In 1938, the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term 'chronotope' to describe the role time and space plays in literature. In 1985, the American astronomer, Carl Sagan testified before congress on the threat of climate change to life on Earth and the need for the world's governments to work together to address the issue. What if Bakhtin's literary theory applied to scientific discourse, and the natural environment from 1985 into the future were the time and space of the story?