The Burning Years

“Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable,” President Kennedy in a 1961 address to the United Nations.

In my book The Burning Years I examine in detail what Kennedy meant in his address. I follow a group of people as they survive a planet made uninhabitable by climate change. “Recent investigations have shown that inconceivable catastrophic changes in the environment will take place if the global temperatures increase by more than 2° C (3.6° F). A warming of 2° C (3.6° F) corresponds to a carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration of about 450 ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere. As of beginning of 2007, the CO2 concentration is already at 380 ppm and it raises on average 2 - 3 ppm each year, so if nothing is done the critical value will be reached in approximately 20 to 30 years from now.” Jürg Rohrer, Time for Change

Because I was interested in the science of global warming as much as our collective reaction to it, I deliberately did not follow the example of novelists like Cormac McCarthy when I wrote The Burning Years. McCarthy wrote the brilliant post-apocalyptic tale The Road, which follows the journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed most of civilization and, in the intervening years, almost all life on Earth. Instead, like Andy Weir author of The Martian, I focused on the science of climate change and the practicalities of what it will take for human beings to survive it. I did not dwell on what the fate of those left outside on a too hot planet might be. I left that to the imagination of my readers.

If I was to write a more literary novel like McCarthy, one that was not relegated solely to the genre of science fiction, I would have, like him, described the fate of a small set of specific characters who do not survive climate change. I guess that would have been more honest, because based on my extensive research it seemed highly likely that if we do not take steps to halt man-made climate change, the majority of Earth’s inhabitants will in fact die very horrible deaths.

“Yet temperatures in the lower stratosphere are decreasing as a result of increased carbon and other heat-trapping emissions. The reason for this apparent paradox—increasing temperatures at the Earth's surface and decreasing temperatures in higher parts of the atmosphere—can be explained using the blanket analogy. Carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases rise into the atmosphere, spread around the globe, and act like a blanket holding in heat around Earth. This blanket also protects the warm surface of the Earth from the cold air above it. As heat-trapping gas concentrations increase, the blanket thickness also increases. This further warms the Earth’s surface; heats the blanket itself; and traps more heat in the lower atmosphere. Heat that normally (i.e. before blanket thickening) would escape the lower atmosphere and enter the stratosphere no longer does so, leaving the stratosphere cooler. Cooling of the lower polar stratosphere enhances PSC formation, and thus contributes to ozone loss. It appears unlikely that the decrease in ozone-depleting substances will lead to restabilization of the pre-1980 stratospheric ozone layer because of the competing and uncertain effects of further climate change.” Union of Concerned Scientists.

If I was to be absolutely honest with my readers, I would have shown them through the lens of an anthropocene altered world, and a limited number of characters that after months of prolonged exposure to solar UV radiation, we who are left, will most likely experience cancer rapidly spreading into our lymph nodes and generating very painful golf ball-size lumps throughout our bodies. We will also simultaneously most certainly experience loss of sight and slurred speech caused by lesions in our brains as we begin to slowly and painfully waste way.

While this might have resembled the truth of what I know, I just could not bring myself to write characters and a story such as this, because I believe it is highly probable such a grim fate awaits both my children and grand-children if all of us do not take collective action immediately to prevent the warming of our planet.

The neoliberals that are now in charge of our government and who heedlessly and cynically promote a high consumption, carbon-hungry system are treating our atmosphere like a waste dump. By doing this they are making sure that your and my children and grandchildren will most likely die from starvation, cancer, and massive, overwhelming weather events. Unlike the lucky characters in my book the majority of us do not have access to the kinds of resources it will take to escape such a cataclysm, and live off-planet or underground the surface of the earth for hundreds of years. As for those families of the neoliberals associated with today’s corporate elites, I show in my book how they will most likely escape this fate, because they have the money necessary to protect themselves and their families from it.

In my book I also make sure to raise an alert to the weather modification programs which exist – extensive geo-engineering of the weather happening right now, and which will only increase as our planet warms. Be alert to these programs and make sure you know what’s happening with them. Don’t consign their existence to conspiracy theories or science fiction. My research and Naomi Klein’s who wrote This Changes Everything, proves otherwise.

When I wrote the book, I also thought it was important to ask whether or not we will need to create a series of climate-immune, bio-engineered humans in order for our species to survive, once we’ve made this planet uninhabitable. You can be certain that people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are already thinking about how they can do this – not because they care about the survival of our species, but because they want to ensure their own individual survival and virtual immortality if you like. I examine people who I think are much like them them in my book, so my readers may gain some insights into their morals and motivations.

I hope after reading The Burning Years, the ones of us who currently live on Earth’s surface will be encouraged to become involved in individual and collective strategies for her survival. I hope my readers will come to realize at the end of the book that we are a society which is in love with the hyper-carbonized pursuit of short-term comfort at any cost. I hope they will be moved to find practical ways to cut back on their own use of fossil fuels and encourage their towns, cities and state governments to forge ahead as they examine ways within communities we can collectively decrease their use.

However, in my heart I know full well that for a society such as ours to change its economic norms fast enough will be well nigh impossible, and that perhaps I really wrote this book as a positive warning to prepare for the worst.

If you are willing to review this book on Amazon or Goodreads I have a limited number of e-copies and hard copies that I am willing to giveaway. Please look soon for serialization of a few chapters.

"Here's a fiction that's not afraid to tackle some of the biggest topics of our time."

Bill McKibben, author, The End of Nature and numerous environmental books, and founder of 350.org

I loved this book even more than just “loving it,” I feel very strongly that it critically bridges and transcends audiences and the timing of this subject matter is beyond perfect. I believe, now more than ever, what Felicity Harley has written is both relevant and important.

The science, current and future, is sound and far-reaching. Harley taps into many current political, social, and environmental situations and expands on real-time scientific breakthroughs (for example, exploring beyond our planet). I really liked the narrative “voices” throughout the book, regardless of which scenario the reader is dropped into. All are equally engaging and the character development is even and (almost) clinically objective. I think this will (also) really appeal to a sci-fi audience, which is awesome and very “in line” with today’s readers.

Additionally, I have to admit that I was haunted by Ms. Harley's descriptions of the plutocracy and their reckless disregard for the vast majority of living things on Earth. What OTHER possible explanation can there even BE than hers (that they consider everyone but themselves to be “takers”)? Harley's descriptions of the political elite align perfectly with real-time scenes playing out across America right now.

The mix and “balance” of gloom and despair vs. incredible scientific achievements removed what might have become an almost claustrophobic effect. Example: The US population goes from 318 million to 10 million (horrible) VS Rachel’s living, breathing personal living quarters on spaceship Persephone which made me think of the vividness and aching beauty of the forests in the movie, “Avatar.” Very hard to achieve this effect. It's difficult to attach a "genre" to Harley's book without shortchanging it one place or another, but if I had to explain it to someone who hadn't read it, I'd say it's like a mix of what Naomi Klein, Elon Musk and Phil Plait would conjure up together, and ask Bong Joon-ho (Director of the movie "Snowpiercer") to make into a film.

[Side bar: It was a VERY nice weaving of string theory, parallel universes, quantum entanglement, Maslow, and the heliosphere’s foam zone, to name a few, in this book! Also, excellent timing with the TV series “Stranger Things” also implicating the US Department of Energy in future misdeeds – and DARPA gets thrown into the mix, too. Perfect!]

After I finished the book, I visited "The Burning Years'" website and as I scrolled down to the pictures at the bottom of the page (seeing them for the first time), they perfectly complimented my imagery of scenes in the book. SO NEAT and visually beautiful. I advise anyone who reads the book to do the same. https://schatziesearthproject.com