Climate Change in literature

So, while listening to NPR in the car a few days ago I heard this really fascinating interview with the British novelist Ian McEwan. After taking a trip to the arctic with a group of other artists, writers, and humanists, he was inspired to write a novel about climate change, the recently-released book, Solar. As I'm writing my paper on books about the history and science of climate change, I think it is interesting to consider how contemporary writers are incorporating the issue into fiction.

I've not yet read the book, so I can't vouch for it's quality (reviewers have mostly agreed that it's not McEwan's best book). But this is the first book of contemporary literature I have come across that grapples with the question of climate change and what it means for humanity, which in itself is interesting, given that climate change is the issue of the day. It seems a difficult topic for a novelist to tackle, given that it is such a heated political topic and there is much uncertainty surrounding what course climate change will take in the future -- unless the novelist is a science fiction writer, I suppose. I'm interested to read it and see how (and if) McEwan successfully gets a moral point across without sounding too preachy . . .

Anyway, the interview is here:
http://www.wbur.org/npr/125470747

And a review here:
http://www.wbur.org/npr/125434400

- Sarah