Who doesn't like a good story, especially one that sharpens your thinking about the future? Science fiction has been doing that for generations, and now, a growing number of sci fi and speculative fiction writers around the world are imaging what a future with climate change will look like, and how we might respond to it.

Listen in to this thought-provoking final episode of the COAL+ICE Podcast with guests:

Chen Qiufan: Chinese speculative fiction writer, author of "The Waste Tide," AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future (co-authored with Kai-Fu Lee), and more.

Gu Shi: Chinese speculative fiction writer, and Beijing urban planner.

Eliot Peper: Oakland-based American speculative fiction author of almost a dozen novels, including Veil, about someone hijacking the climate, and his latest thriller, Reap3r -- out in May 2022.

Most of us on earth now live in cities. By 2050, more than two-thirds of us will. And by the end of this century, demographers predict, 85% of the world’s population will live in cities. By then, demographers estimate, cities like Lagos in Nigeria and Mumbai in India will have 60 million or more inhabitants, and much of the world's urban growth will be in Africa.

What will this mean for climate change, and how will climate change affect growing urban populations? Much depends on whether smart decisions are made now about how expanding cities develop, and how existing cities -- especially in energy-intensive countries like the United States -- adjust to be more climate friendly.

With guests:

Ping Huang, a post-doctoral research associate at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, UK, and a native of Shenzhen, China, working on urban energy transition and climate governance.

Basirat Oyalowo, a researcher at the department of Estate Management, University of Lagos, Nigeria, where she also manages the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development. Her research in housing studies and sustainability broadly focuses on issues around informality, resilience, housing finance, regeneration and real estate sustainability.

Linda Westman, a post-doctoral research associate at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, UK, whose work focuses on urban sustainability transformation and the governance of sustainability and climate change, including a focus on China.

Siqi Zheng: is an MIT professor focusing on urban and real estate sustainability. She directs MIT's Center for Real Estate, and creator and director of its Sustainable Urbanization Lab.

We've all got to eat. And climate change is throwing us new challenges as to how to feed a global population that's getting bigger, more urban, and more affluent -- and make sure the world's poorest have enough nutritious food too.

This would have been a challenge without climate change. With it, farmers need to adapt to wilder weather, less predictable rainfall, and shifting growing zones that sometimes mean they can't plant what they long did, and have to find new crops that are resilient to the new normal.

Meanwhile, efforts are afoot to cut emissions that agriculture itself contributes to climate change.

In this episode, breaking down this complex set of issues in simple terms, with on-the-ground knowledge are:

Channing Arndt, director of the environment, production, technology division at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
&
Dawit Mekonnen, research fellow in Ethiopia for the International Food Policy Research Institute.