Climate change in popular culture
References to climate change in popular culture have existed since the late 20th century and increased in the 21st century. Climate change, its impacts, and related human-environment interactions have been featured in nonfiction books and documentaries, but also literature, film, music, television shows and video games.
Science historian Naomi Oreskes noted in 2005 "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 in 2000 contrasted the relatively rapid acceptance of ozone depletion as reflected in popular culture with the much slower acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change.[2] Cultural responses have been posited as an important part of communicating climate change, but commentators have noted covering the topic has posed challenges due to its abstract nature.[3][4] The prominence of climate change in popular culture increased during the 2010s, influenced by the climate movement, shifts in public opinion and changes in media coverage.[5][6]
Art
Omnipresent and relevant, yet abstract and statistical by nature, as well as invisible for the naked eye – climate change is a subject matter in need for perception and cognition support par excellence.[7]
Climate change art is art inspired by climate change and global warming, generally intended to overcome humans' hardwired tendency to value personal experience over data and to disengage from data-based representations by making the data "vivid and accessible". One of the goal of climate change art is to "raise awareness of the crisis",[8] as well as engage viewers politically and environmentally.[9]
Some climate change art involves community involvement with the environment.[8] Other approaches involve revealing socio-political concerns through their various artistic forms,[10] such as painting, video, photography, sound and films. These works are intended to encourage viewers to reflect on their daily actions "in a socially responsible manner to preserve and protect the planet".[10]
Climate change art is created both by scientists and by non-scientist artists. The field overlaps with data art.Film
Fictional films
Climate change has been an occasional topic in fictional cinema.[11] Nicholas Barber opined in BBC Culture that Hollywood films seldom feature climate change mechanisms due to the difficulty of tying the topic to individual characters, and due to fears of alienating audiences; instead, impacts of climate change have been more frequently depicted as a consequence of nuclear or geoengineering accidents.[4]
- Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) – A meteor shower ignites the Van Allen radiation belt and causes abrupt global warming that will render Earth uninhabitable within three weeks, which the United Nations attempts to solve by sending the submarine USOS Seaview into the Mariana Trench to fire a nuclear missile at the flaming belt.
- The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) – Nuclear weapons testing by the United States and the Soviet Union tilt the Earth's nutation by 11 degrees, causing Earth to begin spiraling towards the Sun and global temperatures to rise. The world's governments attempt to solve the problem by detonating nuclear bombs in Siberia to correct the tilt.
- Soylent Green (1973), film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton Heston. Set in a dystopian future of dying oceans and year-round humidity due to the greenhouse effect, resulting in suffering from pollution, poverty, overpopulation and depleted resources.
- Blade Runner (1982), a film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, is set in a humid rainy climate changed Los Angeles in an alternate 2015, based loosely on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Its 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049 is also noted for its depiction of a warmer climate.[12][13]
- Split Second, 1992 film starring Rutger Hauer and Kim Cattrall is set in 2008, in a London that is flooded as a result of global warming.
- Waterworld (1995) starring Kevin Costner. Set in 2500, where the polar ice caps have melted due to global warming and the Earth is almost entirely covered with water.
- 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.
- 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. 2,000 years later, the world has entered a new ice age and is populated by advanced robots known as Specialists.
- The Day After Tomorrow (2004) directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Dennis Quaid.[4] An abrupt shutdown of thermohaline circulation causes catastrophic abrupt climate change, plunging the Northern Hemisphere into a new ice age. As a result, the Northern United States, Canada, Europe, East Asia, and Russia are devastated by massive winter storms, and the surviving population of the United States is evacuated to Mexico. The film has been cited as one of the few blockbuster films to discuss climate change.[11][4][14]
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) – Klaatu lands on Earth as an alien delegation to either convince humanity to halt its destructive behavior or destroy it. The film notably updates the original film's Cold War-era concern with nuclear warfare and mutually assured destruction into the contemporary issue of climate change.
- The Thaw (2009) – Melting ice caps defrost the remains of a woolly mammoth infected with deadly parasites, which spread to a research crew sent to Banks Island.
- The Age of Stupid (2009), drama-documentary-animation hybrid directed by Franny Armstrong and 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?"[15]
- Earth 2100 (2009), predictions of possible attempts at adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of continuing global warming.
- Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) and Birdemic 2: The Resurrection (2013), where global warming mutates birds to begin attacking humanity.
- The Expedition to the End of the World (2013), director: Daniel Dencik, relating to the Greenland ice sheet and the retreat of glaciers since 1850.
- The Colony (2013), climate modification towers are built to cool the planet, but cause an Ice Age, forcing humans to live underground.
- Snowpiercer is a 2014 fictional film regarding a problematic solar geoengineering attempt that inadvertently freezes the earth.[16]
- Into the Storm (2014), in which a character hints that major storms are becoming more frequent.[16]
- First Reformed is a 2017 film in which an Reformed Church in America pastor discovers the causes and effects of climate change and attempts to take violent action against those he considers responsible.
- Climate Change Denial Disorder is a satirical short film which parodies climate change denial and perspectives on climate change through discussion of a fictional disease.[17][18][19]
- Downsizing (2017) – In the future scientists discover a method to shrink humans to size of five inches to solve climate change and overpopulation. The technique fails when only three percent of the population choose to undergo it, with its inventor discovering that humanity will go extinct from positive feedback of Arctic methane emissions within 100 years.[11]
- Geostorm (2017) – Natural disasters caused by climate change lead humanity to construct a network of weather modification satellites in 2019, which malfunction and cause severe weather across the world in 2022.
- Fast Color (2018), is set in a future American Midwest suffering from an eight-year drought.
- Bo Burnham: Inside (2021), the special includes several references to climate change and the danger of a climate apocalypse.[20] For instance, the lyric "20,000 years of this, seven more to go," in the song "That Funny Feeling" is believed to be a reference to the Climate Clock showing the time left to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before 1.5 C global warming becomes inevitable.[21]
- The Tomorrow War (2021), melting ice sheets from global warming thaw a frozen spaceship under the Academy of Sciences Glacier from the 10th century AD filled with weaponized bio-engineered aliens known as "Whitespikes" in November 2048, which completely overrun Earth and almost completely annihilate humanity by 2051.
- Reminiscence (2021), a film set in a post-apocalyptic future where Miami has been flooded by the ocean due to climate change.[22]
- Don't Look Up (2021). An apocalyptic black comedy film, in which two astronomers from Michigan State University unsuccessfully attempt to warn the world of a comet coming to impact Earth and destroy humanity within six months. The film is intended to satirize public denial and apathy towards climate change from governments, the media, and corporations.[23][11]
- How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022), based on the non-fictional book of the same name by Andreas Malm
Documentary films
- An Inconvenient Truth (2006) is an American documentary film made in 2006 directed by Davis Guggenheim which covers former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign related to raising awareness about global warming.[24] An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is a follow-up film released in 2017.
- The 11th Hour (2007), created, produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio.
- Signos: Banta ng Pagbabagong Klima, a 2008 Philippine television documentary presented and narrated by actor Richard Gutierrez and aired on GMA Network.[25]
- The Great Global Warming Swindle, a 2009 polemical film that denies the existence of climate change.
- Carbon Nation, a 2010 documentary film.
- Chasing Ice, a 2012 documentary film.
- White Knight, a 2012 documentary film
- Thin Ice, a 2013 documentary film.
- Merchants of Doubt, a 2014 documentary based on the 2010 book of the same name
- Before the Flood, a 2016 documentary
- Chasing Coral, a 2017 documentary
- 2040, a 2019 documentary by Damon Gameau
- Climate Change – The Facts, a 2019 BBC documentary presented by David Attenborough
- Planet of the Humans, a 2019 documentary directed by Michael Moore
- I Am Greta, a documentary following teenaged climate activist Greta Thunberg
Literature
Non-fiction
This refers to the classification non-fiction, without regard to whether the books are accurate or intended to be accurate.
- The End of Nature 1989 book by Bill McKibben, which has been cited as the first book on climate change written for a general audience.[26]
- Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991) by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl
- Earth in the Balance (1992) by Al Gore, recommending a "Global Marshall Plan" to resolve ecological crises such as climate change
- The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era 1999 book by former oil geologist Jeremy Leggett
- The Coming Global Superstorm (1999) by Whitley Streiber and Art Bell, predicting the possibility of abrupt climate change from a shutdown of thermohaline circulation
- The Discovery of Global Warming 2003 Spencer R. Weart book describing the history of climate change science
- The Weather Makers (2005) by Tim Flannery, a series of essays describing the effects of climate change
- Field notes from a catastrophe: man, nature, and climate change (2006) by Elizabeth Kolbert describing effects from climate change already occurring in the natural world, as well as opposition to climate change mitigation from corporations and the Bush administration
- Hell and High Water (2006) by Joseph J. Romm warning about the consequences of sea level rise
- An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It is a 2006 book by Al Gore released in conjunction with the film An Inconvenient Truth. Based on Gore's lecture tour on the topic of global warming this book elaborates upon points offered in the film. It "brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world; photographs, charts, and other illustrations; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming."[27]
- Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2007) by Mark Lynas. It presents the consequences of climate change for each additional degree Celsius of warming, culminating in a possible 6 degree scenario in which release of methane hydrate leads to an extinction event similar to the Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event. The book was also adapted into a National Geographic Channel film.
- Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change (2007) by Clive Hamilton, criticizing the government of Australia for blocking international climate change mitigation
- Break Through (2007) by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, arguing that the paradigms motivating the environmentalist movement are poorly suited to resolve climate change
- An Appeal to Reason (2008) by Nigel Lawson, criticizing the scientific consensus on climate change
- Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008) by Thomas Friedman, arguing that the United States could reclaim a sense of purpose after the September 11 attacks and the end of the Cold War by solving issues of overpopulation and climate change
- Why We Disagree About Climate Change (2009) by Mike Hulme, exploring the reasons for differing ethical, political, cultural, and economic views on climate change across the world
- Carbon Shift (2009) by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nick Garrison, explaining how the likely effects of peak oil and climate change on Canada
- Requiem for a Species (2010) by Clive Hamilton, arguing that climate change has already progressed past the point at which catastrophic impacts for the world and human society, including possible societal collapse or extinction, can be avoided
- Merchants of Doubt (2010) by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, which examines the history of climate change denial and its relationship with the tobacco industry playbook.
- The God Species (2011) by Mark Lynas, postulating that climate change indicates that Earth has entered an anthropocene epoch in which natural systems are under human control
- 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (2012) by Jørgen Randers, arguing that current trends suggest carbon emissions will peak around 2030 but that it will be insufficient to prevent 2 degree Celsius warming which will limit future economic growth
- The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars (2012) by Michael E. Mann, explaining the temperature record of the last 2,000 years and his work on the so-called "hockey stick graph"
- This Changes Everything (2014) by Naomi Klein, which criticises capitalism as a root cause of climate change.[28]
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2015) by Elizabeth Kolbert, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and explained the concept of the Holocene extinction
- The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016) by Amitav Ghosh, arguing that climate change is driven by neoimperialism
- Drawdown (2017) which ranks different climate change solutions.[28]
- Deep Adaptation (2018) by Jem Bendell, arguing that climate change has progressed too far to prevent societal collapse and that people must accept major changes to their way of life to adjust to the coming changes
- Losing Earth (2019) by Nathaniel Rich, based on a New York Times Magazine article, examining attempts to implement climate change policies in the United States from 1979 into the 1980s.[29]
- No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019) by Greta Thunberg, collection of speeches presented before the United Nations, the European Union, the World Economic Forum, the United States Congress, the French National Assembly, and climate protests
- The Uninhabitable Earth (2019) by David Wallace-Wells, based on a 2017 magazine series of the same name explaining the likely consequences of climate change on human society in future years.[28]
- On Fire (2019) by Naomi Klein, advocating substantial climate change mitigation tactics such as the Green New Deal.[29]
- A Life on Our Planet (2020) by David Attenborough, an autobiography describing his career in the BBC since the 1950s during the Holocene extinction and warning about the consequences of biodiversity loss from climate change
- How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021) by Bill Gates, providing tactics to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, particularly greater investment in sustainable energy technology
- How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2021) by Andreas Malm, advocating violent techniques such as sabotage in climate activism
- The New Climate War (2021) by Michael Mann, describing resistance to climate change mitigation from the fossil fuel industry
- Under a White Sky (2021) by Elizabeth Kolbert, exploring possible technological solutions to climate change such as solar geoengineering
Fiction
Climate fiction (sometimes shortened to cli-fi) is literature that deals with climate change.[30] Generally speculative in nature but inspired by climate science, works of climate fiction may take place in the world as we know it, in the near future, or in fictional worlds experiencing climate change. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. Climate fiction typically involves anthropogenic climate change and other environmental issues as opposed to weather and disaster more generally. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society.
The term "cli-fi" is generally credited to freelance news reporter and climate activist Dan Bloom, who coined it in either 2007 or 2008.[30][31] References to "climate fiction" appear to have begun in the 2010s, although the term has also been retroactively applied to a number of works.[32][33] Pioneering 20th century authors of climate fiction include J. G. Ballard and Octavia E. Butler, while dystopian fiction from Margaret Atwood is often cited as an immediate precursor to the genre's emergence. Since 2010, prominent cli-fi authors include Kim Stanley Robinson, Richard Powers, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Barbara Kingsolver. The publication of Robinson's The Ministry for the Future in 2020 helped cement the genre's emergence; the work generated presidential and United Nations mentions and an invitation for Robinson to meet planners at the Pentagon.[34]
University courses on literature and environmental issues may include climate change fiction in their syllabi.[35] This body of literature has been discussed by a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Dissent magazine, among other international media outlets.[36] Lists of climate fiction have been compiled by organizations including Grist, Outside Magazine, and the New York Public Library.[37] Academics and critics study the potential impact of fiction on the broader field of climate change communication.