A cheerful little story from Paolo Bacigalupi:Most days, they'd perch atop the new Charles River levees and skip rocks across warm algae-choked waters, occasionally trading hits on Josh's asthma inhaler. Up in Canada, whole beetle-killed forests were burning, and the smoke kept blowing south. Burnt Canadians, they called it. They rated the Boston weather by how thick the Canadians were, and how many asthma hits they needed.
I get the vibe that the author wrote this as more of a flyover country snuff film than a warning.
I liked the story. True cli-fi .
George Turner wrote version of this story as Drowning Towers back in 87/88 focused on climate change in Melbourne. Turner was a journalist so he made a much better writer than most scifi authors. I highly recommend the book as it makes for a pretty grim realistic read about the future based on what was already know in the late 80s.
See also T.C. Boyle's A Friend of the Earth. Learn to love saki.
Bacigalupi's novels and stories are generally in that same cheerful vein. Check them out. "The Water Knife" is set in an American Southwest that could be part of the world of "A Full Life."
Yeah, I've read them all, I think. Good times, good times!
"But Doctor, I AM Paolo Bacigalupi!"
sounds about right.