaffe is excused because it’s part of what’s called poetic license, and Sting can make all the gaffes he wants because his voice carries far and brings messages of hope to all who care about planet Earth.

He even sang the song at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in 2016!

And please capitalize the word Earth whenever you write it. Our home planet deserves a capital letter E because, yes, it’s the Earth, our Earth, the Earth we need to listen to with care and constant action to remedy what currently ails her.

Cli-fi, no lie…