NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth novels show how dangerous it is to blame minorities for a climate disaster

If you haven’t read NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky) then stop what you’re doing right now and read them. They’re amazing. The three books are a powerful story, of several generations, struggling to survive in a hostile world where nature and society are brutally oppressive. 

The three novels take place on The Stillness, a world with a single giant content that is geologically unstable. There are frequent major volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, poisonous gases are suddenly released from the ground and ash falls from the sky, making it difficult to raise crops and animals. The people of The Stillness live in constant fear that the next shake of the ground could be the end of civilization.

In such a dangerous world, the human societies that form are brutal and oppressive. Although they offer some structures that provide protection from the environment, they are controlling, authoritarian and exploitative. Especially if you belong to a certain minority group.

A minority is blamed for the world’s problems

The Stillness is blighted by natural disasters, however, the geological instability that is the source of so much suffering was created by humans. The third of Jemisin’s trilogy, The Stone Sky, describes (mild spoiler coming up) how an ancient civilization’s greed for power and a failed experiment destabilised the whole world.

Despite this, the people blamed for the problems are not the people who caused them. The anger of the people of the Stillness is focused on a group of people called Orogenes. Orogenes are people born with the power to move the earth and thus have the ability to create (or prevent) the natural disasters that threaten the people of the Stillness.

Orogenes are treated awfully by the civilizations of the Stillness. They have no rights. They are controlled by an organisation called the Fulcrum who dictates every aspect of their lives. Their children are taken away from them. They are hated, feared and often killed by non-Orogenes because of who they are.

A prescient warning about our future

Many of the point-of-view characters in Jemisin’s novels are Orogenes and her powerful prose makes vivid the pain they are forced to go through by a society that hates and fears them. These books are an emotionally charged warning about what can happen when all of society blames a group of people for an environmental disaster.

The Orogenes aren’t responsible for the bleak existence the people of The Stillness have to endure: toiling in a hostile environment, constantly threatened by natural disasters. However, they are blamed for it.

I am worried that Jemisin’s novels are a prescient warning about our future. As we approach a climate disaster, and the effects of climate change become more widely felt, who will be blamed for the suffering this will cause? Will it be the greedy corporations? The businesspeople who run them? The politicians who have failed to act despite years of warnings? Or will we blame the victims of a climate catastrophe? The people we always blamed for social problems: poor people, people of colour and migrants.

The rise of Ecofascism

This is already happening. As the climate worsens and knowledge of how bleak our future could be spreads, people are becoming frightened. We are seeing on the news stories about how large numbers of people are displaced by climate change. For example, the stories about a migrant caravan heading to towards the USA during the 2018 mid-term elections.

The effects of the climate emergency are being more keenly felt in poorer countries and this will inevitably cause migration. Many people in wealthier countries are concerned that there isn’t enough to go around if we let these victims of climate disasters in. This fear of climate migration is fueling the far-right, and specific climate-related migration anxieties have led to the rise of “Ecofascism”.

Biran Khan has written in detail about how our fears about a climate disaster and the stories we tell about the environment are driving people towards Ecofascism. In the above article for Gizmodo, he interviewed Betsy Hartmann, a professor emeritus at Hampshire College who studies the connections between white nationalism and environmentalism. Hartman summed up the problems with the stories we tell about migration and climate change when she said: “Using this highly militarized and stereotyped Malthusian discourse about poor people of color is dangerous and counterproductive.”

I am worried that our narratives about a climate disaster, about how people could be displaced by the impacts of climate change and the strain this will place on our societies are fueling Ecofascism. This could lead to a very dark place.

A minority is blamed for our world’s problems

Are we heading towards a world like The Stillness? A world where the environment has turned against us and humans eke out a perilous, pitiless existence oppressed by hostile natural forces and tyrannical governments? A world where we blame a small group of easily recognisable people for all the problems of the world? A world where we hate a minority, seek to control them and frequently subject them to violence because of our fear about the dangers for the world?

This is possible, which is why we should all read Jemisin’s novels and experience the suffering of the Orogenes. We should let this be a warning against hating each other and blaming each other for the effect of a climate disaster. Our future doesn’t have to be The Stillness. We can work together, in solidarity, for a better, safer and more tolerant world.