Uneasy Climate

Up until about two years ago, climate change was acknowledged, but not really spoken about directly in the media.  The mood has changed, however, and climate change has become a regular talking point. Maybe the sheer volume of the bad news about our deteriorating environment hit some kind of critical mass. Maybe it's because movies like "Downsizing" and "First Reformed" started addressing people's anxieties about the environment directly.  Whatever the reason, it's clear that Trump-era media is going to be marked by fears of environmental catastrophe the way that '80s films were marked by fears of nuclear annihilation.

So far this year, there have been direct mentions of climate change in shows like "Euphoria" and "Big Little Lies," and it's been explored through a more allegorical lens in genre films like "Fast Color," "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," and "The Dead Don't Die."  Disaffected television teenagers now regularly cite ecological apocalypse as a reason for their angst. In "Big Little Lies," a second grader had an anxiety attack brought on by a global warming lesson. Direct effects of climate change are rarely discussed - this is left for the many documentaries being produced about the subject - but they're treated with a grim sort of respect and certainty these days.  Environmentalists are no longer written off as kooks or conspiracy theorists. Even "South Park" apologized last year for its 2006 episode mocking Al Gore's efforts to raise the alarm about climate change, represented by the notorious "ManBearPig."  

Probably the genre that has been the most affected by the climate change issue has been science-fiction.  Over the past few years, nearly all depictions of the future have been dystopian. You don't see the kind of blissful, edenic views of the future that used to be common in the '50s and '60s.  Instead, there have been a lot of overcrowded ghetto cities full of corrupted technology, as seen in "Ready Player One," "Elysium," and "Blade Runner 2040." Or else it's environmentally devastated future Earths like "Interstellar" and "Avatar."  Brad Bird's "Tomorrowland" pointed out this difference explicitly, contrasting the space-age optimism of the past with the pessimistic views of the present, warning that this was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even in this context, climate change is rarely discussed directly.  I think there's still a certain reluctance because everyone is still having trouble parsing how to talk about the subject.  Clearly there's a major crisis looming, the outlook is bleak, and each new headline about the state of the environment has been more awful than the last.  However, there's also an important need to avoid being alarmist and defeatist about the subject. Every serious discussion of climate change tends to put the emphasis on what people can do to avoid or mitigate the worst outcomes.  Dwelling on the darkest timeline isn't helping anything.      

So evoking climate change in a fictional context is difficult because there's often not the narrative space to address concerns like this directly, and mining the crisis for entertainment value feels increasingly distasteful.  There's the whole political context that complicates matters. Many people, sadly, are still in denial that climate change is real. For others, however, it's too real, a topic that inspires such existential distress that it overwhelms whatever else the story is trying to achieve.  Cancer and Alzheimer's used to be verboten topics on soap operas for this very reason, recognized as too upsetting for many members of the audience.     

The doom-and-gloom treatment of climate change is no doubt also exacerbated by the current social and political climate in the U.S. and U.K., and I expect it's going to get worse over the next year with the 2020 election season coming up fast.  Watching the rise of the hard-right and alt-right, the spread of disinformation over social media, and the crackdowns on civil liberties, free speech, and privacy since 2016 have been exhausting. It's clear that there's plenty to be anxious about even without climate change issues.  

As all this anxiety comes to a head, I take some comfort in observing that attitudes toward climate change are changing, at least among fictional characters.  The creators still have to walk a fine line, and most mentions are brief, but climate change is getting more time in the spotlight. More importantly, it's being treated more seriously and more carefully.  We're a long ways away from Roland Emmerich's "The Day After Tomorrow," and that's a good thing.  

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