Hello Friends!
Welcome to Bright Green Futures, Episode Thirty: Earth Day, Joy as a Tactical Weapon, and Release Day for the Bright Green Futures Anthology
I created Bright Green Futures to lift up stories about a more sustainable and just world and talk about the struggle to get there.
Today is Earth Day, friends, and the Bright Green Futures: 2024 anthology is now published!
I definitely will talk more about the anthology in a minute, but first, I want to talk about why stories like these matter, why joy is a tactical weapon, and how there’s really only one fight we’re engaged in now.
There’s a lot of harrowing things happening, and on this Earth Day in 2025, with American fascists determined to accelerate fossil fuel consumption as well as dismantle democracy and human rights, it can seem like the climate crisis has retreated from view, just a distant thunder rumbling on the horizon.
Of course, this is not true.
The Trump administration has not yet dismantled our ability to measure global temperature—which to be sure, they are actively trying to do—but we can already see that 2025 is far warmer than predicted, so we’re once again off the charts into unknown global heating territory with the fascists stomping hard on the gas pedal.
I hate using metaphors grounded in systems I’m actively trying to dismantle — as Orwell would tell us, the way you use language matters — but I found myself inadvertently using another one recently to describe running out of energy, due to doing too many things, too hard for too long, despite knowing better. I posted on socials that...
Me using fossil fuel metaphors tells you how exhausted I was. We default back to the familiar when we’re ground down. But it’s also an excellent example of how fossil fuels aren’t just embedded in our lives at every level—food, transport, energy, housing—they’re embedded in our language. Our entire world is built upon a hundred years of cheap oil and gas empowering the global rich, both people and nations.
Except that world is now starting to unravel.
There’s an intentional acceleration happening with Trump, Musk, and all who rush to comply with their autocratic dismantling of democracy, but the unraveling had already begun before that. The consequences of all that carbon pumped into the atmosphere was starting to be undeniable, even to those determined to close their eyes as tightly as possible. Even as scientists—the ones who haven’t been fired—are warning about tipping points and continuing unprecedented heating, international banks are now openly plotting how they can profit from a warming world.
They’re the meme come to life, the one where the business people are looking out on a burning world and saying “Somehow we need to monetise this — and quickly.”
In the book ALL WE CAN SAVE, which is collection of climate fiction and non-fiction essays released in 2020, and which I was recently reading for book club, they lay out a case for how to fight the climate crisis. It struck me how much of it was both out-of-date and still very correct. A lot has happened since 2020. The essays were correct in the diagnosis that environmental justice had to be at the heart of the climate fight and that we needed stories that would show what a better world looked like. They didn’t know yet in 2020 that Biden would start to enact a lot of the Green New Deal policies, even as he abandoned that label. Even I didn’t foresee the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act or Lina Khan’s incredible progress in unwinding the corporate consolidation that’s empowered so many international companies, especially tech companies.
But the billionaire class saw all too clearly where that was going. And they knew they were running out of time.
Only an all-out assault on democracy, on the American people, on the rule of law and the world economic order, destroying democracy and empowering autocracy, would be enough to keep them merrily in power as the world burned. Otherwise, those pesky social justice types might raise taxes and demand corporations stop dumping toxins in the water.
If a bunch of us had to be sacrificed to keep the billionaires in power, that was a price they were willing to pay. A price they’ve always been willing to pay because it was always someone else’s family member who was deported or wife who died because she couldn’t get an abortion. It was someone else’s child with asthma, someone else whose child was trans or Black or brown.
The absolute rage Elon Musk has that one of his children is trans, the fact that he carries one of his many small children around as a human shield as he dismantles the government… it gives you a glimpse of how angry the rich are that they aren’t yet gods. That they might not be able to control everything. They fully know the world is on fire—that’s what bunkers and absolute power are for. To insulate them from the consequences of their actions.
If the world must burn faster for these broken men to have what they want, then they’ll move fast and break everything to make it happen.
Celebrating Earth Day while under this level of assault… that isn’t frivolous, friends, it’s radical.
Powering up with some kind of joy while under attack isn’t silly, it’s a tactical strike at the heart of this anti-human darkness that’s trying so hard to destroy everything good.
I made a post about this as I was struggling with my own personal burnout:
Sounds like I’m preaching to y’all, but I’m really talking to myself. Because I know what I need is regularly-scheduled power ups from things that bring me joy: reading, writing, simple relaxation. Visiting the Little Free Libraries, dropping my solarpunk zines and redistributing book wealth. Visiting the real library and getting my passport stamped. Planting way more herb seeds than I can possibly use, with the idea that maybe I can give some away.
When Trump was re-elected and I realized America had chosen to learn the hard way why you don’t put tyrants into office, I spent several months post-election trying to figure out what the hell to do now. Keep writing hopeful climate fiction? Seemed pointless. Plant a garden? I’d already been down that route and knew that was an individualist panic-reaction much more than a solid-strategy for securing your food supply. More on that later.
I had to wrestle with my demons, but I quickly realized the most important thing was to keep my gas tank at least half full — or, now that I’m in a place to construct better analogies, keep my battery at least half charged. And not just because stress was messing with my battery indicator and that the 25% charge might in fact be closer to zero, but because the power drain to simply exist in this nightmare timeline was much higher than normal and erratic as hell.
I didn’t know what was coming—my crystal ball is still broken—but I knew it would include things I couldn’t possibly prepare for. Just like the temperature line that’s taking off into uncharted territory, the uncertainty caused by rapid unscheduled disassembly of the government isn’t something you can prepare for—it’s something you build resilience to withstand.
It’s important to understand this absolute chaos is intentional. It’s the only way the billionaire class can keep you from fighting back. They’re counting on being able to devastate you with terrifying news of people being kidnapped off the street and sent to torture prisons. The only chance they have is to keep you literally drained of energy.
Which is why it’s a radical act to do whatever it takes to power up.
Only then can you unlock the ability to fight this.
But don’t forget: you actually do deserve whatever joy you can find. Any voices telling you otherwise are working for the other side, whether they think so or not—and even if those voices are inside your own head.
So, I knew all that already—I knew deep in my bones I couldn’t do my lane work without sufficient powering up—and yet I still let my battery run down because that’s my weakness, throwing myself into work to avoid the pain of the world only to run myself down so badly that I can’t actually keep the world at bay anymore, ironically doomscrolling into the night. I’m like a cranky toddler who’s up past her bedtime and literally can’t settle down to sleep because I’m too tired and all self-regulation is out the window! Might as well just power through until I physically crash!
Which isn’t the healthiest way to live in normal times.
But it’s downright deadly now. I can’t afford it. And neither can you.
Once I crashed, at least I knew how to reboot. Those things that power us up are unique to each of us, but I suspect they get labeled, maybe even by you, as “frivolous” or unimportant. And if there’s one thing I’m convinced of more every day, it’s that anything our culture denigrates in that way, anything it says is a waste of time or silly… those are the things that are most critical and are probably holding up all of civilization.
This is why I say joy and community and rest and healing are radical and disruptive. It’s why I write stories that include those things in our future.
Because that is threatening as hell to the billionaire class.
I started out saying there’s only one fight now: not to be reductive, but all the human rights abuses, all dismantling of the commons, the theft of public wealth into private hands, the logging of public lands and targeting of trans bodies… all of it is the billionaire class trying to monetize a burning world. Quickly. Before it’s all gone.
They’re convinced if they move fast enough and break enough things, we won’t be able to stop them.
They are wrong, of course.
We are able to stop them — that’s why they’re so desperate to convince us otherwise. I’m not saying it will be easy or fast, or in any way guaranteed. I’m not saying there won’t be tremendous harms — of course there will be, America chose to take the hard path, the one lined with broken glass.
I’m still angry about that.
But more than that, I’m determined. Determined to do my part in the fight.
I’ve found my lanes and one of them is doing the imaginative work to show a better world, the one we’re fighting for. One where we don’t just claw back from the billionaires the rights they’re taking away, but actually change the way all of it works. A world where we take power away from broken men who use their children as human shields. Where we stop voting in men who send people to torture prisons. Where we affirm that all humans deserve human rights… it’s right there in the name. And of course, we do the hard work to stop barreling down this suicidal path of destroying the biosphere we depend upon for life.
I know it sounds impossible, that we could not only defeat the fascists but also usher in a better, more sustainable and just way of living. That we could actually do both of those at the same time. That those things are actually inextricably linked.
It would be easy to dismiss the possibility except we’ve done this before, multiple times... not in identical ways, of course, and not without cost, sometimes horrible, terrible cost, but it is not even close to “impossible.” That’s the gift of despair that tyranny desperately wants you to give. Do not do it.
But I know it’s hard to imagine — after all, I’m in the imagination business.
Which brings me to the Bright Green Futures anthology. You’ll find stories like that in this collection, from some of the amazing authors I’ve had here on the pod. Stories that grapple with the anxiety of living in a precarious world. Stories that show how the best things in life are often right next door, but we’ll have to let go of the old ways to find the new. Stories where we’re not just in this together with our fellow humans but our non-human kin as well.
I can’t wait for you to read them.
If you preordered the anthology, your copy should be on your ereader or delivered to your home, but if you’ve been waiting for release day, it is now live on all five ebook retailers plus you can get the print copy from Bookshop.org or order it from your local bookstore. It should also be available through Libby, so please request that your library carry it! There are also a couple of the individual stories still free, so you can download those to get a sample first.
I hope these stories will help you recharge your battery so you can get back in the fight.
Take Action
And when you’re ready, I’ve got a whole list of things you can do—actions you can take today, Earth Day 2025—to start building that future we all want to have.
Job One is, of course, fighting the fascists every way you can — non-violent protest and economic boycotts are absolutely effective tools and if you’ve got the chance to do direct non-compliance or throw sand in fascist gears, do that, please and thank you. Voting fascists out of power, every opportunity you get, at every level of governance, is also key.
But there are a lot of actions to build that better world—that are absolutely necessary to build the human infrastructure we need and that will need a lot of hands doing a lot of work—that aren’t protesting or voting. Things like mutual aid and advocacy, things like education and supporting libraries.
I will put an extensive list adapted from Frontline Medics in the show notes.
Find your lane and take action.
Build Your Resilience
Once you’re powered up with renewable joy energy, and once you’ve picked out some actions to start taking, it’s also important to build your own resilience. Once you’ve worked through some of the basics, like access to food and energy, that reassurance can give you more bandwidth to engage in the fight.
Which brings me back to that idea of planting a garden—absolutely do that if it brings you joy. But if you’re thinking of going rugged individualist and somehow growing all your own food, I want you to take a moment and consider putting that energy into building food security at the community level. Support your local regenerative organic farmer by buying a farm share. Community gardens are another great option. Building a better world means refocusing from rugged individualism to resilient communities, and this is a great place to start. There are, in fact, a million ways to do that, which I’ve been writing about on my personal blog: things like how to find community solar, how to prepare for economic uncertainty, and the various backup power options.
This is another one of my lanes: sharing information to help folks survive the hard times we’re in.
From Sue’s Personal Blog:
How to Prepare (Not Prep) for Uncertain Times and Build a Better World in the Process
Backup Power Battery Options for the Climate Crisis
Please share the posts with a friend and build some community along the way.
As for me, I’m going to spend Earth Day launching the anthology and, if the weather is decent, spend some time with my plants. I have a new native garden I like to sit with, enjoying the plants earnestly growing through their lifecycles, drawing them when I have enough time and patience. I have a garden spot I want to populate with ridiculously showy flowers because that will make me happy and it’s the perfect space to invite friends to visit. I might read one of the many unread books I have stacked around my house, waiting their turn.
I hope you’ll find what will power you up.
I hope the anthology will be one of those things.
But most of all I’m grateful you’re here, listening to the pod, because you’d only spend time doing that if you truly cared about building a more sustainable and just world.
And that’s the most important step.
NOW AVAILABLE
These hopeful climate-fiction stories include clicky space centipedes, sentient trees, a flooded future Rio de Janeiro and characters trying to find their place in a climate-impacted world. Each story imagines a way for us to survive the future, together.
WAYS TO GET THE ANTHOLOGY (all links here)
Order a print copy on Bookshop.org: you'll be supporting independent bookstores!
Order a print copy from your local bookstore (ISBN 9798349201967): this will help the bookstore become aware of the anthology!
UK FRIENDS: order a print copy from Waterstones!
Request your local library carry the ebook (Libby) or print version (Ingram)!
Story Theme Words
CLIMATE ANXIETY
CLIMATE RESTORATION
CLIMATE ROLES
CLIMATE CONNECTIONS
CLIMATE RESILIENCE
CLIMATE HERITAGE
LAST DAY TO GET RENAN’S STORY FREE
Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. Also check out the Academic Studies section.
LINKS Ep. 30: Earth Day, Joy as a Tactical Weapon, and Release Day for the Bright Green Futures Anthology
Download Zines: Bright Green Futures and How to Solarpunk
Politics and the English Language by George Orwell
All We Can Save edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson
Solarpunk Future! Discord: Solarpunk Bookclub
Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting (adapted from Frontline Medics)
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