The new satirical novel, Scob Nation, might piss you off. It’s written by a local author under the nom de plume Templ Grit. Though he’s written nonfiction books about climate under his own name, his ideas have been met with, let’s say, consternation.
“It’s been a journey,” Grit admitted. “My climate journey has been a long one. I sold my first solar module in 1999. So, literally in the last century. I built a foundation in the renewable energy business, worked in it for decades, did pretty much everything that you can do, built companies, raised millions.
“A lot of the tools and the stories that are out there, the words being used, are things that I helped bring to market back in the day. Even the phrase ‘clean energy’ was something I developed in very detailed focus groups. Spent a lot of time doing government policy and things like that.”
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Templ Grit’s satirical sci-fi novel, Scob Nation, depicts a dystopian world driven by extreme environmentalism and moral certitude, where big tech controls the population and people are subject to punishment for their climate footprint. The novel is currently available on amazon.com.
The entrepreneur and educator started becoming concerned that environmentalism had morphed into a kind of unrealistic and unhealthy climate alarmism.
“I’d say about halfway through this journey, in about 2014, I noticed things started to change,” he said. “I think the biggest change was everything just got so dire. Before, we were the good guys and were united around this idea that we were doing incrementally better. We didn’t claim to save the world. We just thought, ‘This is good stuff, you know, a blue rectangle that makes electricity.’ We were slowly getting these on the rooftops, but then suddenly, the apocalypse showed up, right? And everything had to be framed in terms of preventing the planet’s destruction. It just got weird.
“Like a lot of things, once big money enters an industry, any industry, when billionaires show up, things change, the message changed. If you were selling solar, you had to sell it as a way to save the planet. And it was just like, ‘Wait, what? How did that happen?’ Then the pressure campaigns kind of started.”
Grit’s book asks an uncomfortable question: What is the ultimate endgame if society indulges in climate activists’ every desire? What would the world be like if, for instance, Greta Thunberg made every nation’s climate policy?
In Grit’s story, the answer is an Orwellian dystopia where citizens’ climate footprint can result in punishment with an authoritarian society driven by climate morality.
Set in 2045, first in Atascadero and San Luis Obispo, and later on a cross-country road trip to a detention and reeducation center, it follows Mateo Anaya—a father searching for his son, Reyes—in a world overrun by technology, where extreme environmentalist and morality are inextricably intertwined.
“Think social credit scores, algorithmic compliance, and tech-enabled control,” the author explained.
Scob Nation isn’t interested in proving whether climate change is real, isn’t interested in proving what we’re doing is or isn’t saving the planet. It’s simply imagining a future where environmentalism is no longer tethered to reality and becomes religion.
“It’s a warning about implementation overreach,” Grit said. “The reactions [the book’s received] proved my thesis. Climate activists called it ‘dangerous’ and said I shouldn’t be allowed to write it in the first place. One dismissed it as ‘alt-right’ after reading two pages. I write under a pen name because questioning how we implement climate policy—even in fiction—has become professionally risky.”
Grit, in his professional capacity and under his real name, was invited to a Cal Poly environmental engineering lecture, where his ideas were met with outright hostility. He described the tone as “a lynch mob.”
“We’re talking extremism,” he said. “I’m not in there saying, ‘Burn, burn, burn, drill, drill, drill.’ I’m not doing any of that. I’m just saying, ‘Hey, I researched this. I spent longer than any of these kids have been alive in this industry. I kind of know what I’m talking about.’ And no one was having any part of it.”
Grit describes today’s youth and young adults as “the first generation of the climate children that grew up with nothing but this message of hopelessness.”
“I realized that the big climate machine that I had helped build, and that I had used for so long, is now being viewed differently,” he explained. “The story is dark, and we’re actually doing real damage. We’re doing all the things that we had accused all the oil companies of doing. So, I started to dig into it. I said, ‘I’m going to dig into this and really find out where the roots of this are.’”
‘The story is dark, and we’re actually doing real damage. We’re doing all the things that we had accused all the oil companies of doing.’
—Templ Grit, author and educator
From that digging came the idea for Scob Nation. Aside from comparisons to George Orwell’s 1984, Grit’s book recalls Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World, where power systems aim to psychologically condition the populace. Like sci-fi writer William Gibson (Neuromancer, Johnny Pneumonic), government is no longer run by the people for the people. In Gibson’s world, corporations rule; in Grit’s, it’s Big Tech. Like Gibson’s world, Grit’s also contains body modifications. People communicate via “u-discs” implanted in their temples, which can be used as a method of control. Mateo’s wife, Lauren, is sister to an environmental zealot named Gina, who endorses the draconian methods of social control. She’s modified her body by way of protest and to demonstrate her environmental purity.
The delineation between Democrats and Republicans have blurred. In Grit’s world, they’re called Democans, who call the massive global cyber-event that changed the world the “glitch,” and Republicrats, which call it the “Correction.”
The system is run by Blonden Viate, the “Climate Overman” who oversees prisons and reprogramming centers. It’s dark stuff but engrossing and thought-provoking.
“The climate is the climate,” Grit said, “and there’s a whole infrastructure and story with that, but there’s also a story about the moral certainty that comes with it, what I call that the moral architecture. That’s a story that no one is telling, and that’s why I decided to write Scob Nation as a fiction. Let’s give the most hardcore climate activists what they want for the next 20 years. What does this world look like? And what kind of damage does this do?
“So, the book is not about the climate; it’s about our perception and our moral attitude towards the climate.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Autumn Arts Annual 2026.
