Climate change in popular culture

The issue of climate change and global warming, its possible effects, and related human-environment interaction have entered popular culture since the late 20th century.

Science historian Naomi Oreskes has noted that "there's a huge disconnect between what professional scientists have studied and learned in the last 30 years, and what is out there in the popular culture".^[1] An academic study contrasts the relatively rapid acceptance of ozone depletion as reflected in popular culture with the much slower acceptance of the scientific consensus on global warming.^[2]

Film

• Carbon Nation is a 2010 documentary film

• The Age of Stupid (2009) drama-documentary-animation hybrid starring Pete Postlethwaite as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, watching archive footage from 2008 and asking "Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?"

• The Day After Tomorrow (2004) starring Dennis Quaid. An abrupt shutdown of thermohaline circulation causes catastrophic climate change, plunging the Earth into a new ice age.

• A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) set in climate changed world near flooded ruins of New York City, where global Warming has led to ecological disasters all over the world in the mid-22nd century.

• The Arrival (1996) starring Charlie Sheen. Extraterrestrial aliens attempt to secretly cause global warming and thereby terraform Earth into an environment more suited to their needs.

• Waterworld (1995) starring Kevin Costner. Set in a future world, where the polar ice caps have melted due to global warming and the Earth is almost entirely covered with water.

• Blade Runner (1982) film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, is set in a humid rainy climate changed Los Angeles, based loosely on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Literature

• Arctic Drift (2008) by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler. A thriller involving attempts to reverse global warming, a possible war between the US and Canada, and “a mysterious silvery mineral traced to a long-ago expedition in search of the fabled Northwest Passage.”^[3]

• Fallen Angels (1991) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. Set in North America in the "near future", a radical technophobic green movement dramatically cuts greenhouse gas emissions, only to find that manmade global warming was staving off a new ice age.

• Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007) comprise the Science in the Capital series, a hard science fiction trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Set primarily in Washington, D.C., abrupt climate change causes weather disasters in the US capitol and flooding of the fictional island nation of Khembalung. Main characters are American scientists, politicians, and Buddhist monks.^[4][5]

• Solar (2010) by Ian McEwan follows the story of a physicist who discovers a way to fight climate change after managing to derive power from artificial photosynthesis.^[6]

• State of Fear (2004) a techno-thriller by Michael Crichton concerning a group of eco-terrorists attempting to create "natural" disasters to convince the public of the dangers of global warming. The book is critical of the Scientific opinion on climate change and accusing its proponents of using fear tactics.

• The Stone Gods (2007) by Jeanette Winterson. This novel opens on the planet Orbus, a world very like Earth, running out of resources and suffering from the severe effects of climate change. Inhabitants of Orbus hope to take advantage of possibilities offered by a newly-discovered planet, Planet Blue, which appears perfect for human life.^[7]

Television

• South Park spoofed global warming in five episodes: Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow, Spontaneous Combustion, Goobacks, Smug Alert! and Manbearpig.

• Star Trek: The Next Generation had two such global-warming themed episodes:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Déjà Q (1990) - The crew suggests an artificial amplification of global warming using greenhouse gases to counter the cooling effects of dust from the impact of a moon on a planet.
  • The Inner Light (1992) - Jean-Luc Picard lives a lifetime on a planet experiencing Global Warming and aridification. Ultimately the climate change becomes serious enough to threaten all life on the planet. This Hugo Award winner is among the 5 most popular out of all 178 episodes in the TNG series.

• The 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon has four episodes dealing with global warming. In Shredder's Mom, Shredder and Krang use a mirror fixed to a satellite to warm up the Earth if the political leaders do not surrender to them. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles get help from General Yogure to stop them. In Northern Lights Out a man named Eric Red in Norway plans to melt the polar ice cap and flood all the coastal cities on the Earth by blowing up underground volcanoes, which will make it "easy" for Eric Red and his gang to take over the Earth. In A Real Snow Job, set in the Alps in Austria, Krang and Shredder use a Zoetropic wave device to melt the worlds' ice, flooding the coastal cities and making the Earth easy for Krang and Shredder to take over. In Too Hot to Handle, Vernon Fenwick's nephew Foster has an invention that brings the Earth closer to the Sun, a "Solar Magnet".

• The 1980s Transformers animated series had at least one global-warming themed episode: "Revenge of Bruticus." There, the Combaticons (a faction of the series' main villains, the Decepticons, created by rebel Decepticon Starscream) use the Space Bridge device to hurl Earth toward the sun, hoping to destroy the Earth and all enemies. The Autobots are forced to help the humans endure the heat while putting aside their differences with the Decepticons in a race against time to restore Earth to its natural orbit.

Comic books

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures from Archie Comics. Set in their present (1980s/1990s), but also including time travels to a future, in which New York City is flooded because of global warming and the greenhouse effect.

Video games

• Fuel (2009 video game) is a racing video game set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by extreme weather fueled by global warming.

Related videos

• From Science to Time to Vanity Fair: Global Warming Becomes a Hot Topic. Lecture given by Amy Gajda, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Law, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. February 8, 2007.

References

1. ^ Sandi Doughton, "The truth about global warming," The Seattle Times (October 11, 2005).
2. ^ Sheldon Ungar, "Knowledge, ignorance and the popular culture: Climate change versus the ozone hole," Science 9.3 (2000) 297-312.
3. ^ BookBrowse website, Arctic Drift, retrieved on 2009-04-14.
4. ^ Random House, Inc. website, "Sixty Days and Counting'" Retrieved on 2009-04-14
5. ^ biblio.com website, "Books by Kim Stanley Robinson" Retrieved on 2009-04-14
6. ^ The Guardian website, "McEwan's new novel will feature media hate figure" Retrieved on 2010-02-01
7. ^ Jeanettewinterson.com website, "The Stone Gods" Retrieved on 2010-01-02