Writers Mary South and Alexandra Kleeman discuss writing climate crises in works of fiction in the face of rising temperatures and unprecedented ecological disasters. Kleeman’s latest novel, Something New Under the Sun, takes us to a drought-ravaged California, where water is so scarce that a substitute is manufactured and sold as WAT-R. 

In the middle of Nevada lies Rhyolite Ridge, a place with the largest known lithium deposit in North America and home to an endemic wildflower known as Tiehm’s buckwheat. The flowers’ endangered status prevents the development of more lithium mines. Writer Mason Voehl investigates the battle between those who seek to gather the precious ore essential to decarbonizing our economy and those who seek to defend a species on the verge of extinction.