Earlier this October, a meteorologist broke down on US national television as he watched Hurricane Milton rapidly intensify into what would be dubbed “the storm of the century”. Around seven million people in Florida were affected. This scene could easily have come from Stephen Markley’s 2023 apocalyptic novel The Deluge, a 900-page saga that eerily mirrors the current climate crisis, depicting a world unravelling under the weight of devastating hurricanes, scorching temperatures, hunger, disease and violence.
In Markley's fictional world, US political and corporate elites, clinging to their profits, prop up an AI-powered surveillance state to control the population and quash any resistance to their carbon-intensive economy at the very source of the climate crisis. Published almost two years ago, The Deluge feels alarmingly prophetic as the United States heads into a crucial presidential election, with climate change looming as a key issue – yet conspicuously absent from much of the political debate.
Markley recently visited Geneva for an event at the Société de lecture, where Geneva Solutions spoke with him about what awaits the world’s second-largest emitter at this turning point in its history.
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