Murder and Romance in Thrutopian Worlds

Feature by Denise Baden

Your first question is probably, what is ‘thrutopia?’ The term was coined by Rupert Read in an article in HuffPost in the context of trying to understand how we get from where we are now to a sustainable society.

The term stands in contrast to the idea of Utopia, a term coined by Sir Thomas More in 1516, where he outlines his vision of the ideal society. It translates literally as ‘no place,’ and it’s hard for us to think about without simultaneously imagining how it could go wrong! Human beings are contrary, complex creatures, and instead of this notion of a perfect world filling us with a desire to live there, it has come to mean in many people’s minds an oppressive regime, where freedoms are restricted in the name of the ‘common good.’ I can’t help thinking of a friend of mine who, when dating a ‘perfect’ man, cried out in frustration, ‘I have nothing to work with!’

Thrutopian approaches give us plenty to work with. They appeal to me because for decades, for reasons I don’t understand, I’ve taken it upon myself to work out what I would do if I ruled the world – a benign dictator if you will. I even set up a Facebook page called, ‘if I were a well-meaning dictator I would…’ to encourage my students to think outside the box. My favourite suggestion was to have a “bank holiday where everyone has to dance everywhere!” It wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind in terms of incisive thinking, but it made me smile, and sometimes that’s just what a climate-anxious academic needs!

I undertook some research. In a series of studies, I compared problem-focused/dystopian approaches with more solution-focused approaches across a variety of contexts (business ethics education, news stories and fiction) with a range of samples and methods. In all cases, I found that solution-focused communications were significantly more effective at inspiring ethical/sustainable behaviour than the problem-focused communications. In addition, negative approaches that appeal to fear inspired a few people to action, but just as many switched off or exhibited avoidance, denial and anxiety.

Psychological studies of responses to fear also raise the issue of unintended consequences of trying to ‘scare people green’. For example, many writers (of news, climate fiction, sustainability courses etc.) assume that if we just make our audience aware of how bad things will be if we don’t change our ways, we’ll all give up beef, and flying and campaign for climate action. But in truth, it’s just as likely to lead to people buying up all the toilet rolls, and increased support for far-right, racist politicians.

The problem is, most climate communications, whether they be in documentaries, news stories or popular fiction, focus on dystopias. Steve Willis, a chemical engineer and fellow thrutopian author (Fairhaven, Defying Futility) has allowed me to share his diagram of films, books etc, which plots dystopian/utopian visions of the future against plausibility. It’s clear that there’s little that is both positive and plausible.

graph by Steve Willis

I set up the Green Stories project in 2018 to provide resources and encouragement for fiction authors to write into this space. In order to showcase this writing to a wider audience, I then established a publishing imprint, Habitat Press. So far, we’ve run 20 free competitions, resulting in 15 publications, all of which boast thrutopian credentials.

Thrutopian writing in practice

In many of my talks and workshops, I borrow an approach used by Rob Hopkins who started the Transition Town movement, where he asks us to picture ourselves a decade or so in the future and imagine that we’ve transformed into a flourishing society. My experience, even when not with a ‘green’ audience, is that there’s a remarkable consistency in what we yearn for: a more equal society, stronger communities, greater access to nature, clean air and water.

The barriers are an economic system and cultural values that incentivise excessive consumption; a democracy hijacked by vested interests and inability to think beyond short electoral cycles; a media landscape that has enabled those with the most money to control the information voters are exposed to; and a legal framework for public limited companies that requires them to maximise profits for shareholder value, regardless of the consequences for humanity.

While we’re constrained within our current systems, these barriers seem insurmountable, but fiction is a safe space to envision not only how things could be different, but also how that transition may occur.

At Habitat Press, we publish fiction that explores this vital area. One example is the novel, Visco, by David Fell, which was the 2020 Green Stories prize winner. This story imagines a giant music festival which allows free access to those who need care and their carers. It’s a great success and those attending love it so much, no one wants to go home when the music stops. So they don’t and a new kind of society emerges. David brings to this novel all the knowledge he has gained in his years working as a sustainability consultant, and packages it with engaging characters and an exciting plot.

My first novel, Habitat Man, showcases how we can transform our own back gardens into wildlife friendly habitats. I also throw in a dead body and a romance to keep readers turning the pages. In our anthology, No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet, climate solutions are at the heart of each story. Some showcase policies we can campaign for, but others like Mostly for You about a cleaner, show how we can transform our own businesses into sustainable enterprises that nourish our planet rather than poisoning it. Habitat Press’s latest book, Dirt, by Laura Baggaley, is a young adult novella set in the near future, in which regenerative farming forms the backdrop to a future-set eco-romance – pitting industrial agriculture against sustainable food production. It’s a story that shows how closer community ties and knowledge-sharing can transform our lives from the ground up, and the conversations that can help us achieve this. Dirt comes out next month, and the first chapter will be published by Bending The Arc on 3rd May in an exclusive preview.

A Thrutopian Whoddunit

My own recent projects have been a play and a novel, where as a social scientist and systems thinker, I drew upon my knowledge of the key levers for change and the obstacles.

We can’t ignore power, so we need to upgrade our democracy. Citizens’ assemblies offer an alternative that holds great promise. In most countries, citizens’ assemblies can only make recommendations. There are campaigns to give them legal power, but a barrier is lack of public awareness. To combat this and spread the word, I turned to theatre and mainstream genre fiction, rather than academic articles read by very few. The hope is to create a bottom-up understanding and desire for alternatives that can better allow us to choose long-term sustainable policies.

With the support of the British Academy, I wrote a play Murder in the Citizens’ Jury which imagines eight people in a citizens’ assembly debating climate solutions. I use the term ‘citizens’ jury’ as we are already familiar with how juries work, so it provides an immediate cue what to expect. And who doesn’t love a locked-room murder! The whodunnit element provides the drama and mystery. The context raises awareness of this emerging form of participative democracy. It also allows climate policies to be explored from the perspective of a variety of people, each of whom relates to them in different ways.

The climate policies discussed in the play are those which reduce consumption – something politicians don’t dare to talk about: repair cafes, sharing economy/libraries of things, on-demand bus services (think Uber but buses). If everyone used such services, they’d be so cheap and convenient, no one would need their own car or their own tools, games, sports gear, etc. But we don’t – why would we, when every bit of information we’re exposed to persuades us of the value of buying stuff? Hence the most significant policy explored in the play – personal carbon allowances. In emergencies, we ration what is scarce.

In this climate emergency, carbon is scarce, so the idea is that we each have our own allotted carbon allowance, and if we go over it, we buy carbon credits on the open market. If we go under, we make money selling our spare credits. It acts as a progressive tax on high-carbon consumption. For example, if you ate beef, and flew everywhere, you’d use up your PCA more quickly than if you insulated your house and made greater use of public/active transport. PCA is also known as personal carbon trading, and was proposed back in 2007 by David Miliband, DEFRA and the Sustainable Roundtable, but the global financial crisis pushed it off the agenda.

Murder in the Citizens’ Jury was performed in 2024 in a sellout run, and later, a school put on an abridged one-hour version and recorded. It was interactive and the audience voted for their favourite climate policies. The director told me people were still debating the ideas days later. It’s currently available royalty-free for any school/college drama groups and theatre companies, amateur or professional, to stage.

Inspired by the success of the theatre production, and wanting to reach a larger audience, I’ve included the ideas from the play as a story within a story in a novel which I’ve just released: Murder in the Climate Assembly. It follows a moral philosophy professor, Iris Tate, who is approached with a request to solve a dilemma. The Director of Public Prosecutions must decide whether to prosecute a murder which took place in a citizens’ assembly on climate. The stakes are high. In the story, citizens’ assemblies have been granted actual power. If they get through the trial period, a House of Citizens will replace the House of Lords. But if the murder is revealed, the media frenzy would mean the end of this form of direct democracy, which many believe could be the silver bullet to avert a climate crisis.

Professor Iris Tate decides to consult her students, and devises a moral philosophy course that presents the murder as a hypothetical whodunnit. A variety of characters provide entertaining sources of ethical dilemmas, but what the students don’t know is that the ultimate conundrum is very real, and their conclusions will have far-reaching consequences. The novel is funny, dark and thought-provoking, and engages the reader in the search for solutions that will actually work.

You can see the synopsis, reviews and extracts showing how each climate solution is included on my website.

We’re not all sustainability consultants or social scientists, but whatever your area of interest or expertise, you can take that bit of the jigsaw and imagine the best it could be. Don’t start from where you are and try to be less bad. That would be like setting off on a journey with a vague idea of how to be ‘less here’! Take time to imagine what a truly regenerative, sustainable approach would look like, involve others in the envisioning process, then work backwards from your dream to see how to get there.

Then share it! A novel, play, poem, song, talk, podcast or workshop. And sign up to Green Stories so you’re informed about our next competition later this year. We’d love to read your thrutopian visions!

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Denise Baden is Professor of Sustainability at the University of Southampton. She has published numerous book chapters and articles in the academic realm, as well as writing two novels, Habitat Man and Murder in the Climate Assembly. She is on the Forbes list of Climate Leaders Changing the Film and TV Industry and won the Writing Climate Pitchfest in March 2024 for her TV script The Assassin.