Introduction: The Climate Issue

Abstract

Introduction:The Climate Issue Timo Müller (bio) and Michelle Yates (bio) Climate is emerging as the predominant problem of the twenty-first century. The existential threat posed by climate change, which has long been understood in the abstract, is beginning to take concrete shape for more and more people. Released by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Sixth Assessment Report (2021) shows that climate change is not only a dire present issue but also now irreversible for the next few hundred to a thousand years. The Sixth Assessment Report also documents an increased certainty that there will be more frequent and more intense severe weather and climate-related extremes. People are already experiencing the effects and "slow violence" of climate change through heat waves, heavy precipitation, sea level rise, wildfires, drought, flooding, tropical cyclones, and the rapid loss of marine fauna. Agriculture and yield production in the United States and around the world are negatively impacted by climate change, and this impact will continue in the future. Climate change threatens lives and livelihoods across the world. These developments have engendered a variety of cultural practices, discourses, and imaginaries that range from targeted demonstrations (e.g., People's Climate March, Extinction Rebellion) and lawsuits (e.g., Juliana v. United States) all the way to influential scenarios of future decline or renewal. These cultural manifestations in turn shape not only our moral, political, and economic responses to climate change but our very understanding of climate itself. As Matthew Schneider-Mayerson (2015) has pointed out, there is a dearth of scholarship within the field of American Studies addressing climate change even though the United States is a main driver of climate change. Schneider-Mayerson [End Page 9] notes that there are no special issues within the field of American Studies dedicated to climate, and that it is only in the past few years that there have been American Studies Association conference panels dedicated to the topic. Since the 2015 publication of Schneider-Mayerson's critique, there has been one special issue on climate in the field, "Cli-Fi and American Studies," edited by Susanne Leikam and Julia Leyda for the journal Amerikastudien/American Studies (2017). As Leikam and Leyda note in their Introduction, the twenty-first century has seen a "remarkable burgeoning of a heterogeneous body of cultural texts, including literature, film, visual arts, and performances, and scientific works that take on the challenge of prompting global audiences to engage emotionally and intellectually with the implications of anthropogenic climate change" (109). They further note that "the conceptual, methodological, and theoretical frameworks of American Studies offer extensive expertise for analyses of the heterogeneous body of cultural texts engaging with anthropogenic climate change" (111). In 2020, American Quarterly published a special issue on "Energy Pasts and Futures in American Studies," edited by Natasha Zaretsky, Michael Zizer, and Julie Sze. Though the special issue has important overlaps with an analysis of climate, it is focused on the also relatively underexplored topic of energy studies. Meanwhile, a variety of social science and humanities journals whose scope partly overlaps with that of American Studies have recognized the importance of engaging with climate. Some have published special issues that include case studies about the United States, for example, Theory, Culture & Society's 2010 special issue on "Changing Climates"; ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment's 2014 special issue on "Global Warming"; and Polygraph's 2020 special issue on "Marxism and Climate Change." Our aim with this special issue of American Studies is to expand the conversation around climate within American Studies, and to push the field toward a more robust dialogue and thorough engagement with all aspects of climate change. One of the things that an American Studies approach to climate can offer is an interdisciplinary perspective that captures the socio-cultural, political, and ontological dimensions of climate change, including experiential forms of knowledge that are frequently overlooked or not captured by scientific and quantitative methods. An American Studies approach can address issues that undergird or even shape such methods, for example, the impact of environmental activism, climate skepticism, or corporate greening strategies on the perception and negotiation of climate change in the...