Hot times, dystopian stories: how we envision the climate future

An international team of researchers combining various disciplines is analyzing our visions of the future in the face of the climate crisis via plays, social media posts, and novels. Their findings: many apocalyptic narratives – and a dash of hope.

Culture and Society

by Laura Anninger

August 24, 2026

Approximately 20 centimeters: this is by how much sea levels could rise each year by 2050 on the basis of a moderate emissions scenario. This projection relies on a climate model – a computer program that calculates changes in the climate system using mathematical equations and shows what changes our physical environment could undergo.

But can one also design a model of the way we humans imagine the future on a warming planet – based, for instance, on plays, Instagram posts, educational materials, or novels? If so, what do these visions look like? These are questions explored by nine Austrian, German, and British researchers from the fields of literary and cultural studies, sociology, linguistics, and subject-specific teaching, as well as science and technology studies, in the research project “Just Futures? Approaching Cultural Climate Models”, funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. The principal investigators are environmental humanities scholar David Higgins from the University of Leeds and literary scholar and English studies specialist Julia Hoydis from the University of Graz.

How we envision the future

How does the climate crisis manifest itself in literature and culture? As part of a team of international researchers, literary scholar Julia Hoydis traces how climate narratives from science fiction set in the distant future are inevitably and increasingly reflected in contemporary literature.

Just Futures?

What are cultural models?

These researchers seek to show how climate futures are envisioned in various text formats and media and what these futures look like. “Narratives about how humanity and the climate crisis might and will unfold harness scientific facts and data,” explains Hoydis. “But they work in a different way, of course.”

Also, they cover different aspects. Whereas mathematical models provide abstract data on how rapidly glaciers melt in a warming scenario, essays or plays appeal to people’s emotions. They can, for instance, address the concerns that trouble locals in vulnerable areas or the values and traditions conveyed by the melting ice and people’s reactions to it. What is more, fiction has a more immediate impact. Visions of the future feel closer at hand when we’re sitting in a theater, reading a novel, or scrolling through a social media feed than when we’re looking at scientific graphs.

Not cheerful in the least

But how do authors and dramaturgs envision the future? In order to find the answer, David Higgins and Julia Hoydis analyzed several dozen British texts from the past decade – predominantly plays, novels, autobiographical essays, and textbooks. They used the literary studies method of “close reading,” and aspects they interpreted included the linguistic and rhetorical devices used by the authors. “We look for recurring motifs and themes, such as whether there is a focus on certain agents or characters,” explains Hoydis.

Climate change is not a new topic in literature. Since the 2010s, the term “climate fiction” has been used to describe texts that address this issue. Then, many of the stories written were science fiction, meaning they were set in a speculative, distant future.

When science fiction turns into reality

Today, on the other hand, the plays and novels that Hoydis analyzes also reflect just how steeply the climate crisis has escalated since then and how deeply it has become entrenched in our daily lives. What the writers and theater makers now use for their climate stories is a vaguely near future, the present, or even the recent past. “It’s just difficult to produce contemporary literature that doesn’t address realities like hot summers,” says Julia Hoydis. The 2021 novel The High House by British author Jesse Greengrass, for instance, tells the story of an environmental researcher who seeks refuge from the climate catastrophe in a self-designed, storm-proof house perched on a sloping hill on the British coast.

Stories of the future addressing the end of time

Many of the plays and texts deal with feelings of grief, guilt, and loss through the lens of literature. Another frequent theme surrounds generational conflicts. “There’s nothing cheerful about any of them,” notes Hoydis. A particularly provocative and striking case in point is the 2022 play The Trial by UK playwright Dawn King. Set in the near future amid climate collapse, it features a tribunal of twelve teenagers in a school passing judgment on adults’ past climate-damaging behavior. If the accused are found guilty, they face execution.

The researchers also found many apocalyptic narratives, depicting a dystopian future in which a handful of survivors have to start over on a devastated planet or far away from it. “I’m still on the lookout for the utopias,” Julia Hoydis remarks dryly. None of the texts she analyzed sketch out a transition to a climate-neutral and just society. As Hoydis explains, literature can also reveal what its authors think about human nature. Many seem to believe that human nature cannot fundamentally change.

Hoydis was surprised, however, by the gender aspect included in many narratives. In many novels and plays, the handful of survivors includes pregnant women. Their unborn child symbolized hope for the future of humanity. “This trope is actually very conservative,” says Hoydis.

Climate visions on Insta

In another work package, science and technology researcher Warren Peace and linguist Carolin Schwegler explored the cultural climate narratives circulating on the X (Twitter), TikTok, and Instagram platforms. They analyzed roughly 29,500 short videos, posts, and accompanying texts. Among other things, their analysis revealed a new climate-related visual language on Instagram. Users are increasingly incorporating text into images, videos, and graphics, creating infographics and memes, or combining data visualization with personal stories. Using side-by-side comparisons and swipe images, the users highlight the gap between what is and what they want there to be – e.g. between a deforested and a reforested section of rainforest – and launch a call for action.

Another study by Carolin Schwegler and linguist Jöran Landschoff described aspects of mobility-related visions of the future on the platform. According to the researchers, users voice criticism of current conditions and also envision optimistic futures. They take inspiration, for example, from the optimistic social movement known as “solarpunk,” creating and sharing images of green cities with sophisticated public transportation systems and solar panels at public transport stops.

Lists, literature, and solutions

The researchers’ interdisciplinary collaboration also revealed parallels between platforms, books, and plays. One such parallel concerns lists. Instagram posts, for example, list “10 things you still need to do this summer before it gets too hot,” while characters in novels compile lists of the canned goods they found in an abandoned house. Routines and lists seem to help users, writers, and playwrights to cope with an uncertain future, explains Julia Hoydis.

One thing literary texts rarely describe, however, are solutions. “Literature cannot provide a blueprint for how we can save the world,” Hoydis notes. But it can create echo chambers for emotions, such as the feeling of cognitive dissonance, which arises from the gap between what we know about the consequences of the climate crisis and what we’re actually doing to counter it. Hoydis is convinced that “when we read or watch stories that depict the future in the context of the climate crisis, we feel less as though the grim reality is being completely ignored.”

Social media posts, plays, and texts about the future amid the climate crisis will continue to be written after the end of this year, when the research project will be completed. In the future, Julia Hoydis plans to devote herself even more deeply to climate stories about the older generation. “For, this generation is heavily affected by the climate crisis,” she says. “Yet they are hardly represented in the cultural discourse on climate change.”

About the researcher

Julia Hoydis is a professor of English literature from the 18th to the 21st century at the Department of English Studies at the University of Graz. She studied philosophy, media studies, and English philology at the University of Cologne and acquired her Ph.D. in the field of postcolonial studies. Julia Hoydis was a doctoral candidate and lecturer at the University of Cambridge, a professor at the University of Klagenfurt, and she has taught at the Universities of Cologne and Duisburg-Essen. Her research focuses include climate narratives, posthumanism, and newer forms of digital storytelling.