Climate Change: An Apocalypse for Urban Space? An Ecocritical Reading of “Venice Drowned” and “The Tamarisk Hunter”

As encapsulated by eco-conscious author Margaret Atwood, climate change has an unprecedented effect on human life. Throughout history human beings have adapted to numerous climatic changes by complying with the available sources of food, housing, clothing, water or warmth. Today, however, climate change creates more devastating and instant consequences that populations and the ecosystem cannot cope with. The situation seems to have become too compelling to ignore so many authors feel an urge to warn people by transforming graphs and scientific data into emotion and experience in their narratives. At this point, “climate fiction” commonly known as “cli-fi” emerges as a new category engaging global and local effects of the global warming with literature. Despite the fact that cli-fi was not officially coined until the late 2000’s, many authors have been writing about climate change for years now. In this sense, “Venice Drowned” (1981) and “The Tamarisk Hunter” which was published 25 years later are the best examples to illustrate how deep-rooted and long-standing environmental issue climate is. Kim Stanley Robinson and Paolo Bacigalupi have produced a great deal of works relating to not only the physical destruction of climate change to the Earth but also its long-term effects on our social and economic structures. Accordingly, the stories both set in urban space skillfully exemplify the social, political and economic effects of climate change. So far, a great amount of cli-fi texts have been produced and literary critics have also responded to this trend with an increased quantity of analyses in the context of eco-criticism. In this paper “Venice Drowned” by Kim Stanley Robinson and “The Tamarisk Hunter” by Paolo Bacigalupi will be studied through the theories of ecocriticism in order to demonstrate how cli-fi texts function in providing the reader with an objective perception by elucidating the explicit and belated challenges posed by the problem of climate change.