Cli-fi this week: (May 22-29) – What’s trending worldwide

It’s college and high school graduation season around the world, as this year’s graduates prepare to enter a new phase in their lives. Here is a ”virtual graduation speech” delivered to the Harvard Class of 2099, yes, 2099, by a guest speaker who won’t be alive then. It’s a 4-minute video on YouTube and it’s food for thought. The theme is: “We must tighten the noose around coal,” a concept conceived by Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University in New York in 1988. And here we are in 2017, and coal is still king. When does this end?

• Nathan Kensinger in ”Curbed” online, has written a longform essay on where New York City stands in an age (and a future) where rising sea levels, warming temperatures and vast changes in the city’s population might very well determine where the metropolis and its outlying areas are heading, come the Climapocalypse. If it ever comes. See “Imagining a Manhattan Ravaged By Climate Change” 

• New York literary critic Amy Brady has launched a monthly cli-fi column at the Chicago Review of Books that examines current trends in climate fiction novels and movies. Her column is titled “Burning Worlds” and appears in the first week or so of each month at the literary magazine’s website. A recent column was headlined “Why Climate Fiction Matters: An Interview with UMass professor Malcolm Sen.”

• Canadians Bruce Meyer (as editor) and Michael Callaghan (as publisher) have released a paperback anthology of 17 short stories by Canadian writers titled “Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change.” It’s a first for Canada and actually a first for the world. See the publisher’s website for details and names of the 17 authors. 

• Thanks to the Climate Desk at the New York Times, here are four virtual-reality films that take you on, above and below the Antarctic ice. Watch for a fully immersive experience about the impact of polar ice melting north and south.

• Cli-Fi 24/7: A continually-updated link for Google searches about cli-fi news and trends, updated daily, can be found here.