2023 was a year when climate change felt inescapable. Whether it was the raging wildfires in Canada, the orange skies in New York, the flash floods in Libya or the searing heat in China, the effects of our overheating planet were too severe to ignore.
Not coincidentally, it was also a year when climate change started to feel ubiquitous in popular culture. Glossy TV shows, best-selling books, art exhibits and even pop music tackled the subject, often with the kind of nuance and creativity that can help us make sense of the world’s thorniest issues.
Here are some highlights from the year in climate culture.
(And please share your own recommendations with us by filling out this short form. Your contributions may be featured in an upcoming newsletter.)
Books
“The Deluge” by Stephen Markley
This bracing and beguiling novel tracks a cadre of radicalized scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of the 2040s. Hamilton Cain, the Times book reviewer, writes: “The dystopia is realistic and nuanced, grim but playful, setting Markley’s book apart from the tsunami of recent climate-change literature.”
“Fire Weather” by John Valliant
In 2016, an inferno devastated Fort McMurray, Canada, creating its own weather system during an unseasonably warm spring. “Fire Weather” reconstructs the disaster in harrowing detail, making a case that what had seemed like a freak conflagration at the time was merely a sign of things to come.
“The Heat Will Kill You First” by Jeff Goodell
2023 was the hottest year on record, and this book makes a terrifying case why even small changes to global average temperatures are poised to have devastating consequences, especially for the most vulnerable.
“Birnam Wood” by Eleanor Catton
This wry, wise and thrilling novel is about a group of characters who make suboptimal choices and grapple with some unconventionally thrilling subjects. (To wit: guerrilla gardening, land deals, the privatization of nature.) The Times, in its review, wrote that “the whole thing crackles.”
“Bushmeat” by Theodore Trefon
This book from Trefon, a researcher steeped in Central African culture, explores deforestation, conservation, law enforcement and other topics tied to the bushmeat trade, a huge problem that through poaching and infectious diseases has ripple effects well beyond the areas where it happens. Foreign Affairs called the book an “excellent introduction” to a difficult subject.
“Paved Paradise” by Henry Grabar
A “wry and revelatory new book about parking,” according to the Times review, helps explain how America’s infatuation with the automobile has torn apart our social fabric and exacerbated climate change.
Film and TV
“Extrapolations”
This ambitious Apple TV+ series about a future transformed by climate change was poorly received by critics. But even bad art can make you think, and months after bingeing the series, it keeps coming to mind. One episode in particular, about a rogue geoengineering effort, struck an unnerving balance between far-fetched and troublingly plausible.
“How to Blow Up a Pipeline”
A taught, tense indie thriller inspired by a 2020 book that called for industrial sabotage against fossil fuel infrastructure, this film takes the premise seriously and follows a group of young activists on a perilous journey to blow up an oil pipeline in Texas.
“The Last of Us”
OK, it’s a show based on a video game about zombies. But the world-eating fungus at the center of the story, we learn in the first episode, was unleashed only because climate change had made the planet warmer. It was hard not to watch the show without thinking about a world radically reshaped by soaring temperatures and rising seas.
Music
“Won’t Give Up”
The drag queen Pattie Gonia (who stole the show at Climate Week NYC) partnered with the singer-songwriter Quinn Christopherson and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma to write a requiem for a melting glacier. It also doubles as a climate protest anthem. Don’t miss the music video, shot in Alaska.
“World on Fire”
Dolly Parton’s climate anthem, as Grist describes it, outlines the “sorry state of the world.” The spirited chorus notes that we “still got time to turn it all around.”
“Vespers of the Blessed Earth” and “unEarth”
The Pulitzer-winning composers John Luther Adams and Julia Wolfe each released operas that were inspired by nature and highlighted the gravity of the climate crisis.
Exhibits
“The Yanomami Struggle”
Claudia Andujar, a 91-year-old photographer, has documented the Yanomami people of the Amazon for 50 years. She exhibited her life’s work, alongside pieces by the Yanomami, at The Shed in New York.
“Spora”
This long-term exhibition at the Swiss Institute in the East Village in New York brings an acute awareness to the environment beyond the gallery doors.
“If the Sky Were Orange: Art in the Time of Climate Change”
This show, at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, was curated by the climate writer Jeff Goodell. It set out to consider a world in which greenhouse gasses turn the sky orange.
“Climate Futurism”
This exhibit, curated by the ecologist and climate policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, took place at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. It took inspiration from Johnson’s forthcoming book, “What If We Get It Right?”
Podcasts
“Big Sugar”
This investigative series tackles the long and sordid history of the sugar cane industry in Florida, from the nightclubs of Miami to backroom meetings in Tallahassee. It also shines a light on the devastating environmental impact of the sugar business, revealing how America’s sweet tooth is poisoning our land and water. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
“How a Paradise Became a Death Trap”
On “The Daily,” Ydriss Nouara, a resident of Lahaina, Hawaii, told the terrifying, wrenching story of how he escaped from the wildfire that swept through Maui in August.
“Field Trip”
This Washington Post series on America’s national parks goes beyond the postcards to reveal a precious natural landscape being threatened by fires, floods, drought and pollution.
Dance
“Room With a View”
La(Horde), a dance collective, wanted to explore ideas around climate change, and was determined to show nuance. In “Room,” according to The Times’s dance critic, Gia Kourlis, “relationships get blurry; there are states of submission and power, but as it progresses, dynamics change.”
“Jungle Book Reimagined”
In a two-hour extrapolation of the climate crisis that had its New York debut in November, Mowgli is a refugee girl separated from her family as sea levels surge. She is adopted by animals who have formed a peaceable kingdom in a city that humans have left behind.
With help from Adam Pasick, Nadja Popovich, Delger Erdenesanaa, Raymond Zhong, Gia Kourlas and Dionne Searcey.
Other climate news
California became the second U.S. state to allow agencies to recycle wastewater into tap water as a way of adapting to drought.
The Supreme Court will consider putting President Biden’s plan to address cross-state air pollution on hold.
“Heat islands” are making Australia’s summer deadlier.
The Brazilian authorities are seeking millions of dollars in damages from JBS, the world’s biggest meatpacker, accusing the company of buying cattle raised on illegally deforested lands in the Amazon.
The Biden administration moved to conserve old-growth trees on national forests across the U.S. and limit logging, The Associated Press reports.
Flooding, wildfires, heat waves and blizzards turned travel into chaos in 2023.
Having fewer toys helps kids become more creative, flexible and collaborative, The Washington Post reports.