What if the stories we love could change how
we act on the climate? Today we're asking how
environmental literature and climate fiction,
or cli -fi, shape what we fear, what we hope,
and what we can do to address the climate crisis
and climate injustices. This is Climate to Action,
a CSUSM student podcast. We amplify voices, explore
solutions to the climate crisis, and confront
climate injustice for all living beings. We are
committed to discussions on climate justice and
Indigenous knowledge to address the climate crisis
and to providing a call to action in every episode.
First, we'd like to acknowledge that our recording
studio is on the traditional territory of the
Wisenyo -Payukowichan people. CSUSM and its surrounding
areas are still home to the six federally recognized
bands of the La Jolla, Paula, Pama, Pechanga,
Rincon, and Ceboba Luiseño Payacuicham people.
This land is also a shared space among the Kupenyo,
Kumeyaay, and Ipai peoples. Today's episode focuses
on environmental literature and cli -fi. Our
guest is Professor Dylan Winchock, who teaches
environmental literature and thinks deeply about
how stories shape climate action. Professor Winchock,
welcome. Thanks for having me. Professor Winchock,
could you introduce yourself, maybe talk a little
bit about what you teach, research, and how you
came to environmental literature? All right.
Well, I'm a professor of literature at CSUSM.
I've been here since about 2015. My research...
tends to gear towards the politics of space,
spatial theories, borders, borderlands, things
like that. And I teach mostly 20th century and
contemporary American literature and critical
theory. Pretty much every semester of every year,
I've also taught U .S. environmental lit. Part
of what I like about environmental lit is that
it kind of proves to be an aesthetic intersection
between spatial theory, landscape and environment
and all that. and practices of social justice.
Okay. What do you include under environmental
literature? Maybe novels, poetry, etc.? Yeah,
environmental literature is a really broad genre
of study. Nearly any text that sustains focus
on the environment in any way, shape, or form
can fit within this category. include texts that
meditate on the beauty of nature, but it could
also include texts that call people to action
against unjust environmental practices. It can
include any number of forms of writing, so creative
non -fiction to poetry, memoirs to drama, and
film, visual arts, music. Because of this broad
definition, I think it's often overlooked. Instead
of seeing environmental literature, people will
say, okay, this particular novel is late 20th
century, modern, realist novel, and it happens
to discuss acid rain. But lately, I feel like
people are more willing to accept that texts
focusing on environmental issues are part of
a long tradition that's itself worthy of serious
study. News and social media often frame the
climate via disasters. How does... literature
compared to this especially in the past uh novels
that dealt with environmental issues film art
uh often talked about it in very very alarming
ways uh they often contained a sense of impending
doom a feeling of helplessness and alongside
this is this kind of longing for the natural
world a kind of tragic love affair for the very
thing that we're destroying but recently Recently,
I think things have changed. There's increasingly
a discussion about how to navigate a world damaged
by our hands as though it might persist. Because
whether it's doomed or not, we have to learn
to live as though there's hope. I want to move
on to Orcs and Crake. I read Orcs and Crake in
Professor Winchock's critical thinking class,
which all literature and writing majors must
take. It's a crazy journey of a story that talks
about climate disaster, ethical dilemmas, playing
God, and... So, so much. But for listeners who
haven't read it, let's briefly summarize Oryx
and Crake. Professor, we can both talk about
it, but I'd like you to take it away. All right.
I'll try to summarize this very quickly. Oryx
and Crake, a novel by Margaret Atwood, published
in 2003. It's part of a trilogy. It's the first
book of the trilogy, followed by Year of the
Flood and Mad Adam. And it's a near future dystopian
novel, but also a post -apocalyptic novel, depending
on what part of the novel you're looking at.
And I feel like it's about the dangers of a kind
of corporatocracy, unbridled capitalism and unethical
forms of genetic engineering. It takes place
in a world where mass extinctions and ecological
disaster are kind of everyday occurrences amidst
extreme and unpredictable weather conditions.
And it introduces a number of genetically modified
organisms, from pigs used to harvest human body
parts to coffee plants whose beans all ripen
simultaneously. And all these things wreak havoc
on both the natural landscape and the human market.
Yeah, you mentioned the pigs used to... I think
it was Harvest Human Organs, The Pigeons. That
has stayed in my brain ever since I read it sophomore
year. I'm a junior now. And I just think about
it and think about like what Margaret Atwood
was trying to like talk about in terms of like
where our world is going. Because I felt like
she was scared about where our world was going.
Even back then, like that novel was written.
like 20 something years ago. And I were still
terrified about where the world is going and
all like, like experimentation that like the
common person doesn't know about, but that we
can, that we hear about, like sometimes in the
news, like, like crazy things happening or like,
oh, maybe that, but that was so long ago, or,
but that only happened in like this small burst
of things. And yeah, that, that really made me,
yeah, think about the world. Yeah, I think in
a lot of ways, the book is a cautionary tale
about the Anthropocene, a kind of warning to
us about what happens when the value of life,
both human and non -human life, is superseded
by monetary gain and corporate greed. The novel
imagines human -engineered ecological disaster
and possibly even an end to the human race. There's
a couple elements that do feel pretty close to
home today, like I was talking about. Things
like... pandemics uh privatization inequality
i especially want to talk about pandemics because
that's because that's like how um i think i feel
like that's how the novel is framed by that by
that pandemic like that's how the novel starts
like it's the aftermath of that crazy pandemic
yeah i think i think in order to talk about the
pandemic aspect of this book. I think the first
thing we need to think about is the kind of corporate
control of government. And I think that leads
up to this, because this idea of corporate control
of government is, I think, especially important
given our current political climate. What we
see in it is this kind of increasingly blatant
segregation of upper and lower classes, where
the rich live in these sheltered spaces with
high security, gated communities, and the poor
live with no protection from the ecological disasters
that have been unleashed. Similarly, we have
the segregation of the mind where the STEM fields
are given an excess of funding while the humanities
and arts have all but been replaced by the art
of marketing. All of this isolation, all these
kind of bubbles where people only hear echoes
of themselves from those around them produce
a world of stagnation and kind of a groupthink
mentality. And yeah, there are new innovations
and this kind of illusion of progress, but the
precarity looming just beneath the surface is
completely ignored. And when ecological disaster
strikes, it can't be held at bay by the gates
and walls and armed security guards. It doesn't
care how much money you have or how much money
you lack. It affects everyone. And very few people
in a novel seem to realize this until it's way
too late. I can only hope that we're a bit more
self -conscious than the characters in the book,
but sometimes I do wonder. I wanted to go back
to when you were saying that STEM majors and
like people in STEM fields are like seen as better
than people in the humanities. Like I can think
of like so many little examples of this, like
in my own life and I'm sure like in yours as
well. Or like people like, oh, you're not going
to make a living out of that. Or like the only
thing you can do with a literature and writing
major is become a teacher, become a professor,
which is like, first of all, totally not a bad
thing. But also it's so limiting because we totally
can do so many things. Like I was just at a Chab's
career readiness thing. Professor Wallace, he
had put on with a couple other people who actually
work at the school who had had like English majors.
And they were telling us like mostly what they
do now is marketing. But I want to be a creative
person. I want to. like talk about these things
and like write these kinds of novels and I'm
like in the book um the main character Jimmy
he went to Martha Graham it was like university
or college or whichever it was and that was like
the humanities the arts but it was like totally
looked down upon it's like oh you're at Martha
Graham and you're studying you know all these
things like the arts and philosophy you're thinking
about the world who cares you need to be going
to STEM like like Craig who was seen as this
really cool, like to Jimmy, he was seen as like
this really cool guy, like this absolute genius,
but really he led to the end of their world.
Well, what's interesting about the book is that
the humanities, Martha Graham, this particular
school, the humanities and the arts, turns into
nothing but a marketing school. Their degrees
aren't about art at all. They aren't about philosophy
at all. It's about... marketing. It's about learning
how to sell the products that the people at the
STEM schools are going to produce. So it's a
little unfair to say that these STEM students
are privileged, though they are in some ways,
because the STEM students are placed in the same
position. There's no sense of research for the
sake of research, research for the sake of knowledge.
It's all about research for the sake of money.
That's something I'd totally forgotten about
because I did read it a year ago. But it stuck
out so much in my mind, this book. I also wanted
to talk about how climate fiction often evokes
a lot of emotions. I know I definitely felt a
lot of them, like dread, grief, dark humor. I
know in our class, having conversation about
what we were reading helped me move from... fear
to agency. But how do you as a professor feel
like presenting this book to us? Well, this is
a problem with the book. And part of why I don't
teach it in my environmental class, I teach it
in my critical thinking class, because the book
doesn't provide us with solutions. The book is
a novel of disaster. It's a novel where there
is no message of repair. The world is beyond
the chance of repair. Really, the only way to
find a message of responsibility in this book
is to kind of read it in a mirror. Look at what
the characters do, what the society does, how
the world functions in this book, and try to
do the opposite of all those things. So in other
words, do not give corporations the power to
control your lives. Do not become complacent
about mass extinction and ecological disaster.
Do not isolate and segregate bodies and minds
and find ways to communicate across demographics,
even when some demographics seem to be at cross
purposes with your own perspective. But none
of these things are directly in the book. We
see the opposite of all those things going on
in the book. Where do you see climate justice
or injustice, mostly injustice, in this book?
Like whose lives are protected, whose are expendable,
and who decides? I know we can definitely talk
about the plebe lands. Sure. Sure. Yeah, I mean,
I guess there's two places we can look. One,
we can look at the plebe lands and think about
how the rich live in their gated, highly secure
communities that are essentially prisons that
they stay in. Even though they perceive it as
having this absolute luxury, they're trapped
in these little spaces all the time. And then
the plebe lands, which is where there is no protection,
there is no security, there are... limited resources,
and this is for the poor. And this is also where
all of the new products are tested, is on the
people living in the plebeians before they're
imported into the high upper class areas. So
there's certainly that going on in the book,
this kind of valuing of those who work for the
corporations who live in the gated communities
versus everyone else who... have access to nothing
the other place is the pandemic itself because
one of the characters intentionally unleashes
this engineered pandemic and this becomes a real
a real problem he does it for a reason he does
it in order to wipe out humanity and he does
this because he believes it's the logical choice
and Of course, I think we can easily agree that
genocide is unacceptable, that the choice he
has made is wrong in every possible way, but
the illogical action that he makes is paradoxically
done for a completely logical reason. So getting
back to our critical thinking class from a year
ago, if humanity is destroying the environment,
then all life will die through this ecological
disaster. But... If we remove humanity from the
equation, then only humanity will die and ecological
disaster will be avoided. So do you want disaster
or not? Do you want all life to die or just humanity?
So quantifiably, the solution appears to be better.
Sacrifice humanity for everyone, for every other
life, for all other life. But the fact that this
solution seems viable in the first place indicates
this kind of erosion of the humanities and the
arts. It indicates a kind of replacement of careful
ethical investigation with a quantifiable and
market -based cost -benefit analysis. And that's
problematic. The character for all of his brilliance
has still been trained by the society to think
in terms of numbers and numbers only and not
to consider anything else. I wanted to talk more
about ethical tensions. I know we were definitely
already going. talking about it but i wanted
to talk about playing god which craig does his
whole career basically um and then optimism in
technology versus precaution which i feel like
is so so relevant today um then maybe i don't
know corporate responsibility value of non -human
life we can just um go in and around sure uh
so I don't believe, if we're still speaking about
Oryx and Kraykira, I don't believe the book is
a Luddite book that it wants to kind of eliminate
all technology and go back to some pre -technological
world. I don't think that that's a viable solution.
I don't think that's ever going to happen. We're
stuck with what we have, whether we like it or
not. But how we use these things is what we need
to start thinking about. And in order to use
technology differently. To use technology with
more responsibility, it requires us to change
our perspective, to change the kind of paradigm
in which we think about the world around us.
As it is, we think about how technology can be
used to benefit one organism, and that's human
beings, and how it affects anything else, living
or non -living, barely gets thought about, and
that itself is problematic. Okay, a couple more
things about Orcs in Creek and then we can get
into other environmental lit stuff. What's one
moment in Orcs in Creek that you use to spark
debate in class? Probably the biggest one is
the pandemic. Kind of what we've just been talking
about is this getting to think about why a character
might believe that this kind of extreme action
is justice. And exactly where do we draw the
line? When does an action for justice become
itself unjust? And that is not an easy one to
pinpoint. I don't think it's a contextual thing.
It depends on the particular situation. But clearly,
when we engage in genocide, it's pretty obvious
where we stand here, where we've taken things
too far. But again, he does it. with best intentions
in mind. He genuinely believes that this is what's
best for life. In a utilitarian sense, he's right.
But in every other sense, it's very, very problematic.
Yeah, I remember we had really interesting conversations.
And when I was reading it, I was like, having
such turmoil within myself, because Like as a
person, I was born in 2005, so I've grown up
with technology, grown up with like environmental
disaster and all these things just like being
inevitable, like, oh, you know, we're destroying
the planet. That's the normal fact of real life.
So when Craig was like arguing to Jimmy about
like why he should destroy humanity, I was. Yeah,
I was having that turmoil because I was so angry
at humanity for having destroyed the Earth. And
like I have been like my family raised me to
always care about animals, always care about
the environment, always care about just like
the planet that we live on. So while, of course,
who wants all of humanity to die? I was. Yeah,
it was it was really interesting to think about
and to ponder. Well, I think this this kind of
leads to that. learning to shift our perspective.
Because unquestionably, we can point to humanity
and say that this particular organism, human
beings, is very much the problem. But we also
can unquestionably say that genocide is not an
option. And if we're not going to do the thing
that this character does in this book, then how
do we make sure that this particular organism
does not continue in the trajectory that it that
it's heading. And I think that's part of what
we're seeing in a lot of more contemporary texts
is a kind of call to change that perspective.
I read a book by Travis Holloway called How to
Live at the End of the World from 2022. And he
talks about an art installation by Sarah Ann
Johnson called Schooner and Fireworks. And at
the center of this installation is a little...
sculpture of a sailboat, a schooner. And from
the top mast to the schooner, there's this kind
of ever -widening cyclone of oceanic organisms
that fill the sky up around it. So the ship is
given this privileged position in the center
of the piece, but this position of privilege
is kind of ironically diminished by the intertwined
and interknotted assemblage of life expanding
outward above it, a knotting which it's intrinsically
a part of. And I think... Thinking about our
lives in this way is part of how we're going
to move towards discarding narratives of mastery
and species supremacy that we seem to be so invested
in. Okay, let's take a step beyond Atwood now.
And I would love to hear about some books and
films. media that you teach and recommend and
why you recommend them. All right. I'll talk
about two texts. I'll bring up four, but I'll
just talk about two. So one that I always teach
and that everybody thinks I'm a bit crazy for
teaching at first, and then they change their
mind. and end up really liking this book, I always
get compliments about this book, is Robin Wall
Kimmerer's Gathering Moss from 2003. It's a nonfiction
collection of essays about the surprisingly fascinating
role of moss in the environment. But it's also
about what can be learned through an indigenous
perspective regarding our role amongst the natural
world. So that's the kind of nonfiction text
I think is a useful one to be aware of. In drama,
we have Madeline George's Hurricane Diane from
2017. And it's a satirical play about the god
Dionysus who comes back to Earth and comes to
a suburban cul -de -sac in New Jersey. And then
Dionysus has to convince the women living there
to transform their perfectly manicured lawns
into ecosystems full of sustainable indigenous
plant life. And it's... very much about the absolute
resistance experienced by them, even in the face
of environmental disaster. That sounds really
interesting. My mom and I have always talked
about like, why do we just have plain green lawns?
Because we live like somewhere where we have
an HOA. So it has to be a very specific way of
doing it. But my mom decided to totally redo
our front yard. And now it's like a bunch of
agave. I, yeah, a bunch of succulents, nothing
that needs a lot of water. That makes sense.
Yeah, of course, water builds it, but also, you
know, sustainability. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, I
think that's the resistance that we get from
HOAs and things like that, that to say, no, it
must be this particular look, it has to match
this particular aesthetic, even if that aesthetic
makes absolutely no sense within the environment
that we live. It's one thing to have green grass
in, say, New Jersey, it's very different to have
green grass in Arizona. But the other two novels
that I'd like to mention, and forgive me if I
stick with literature, I'm a lit professor, but
the two novels I'd like to focus on briefly is
one by the Alaskan author Maymay Evans from 2013
called Oil and Water. So it's a fictionalized
but highly realistic account of an oil spill
off the Alaskan coast. clearly inspired by the
Exxon Valdez oil spill from 1989. And what Evans
does is she considers our complex relationship
with the oil industry and what Vandana Shiva
would call our addiction to oil. So on one hand,
it's very obvious. The oil corporation is to
blame for the spill. That's the easy answer.
And it's absolutely true. But the blame can't
stop there. Because there's also the individual
pilot of the oil tanker who caused this accident.
He must be considered in the equation. And there
are all the people on the Alaskan coast who rely
on that corporation directly or indirectly for
employment. And there's all the people who own
a combustion engine car and those who flew on
airliners and the fishermen whose boats are reliant
on that oil. So to simply say the corporation
is at fault, While true, it doesn't take into
account the much bigger picture of how many people
are involved, including those who feel very strongly
about the oil industry. So Evans does that, and
Evans also considers social justice and cleanup
after the oil spill. So how much should be expected
of an individual in the community? How much should
be expected from the corporation? How much from
the government? What actions are considered enough?
What actions are too little? Where does non -action
come into play? And no matter how much we're
willing to do, how much are we really preventing
the next environmental disaster if we don't change
our relationship with oil in the first place?
So this kind of realist novel is helpful for
us to think about these kinds of things. But
realism can only take you so far. So there's
also a more speculative fiction with Jeff Vandermeer's
Annihilation from 2014. So this gets us to critique
models of mastery and taming that have been prevalent
in our culture for so long. So we have this government
-funded expedition that goes into this strange
region called Area X, and each person brings
their particular expertise to the expedition.
And this expertise is used in order to better
know the region in every possible way. So what
they're trying to do is remove all traces of
mystery, all traces of uncertainty. And they
believe that through this, they can kind of tame
this wilderness. And in taming the wilderness,
they can possess it. And in possessing it, they
can turn it into this inert object rather than
a dynamic living thing. So with this kind of
tunnel vision of mastery and taming, what happens
is we start to fail to notice all the other world
-making projects that overlap our own, all these
projects that are interwoven with our own, that
are not us and yet cannot be separated from us.
Area X, for instance, is remaking the world in
its own way, and it resists all the attempts
to contain it. It integrates aspects of our own
action into itself, but also subverts those actions
for its own purposes. And lastly, there's a creature
in this book called the Crawler that studies
one of the characters as if she were nothing
more than a specimen in a lab. She's poked and
prodded, ripped apart and stitched back together,
and then discarded once there doesn't appear
to be anything left to learn. The broken character
lies on the ground afterwards. It's immobile
and still like the inner object of study within
the paradigm of mastery. So by turning that paradigm
onto ourselves and seeing how monstrous it appears,
it helps us think about how we might need to
change that perspective in the first place. I
love Annihilation so much. I was at a literature
and writing club meeting and we were doing a
book swap, which they still do, which is so cool.
If you guys are literature and writing majors,
go to the literature and writing club meetings,
even though I don't go all the time. Anyways,
so I had borrowed it from somebody and then I
completely forgot to actually finish it. And
then I had to give it back to him this semester.
this like i've heard so much about it and i wanted
to watch the movie which i also never finished
which is actually a problem of mine if not finishing
things it's okay if you didn't finish the movie
yeah i heard it was so much different from the
book but i had like people had told me the story
so like i know it but i've never actually read
it but it's so fascinating to me especially the
when you were talking about the creature and
what you said about like how we can Like if it's
being done to us or being done to something that
we see as human, like we realize, oh, this is
what's happening. Here's a mirror. Great stuff.
I'm excited to read, put these on my book list.
Okay. How do these works and maybe environmental
literature in general shift readers from spectators
of apocalypse to participants in solutions? Well,
I think environmental, whether it's films or
documentaries, novels, nonfiction, painting,
sculpture, theater, whatever it is, this art
maintains a conversation about human relations
to the non -human world. It reminds us that this
conversation is ongoing and must remain so. It
helps to prevent us from simply shrugging and
deciding that the end has come or that there's
nothing we can do or that our actions are meaningless.
The moment these actions cease is the moment
that we are truly lost. So engaging in the arts
is one of the many ways we can keep this conversation
alive. Not the only way, but one of the ways.
I definitely agree. Something that really helps
me to process my emotions, just about anything,
but especially about fears about the climate
crisis, is to have conversations. Okay. What's
a small, specific practice you use to stay engaged
in climate justice without burning out? Without
burning out is the hard part, isn't it? I guess,
let me give you two very small things, I guess.
One, this may surprise you, but I read. I watch
films. I go to plays. I engage with the arts
in order to hear a discourse on the environment
that goes beyond my own personal feelings about
it. So I engage in the art for the beauty of
the art, but also for the message that the art
can provide. And secondly, I just find time to
go into the natural world, just to go outside,
to experience nature firsthand. I try not to
forget that it exists amidst the kind of busyness
of our anthropocentric lives, which is often
very hard to do. I try to listen to what it has
to tell me to hear and value the voices and messages
of the non -human. And that's something that
I think we have a very hard time doing. We assume
that the only message available to us comes from
the voices of other people. And while those are
very important, there are so many messages being
told to us from the rest of the natural world
that warrant listening to. Yeah. I know sometimes
when I'm just so stressed from everything, like
this semester, I was doing a play, and I'm also
a journalist on campus. And midterms were coming
up, and so much was happening. I was like, okay,
I'm just going to go for a walk. And I was like,
maybe I'll just sit outside, listen to the birds,
look at the trees. And even if it's like, oh,
all these buildings, because I was at school,
I was like, okay, I feel a bit calmer and ready
to do things. And sometimes I just forget. But
it's important to get back into just taking a
breath, trying to be one with nature, however
you would like to say it. And Anand Singh talks
about these kind of overlapping world -making
projects and about the different tempos in which
they occur. So the tempo of our life is very
fast. The tempo of modern human life is extremely
fast and never stops. There are no pauses, no
rests, just goes and goes and goes. But when
we step out of that, when we start to look around
ourselves and listen to other songs being played
by the world around us, it forces us to change
our tempo. And I think that changes our perspective
greatly and allows us to hear something other
than ourselves for once. Definitely. How delightful.
Okay. Thank you so much for being on our podcast.
It was such a delight to talk with you again
and to hear about your perspective on environmental
literature and your perspective on our world
and to hear a couple more titles that we can
put on our book lists. Okay. Want to hear more
from Climate to Action, a CSUSM student podcast?
Listen wherever you get your podcasts and follow
us on our socials at Climate to Action. For Instagram
and YouTube, that's Climate2Action. For TikTok,
it's Climate2Action. Visit for updates, behind
-the -scenes content, and more. Climate2Action
is recorded at the Inspiration Studios on the
CSUSM campus. Our podcast is funded in part by
a generous donation by the Rosemary Kramer Raitt
Foundation. And finally, Climate2Action wants
to remind you to take climate action. For this
episode, we say... Go read one of the books Professor
Winchock has recommended. Until next time, this
is Saturn from Climate Action signing off.