For my day job, I write software to make renewable power projects more affordable. Before that, I worked in life insurance, and before that, managed health care. I sleep much better at night these days.

Climate change is real. I know that what I’m doing isn’t enough, but maybe if enough of us do our part, there can be a future for our children or our children’s children.

We’ve seen hurricane seasons get worse, record high temperatures get higher, and catastrophic forest fires become seasonal events. We have the data. It’s not a fluke. It’s serious. The one planet we can exist on is on fire, and it’s a problem we have to take seriously.

I’m not sure what else to say on that topic.

The Repossessed Ghost doesn’t get into it. It’s a light, fun, urban fantasy that doesn’t deal in particularly difficult topics. It’s escapist fiction which offers a pleasant distraction from the kind of existential dread one might experience when considering climate change and the future of humanity.

Synthetic Dreams, on the other hand, has climate change at the core of its premise. It seems that when I sit down to write futuristic fiction, my imagination rarely comes up with pleasant futures for us humans. Spin City is a little bit more hopeful, but there is implied cataclysm on Earth in the background. That story does not visit Earth, and if I write any sequels, it’s unlikely that I’ll take the narrative to Earth then, either. It’s probably not a very hospitable place.

I’m not the only writer of science fiction that has a hard time seeing us get around the problem of out-of-control global warming. There’s something about the data that when you look at it, and then you look at the rest of the world and the kinds of problems people seem most concerned with, that hope is not the first thing that comes to mind when writing about the future.

Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe enough of us will do what we can to put out the fire on time. I’m not holding my breath, but I am still doing my job.

This is a huge bummer of a post, and I’m sorry for that. Tomorrow I’ll talk about weather as a tool of the writer and it’ll be much more pleasant, but when it comes to the climate and climate change, it’s hard for me to make light of it.