Kelp forests give hope to climate refugees
Worldbuilding: An underwater paradise in a world of dust
This is the longline for my short story ‘Human Island’.
‘Human Island’ is the story of a grieving mother who documents a human sacrifice and finally finds peace in the most unlikely of places.
To avoid spoiler alerts 🤭, I will not go into plot related story details (such as the human sacrifice) in this newsletter.
The setup
The short story ‘Human Island’ takes place in Southern Europe around 2550. Due to climate change and the increased occurrence of unpredictable heatwaves, most of Southern Europe lost its population as the locals found refuge north where the temperature was cooler, and there was the hope of finding jobs.
Climate change and temperature and sea level rises renderred parts of the world uninhabitable. As a result, more and more climate refugees arrived in Europe. With the cooler north already overpopulated and short on resources, the climate refugees took shelter in the abandoned areas of Southern Europe.
One such example were Japanese climate refugees who sailed to Europe after large parts of Japan were submerged underwater. Those who survived the long and perilous trip established colonies on the Atlantic Coast in northern Portugal and Spain.
At first, the lack of jobs and natural resources made the perspective of living in that area quite daunting, and many Europeans thought that the Japanese communities would soon perish. But the Japanese refugees started recycling materials they found in the abandoned cities and building their signature self-sufficient capsule homes.