One might expect Mar­garet Atwood to have a dark take on humanity’s future. Over the course of a 50-year career, the Cana­di­an nov­el­ist has penned a num­ber of Orwellian sce­nar­ios: a fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian coup inThe Hand­maid­’s Tale, a genet­ic exper­i­ment run amok in Oryx and Crake, and, in her lat­est nov­el, The Heart Goes Last, an eco­nom­ic crash that leaves most Amer­i­cans liv­ing hand to mouth (unless they’re select­ed for a com­pa­ny town whose bylaws have some hell­ish fine print). Atwood has stressed that she writes not ​“sci-fi” with ​“pod peo­ple,” but rather ​“spec­u­la­tive fic­tion”: things that could hap­pen, or have happened.

There’s actually no point in saying, 'We’re doomed.'

In a recent essay for Medi­um that might be termed ​“spec­u­la­tive jour­nal­ism,” she lays out three ener­gy futures. In Pic­ture One, oil has run out, but we hap­pi­ly rely on solar cars, sail­boats, trains and bicy­cles for trans­porta­tion — and lots of long under­wear for warmth. In Pic­ture Two, the oil flow shuts off abrupt­ly and pan­ic erupts. Pic­ture Three is a hybrid: Coun­tries that planned ahead, like Ice­land, tran­si­tion smooth­ly into Pic­ture One and close their bor­ders; the rest of us descend into chaos.

In These Times reached Atwood by phone to ask who she’s sup­port­ing in the upcom­ing Cana­di­an elec­tions, what role fic­tion plays in sound­ing the alarm about cli­mate change, and whether our species is doomed.

You’ve writ­ten about the emerg­ing genre of ​“cli-fi.” Would it be fair to say that spec­u­la­tive fic­tion rep­re­sents a pos­si­ble future and cli-fi represents—

—the future? I’m always a bit wary of say­ing ​“the future,” because any­thing can hap­pen between now and the future. Let us say that it is the yel­low brick road we see before us, unless we change our wicked ways.

In Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol, Scrooge looks at his future, which is hor­ri­ble, and he says to the Ghost of Christ­mas Yet to Come, ​“Is this unal­ter­able? Can I change it?” And the ghost doesn’t answer him. But then Scrooge wakes up to find he can alter his future. The answer was actu­al­ly ​“yes,” but he had to fig­ure it out for himself.

Do you think we can avert the more ter­ri­fy­ing cli­mate-change sce­nar­ios — Pic­tures Two and Three?

I see us at a point of tran­si­tion right now. The mere fact that you are doing this inter­view is an indi­ca­tion. Five years ago, you would not have been. I see a lot of signs of a tran­si­tion away from oil. But the big ques­tions are: Is it enough, and is it fast enough? Or are we all going to cook?

What do you think — are we?

There’s actu­al­ly no point in say­ing, ​“We’re doomed.” In my book Pay­back: Debt and the Shad­ow Side of Wealth, I cov­er the var­i­ous respons­es to the Black Death. One was to run away very fast, but usu­al­ly the plague caught up with peo­ple any­way. Some peo­ple seclud­ed them­selves in cas­tles. Some peo­ple tried to help: They min­is­tered to the sick and usu­al­ly died them­selves. Some peo­ple raped, pil­laged and threw par­ties. And some of them kept records. We’re extreme­ly indebt­ed to them — they didn’t know why it was hap­pen­ing, but they wrote it down, allow­ing us to make an edu­cat­ed guess.

If you say, ​“You’re doomed and you’re gonna cook,” all those who might oth­er­wise try to help are going to instead run away very fast, or rape, pil­lage, loot and par­ty. Hope is what caus­es you to get up in the morn­ing and make an effort. So I’m all for hope.

What do you think of Nao­mi Klein’s argu­ment that we need to tack­le cap­i­tal­ism to tack­le cli­mate change?

I’m always inter­est­ed to know what peo­ple have in mind. What is your alter­na­tive? Peo­ple say, ​“We have to stop using oil right now!”, and I say, ​“Then you’re going to get social chaos: war­lords and com­plete break­down and famine and mur­der.” We are hooked on it at the moment. It’s like any addic­tion: We have to tran­si­tion. If we tran­si­tion wise­ly, we can get off it.

There’s some­thing in Cana­da called the Ecofis­cal Com­mis­sion. It believes that some of the solu­tions are mar­ket solu­tions. [Tes­la CEO] Elon Musk, for exam­ple — what he’s doing makes me very hope­ful. He’s very clev­er­ly made his patents pub­lic so that nobody can take him over and shut him down.

If you ask any per­son, ​“If you can have a snazzy car at a com­pa­ra­ble price, and it’s all elec­tric and you can recharge with the sun, would you have one?” They say, ​“Yes.” And then if you say, ​“If you could have a bat­tery in your house that you recharge with the sun, which will run all of your appli­ances and there­fore you nev­er have to get anoth­er elec­tri­cal bill from a pow­er com­pa­ny — and it’s all direct solar, so there’s no emis­sions — would you get one if it was the com­pa­ra­ble price?” Doesn’t take an instant to say, ​“Yes.” Nobody says, ​“I want to stick with oil. I like it — I like the smell, I like the goo, I like every­thing about it.”

Does state inter­ven­tion play a role?

No, it doesn’t. Oil has become uneco­nom­i­cal in that the cost of it down the line, peo­ple are begin­ning to real­ize, is too high. If you’re sub­si­diz­ing the thing all the time, then it’s obvi­ous­ly not pay­ing for itself, is it?

I think Naomi’s argu­ment is that the state should be sub­si­diz­ing fos­sil-fuel alter­na­tives in order to even the play­ing field.

Yes, in that respect, we might need the kind of state inter­ven­tion we are see­ing now in the form of mas­sive sub­si­dies for oil. Even the play­ing field and sup­ply an alter­na­tive. I’m no big fan of ginor­mous wind farms or ginor­mous solar farms. I’m much more a fan of small­er ones, more local. You’re not caus­ing the elec­tric­i­ty to trav­el very far, which is less wasteful.

The Holy Grail right now is a non-tox­ic bat­tery. The oth­er Holy Grail is non-tox­ic solar pan­els. Peo­ple are work­ing on those. There’s now a solar pan­el made of algae.

Where else do you see hope?

Pre­ston Man­ning… used to be thought of as a very right-wing guy. But he has sat down with the ecol­o­gists and con­ser­va­tion­ists. That is a swing. And you’re see­ing more of that amongst fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians now then you ever would have 15 years ago.

Is that com­ing out of theology?

You know, there’s a lot of scrip­tur­al sup­port [for envi­ron­men­tal­ism] if you actu­al­ly go and look. If you look at my book In the Year of the Flood, you will find some handy, scrip­tural­ly-based ser­mons on those very themes. If you are sup­posed to love your neigh­bor as your­self, you have to love the air that they breathe, the water that they drink, and the food that they eat. Look at the ser­mon about Noah’s Ark. That’s a good one, because God says, “ ​‘The imag­i­na­tion of man’s heart is evil from his youth’ so there­fore I’m not going to destroy them any­more.” I’m not sure what kind of non sequitur that was, but that’s what he said. The new covenant God makes — it’s repeat­ed sev­er­al times — is with all flesh. That means ani­mals, too. You can’t make a covenant one-sid­ed­ly, so that implies ani­mals are sen­tient. He says to the ani­mals, ​“Okay, man’s got domin­ion, and you’re going to be very afraid of him.” Not the same as, ​“Man is a good per­son and there­fore has domin­ion.” In fact, he said that man is evil.

On that note, who do you sup­port in Canada’s upcom­ing election?

I sup­port who­ev­er, in their rid­ing, can defeat a Con­ser­v­a­tive. It can be a Lib­er­al; it can be the NDP. We have three main polit­i­cal par­ties, so we’re very con­scious of vote-split­ting. Last time, the incum­bent [Con­ser­v­a­tive] gov­ern­ment got vot­ed in by 39 per­cent of the vote.

We’re excit­ed a social­ist par­ty might actu­al­ly have a chance on our continent.

If you look at the NDP’s actu­al poli­cies, this is not your granddad’s social­ism by any means. We’ve had NDP provin­cial gov­ern­ments in this coun­try for quite some time. They’re usu­al­ly bet­ter at bud­gets than the Con­ser­v­a­tives. The Con­ser­v­a­tives go out and say, ​“We’re for fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, blahdy-blah-blah,” and then peo­ple think, ​“Oh, good, they’re for fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty,” which allows them to be very irre­spon­si­ble. It’s sort of like being a girl in the 1950s and going into med­ical school: You just had to be bet­ter. For a long time in the 1960s and 1970s, I would only have women doc­tors and women den­tists, because I knew they were going to be better.

What do you think about how the NDP has con­duct­ed itself in this campaign?

[NDP leader Tom] Mul­cair is very smart. Nobody dis­putes that.

You recent­ly were cen­sored for an arti­cle about the prime minister’s groom­ing. Tell me about Hairgate.

The Nation­al Post pulled my arti­cle off the web­site, rumor has it in response to a call from you-know-who. It was kind of a sil­ly piece. I know we take our hair seri­ous­ly, and so do I — God knows, I’ve had it cri­tiqued often enough in book reviews — but it wasn’t about hair. It was in response to an attack ad the Con­ser­v­a­tives did on Justin Trudeau’s hair. The point of my piece was that maybe they shouldn’t be bring­ing it up, because who’s got the per­son­al groomer that the taxpayer’s pay­ing for?

Stephen Harp­er.

And who on the oth­er hand doesn’t need a per­son­al groomer?

Trudeau.

And who wouldn’t know what a per­son­al groomer was if he fell over one?

Mul­cair.

But Trudeau came back with quite a snap­py ad about hair, say­ing, ​“Stephen Harp­er wants to talk about Justin Trudeau’s hair. Justin Trudeau wants to talk about issues.

Let’s talk about your new nov­el, The Heart Goes Last. It’s spec­u­la­tive fic­tion set in the near future, but what struck me is how much the open­ing chap­ters — in which a cou­ple is liv­ing out of their car after an eco­nom­ic crash — echo the recent finan­cial cri­sis, or even the decline of the Rust Belt.

Oh yeah. Remem­ber 2008? A lot of peo­ple lost their hous­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the north­east and around Detroit. It was not an iso­lat­ed expe­ri­ence. Every hor­ri­ble thing that I’ve put in a book has usu­al­ly already been done by somebody.

I real­ly rec­og­nize Stan: this out-of-work guy who’s done every­thing right and has had his role as bread­win­ner under­mined. And his wife, Char­maine, is try­ing to cope.

Any­thing that affects one part­ner in a rela­tion­ship, of course it’s going to affect the oth­er. The ques­tion is how. Do you become mom­my, or do you get fed up?

And then they end up in a prison-like cor­po­rate town.

Every hor­ri­ble thing that I’ve put in a book has usu­al­ly already been done by some­body. This explores the intri­ca­cies and pos­si­ble out­comes of for-prof­it prison schemes, among oth­er things. You don’t have to go back very far in time to find par­al­lels in his­to­ry. You end up in 19th-cen­tu­ry Aus­tralia. The penal colonies, they kept need­ing new recruits. To be a male trans­port­ed to the penal colonies, you had to be a house­break­er or some­thing like that. But there wasn’t a lot of female house­break­ers, so they low­ered the bar for women. They want­ed them there to set­tle the men down, as it were. So a woman could get trans­port­ed for basi­cal­ly sneez­ing. They han­dled it a lot like the way they used to han­dle recruit­ment for the army: They got some guy drunk and put a sov­er­eign in his beer glass, and off he went into the navy.

To what extent do you think spec­u­la­tive fic­tion should play a role in warn­ing peo­ple about pos­si­ble futures?

You can­not tell writ­ers what to do. Rule num­ber one. The only kinds of cul­tures that tell writ­ers what to do are total­i­tar­i­an ones.

You don’t see a dis­tinc­tion between the state telling writ­ers what to do and the pub­lic doing so?

I think it’s the same thing. Cri­tique what they’ve done, but don’t tell them what to do.

Tell me about the Future Library.

An artist named Katie Pater­son decid­ed to do a slow time project called Future Library with the Oslo Pub­lic Library in Nor­way. She plant­ed a for­est of 1,000 seedlings that will grow for 100 years. Each year, a dif­fer­ent author — any lan­guage, any coun­try — will be asked to put a man­u­script in a box. The rules are these. Num­ber one: words only, no pic­tures. Num­ber two: any form — poem, short sto­ry, mem­oir, let­ter, nov­el, screen­play, play, what­ev­er. The third rule is you can’t tell any­body what’s in the box. Year 100, the box gets opened, and the trees will be cut to make the paper to print an anthol­o­gy of the works.

You were the first writer to con­tribute, in 2014. With­out break­ing rule three, can you tell me how you approached writ­ing for peo­ple 100 years from now?

It’s a short in the dark, but a big­ger shot in the dark than the one you usu­al­ly take, because you nev­er know who’s going to read your book any­way. The only thing that read­ers have in com­mon is that they’re read­ers. They can be from any­where, any age, any gen­der, any race, any lan­guage group. Once it’s trans­lat­ed into lan­guages you don’t know, you actu­al­ly have no idea what it says. In a way, you’re already putting a mes­sage in a bot­tle and throw­ing it into the sea. In this case, the sea is just bigger.

So do you think peo­ple will be around in 100 years to read this?

It’s a very hope­ful project, because think about all of the things it assumes. It assumes, num­ber one, there will be peo­ple. Nub­mer two, they will be still read­ing. Num­ber three, they’ll be inter­est­ed in read­ing. Num­ber four, there will be a Nor­way. Num­ber five, the trees will have grown. Those are all big ​‘ifs.’

Any­thing else you want to say about The Heart Goes Last?

It’s got a nice cov­er, don’t you think?

Yes! I remem­ber you say­ing some­where that the paper­backs of your very ear­ly books were pack­aged to look like—

—romance nov­els. I think there were prob­a­bly some quite dis­ap­point­ed readers.

Right now the U.S. trans­la­tions of Ele­na Fer­rante, the Ital­ian nov­el­ist, have that prob­lem. One has a wed­ding dress on the cov­er. I can’t talk my friends into open­ing them.

One of mine, The Edi­ble Woman, has a woman in a wed­ding dress on the cov­er—but she’s look­ing very dis­con­so­late and is hold­ing a pair of scissors.

I think that sends a dif­fer­ent mes­sage. [Laugh­ter] I would open that.