In a dystopian near future, the Greenways are a close-knit but impoverished middle-class family living in a northern town. The story is of their struggle with the economic and environmental effects of climate breakdown and their response to an increasingly intrusive authoritarian government.

Every year, they are legally obliged to find new ways of reducing their carbon footprint. In order to make ends meet, they take advantage of a government scheme to open up their rear garden as a community cemetery. Further down the line, they adopt a refugee family from the south coast who have lost their home through climate disaster.

Meanwhile, the government is attempting to control and reduce the population through increasingly draconian and ethically questionable measures.