What's the Story? Competing Narratives of Climate Change and Climate Justice

Climate change narratives in the United States have appeared in many genres: literary fiction and science fiction, literary nonfiction, children's environmental literature and film, environmental documentary films and science fiction films. Yet by shaping their narratives primarily with techno- science analyses and solutions, these narrative genres have not inclusively portrayed the additional facts of climate change - namely, the underpinnings of colonialism, neoliberalism, speciesism, and gendered fundamentalisms- and thus the activist and systemic solutions they present are partial and ineffective. Moreover, mainstream U.S. ecocriticism has failed to notice the raced, classed, and gendered perspectives in these climate change narratives. A feminist environmental justice perspective can restore analysis of the additional features of climate change root causes and effects by expanding the genres and geographies of ecocritical analysis to include artists of color and of diverse sexualities, as well as by including the practices of animal food production and consumption that are exacerbating climate change. A feminist restor(y)ing of climate change narratives is one of ecocriticism's best strategies for confronting the root causes of climate change and suggesting solutions with real potential for enacting climate justice.