Climate change in popular culture

• 1. The Silence Before The Storm

  ›

  Science historian Naomi Oreskes noted in 2005 that a huge disconnect existed between what professional scientists had studied and learned in the last thirty years and what was out there in popular culture. An academic study from 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. Sheldon Ungar wrote about this knowledge gap in Science magazine, noting that cultural responses have been posited as an important part of communicating climate change. Commentators observed that covering the topic has posed challenges due to its abstract nature. References to climate change in popular culture have existed since the late twentieth century but increased significantly during the twenty-first century. The prominence of climate change in popular culture grew during the 2010s, influenced by the climate movement, shifts in public opinion, and changes in media coverage.

  4

• 2. Fictional Films And Climate Reality Checks

  ›

  An analysis of two hundred fifty of the most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 found that only twelve point eight percent passed the first part of the Climate Reality Check. This check requires that climate change exists within a narrative and that at least one character knows it is happening. Only nine point six percent of these films passed the second part where a character acknowledges the crisis. A global environmental problem such as freshwater pollution or species extinction appeared in twenty-six percent of these films, yet climate change remained rare. When climate change did appear, it was generally mentioned in just one or two scenes without emphasizing gravity or urgency. Research analyzing thirty-two commercially significant fiction films from 1972 to 2023 showed portrayals of environmentally motivated violence tended to present extreme acts of climate defense as morally illegitimate. Recent and commercially successful films favored binary hero-villain characterizations over morally complex narratives. Early examples like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea from 1961 depicted a meteor shower igniting the Van Allen radiation belt causing abrupt global warming. The Day the Earth Caught Fire from 1961 showed nuclear weapons testing tilting Earth's nutation by eleven degrees toward the Sun.

  91068

• 3. Documentaries And Scientific Communication

  ›

  An Inconvenient Truth released in 2006 covered former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign related to raising awareness about global warming. Davis Guggenheim directed this American documentary film which became a major cultural touchstone for climate communication. Leonardo DiCaprio created, produced, and narrated The Eleventh Hour in 2007 to highlight environmental issues. Chasing Ice followed glaciers melting through time-lapse photography to visualize the changing landscape. Before the Flood featured Al Gore traveling around the world to document the impacts of rising temperatures. Climate Change , The Facts presented by David Attenborough aired on BBC in 2019 to explain scientific consensus to general audiences. I Am Greta documented teenaged climate activist Greta Thunberg during her early years of activism. A Life on Our Planet served as an autobiography describing David Attenborough's career in the BBC since the 1950s while warning about biodiversity loss consequences. These works aimed to raise public awareness or debate the reality of global warming through direct engagement with scientific data and human stories.

  2426

• 4. Literature And The Anthropocene Epoch

  ›

  Bill McKibben published The End of Nature in 1989 as the first book on climate change written for a general audience. Elizabeth Kolbert won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2015 for The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History explaining the concept of the Holocene extinction. Naomi Klein released This Changes Everything in 2014 which criticized capitalism as a root cause of climate change. David Wallace-Wells wrote The Uninhabitable Earth in 2019 based on a magazine series from 2017 explaining likely consequences of climate change on human society. Jem Bendell argued in Deep Adaptation from 2018 that climate change has progressed too far to prevent societal collapse. Michael Mann described resistance to climate change mitigation from the fossil fuel industry in The New Climate War published in 2021. Thomas Friedman argued in Hot, Flat, and Crowded from 2008 that the United States could reclaim purpose by solving issues of overpopulation and climate change. Mark Lynas presented consequences of each additional degree Celsius of warming in Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet from 2007.

  3031

• 5. Musical Responses To Environmental Crisis

  ›

  The New York Times found one hundred ninety-two references to climate change in English-language songs entering Billboard charts between 1999 and 2019. Around half of those eighty-seven songs appeared between 2015 and 2019 indicating a surge in musical engagement with environmental topics. American thrash metal band Testament released Greenhouse Effect on their 1989 album Practice What You Preach. French metal band Gojira included Global Warming and World to Come on From Mars to Sirius released in 2005. Radiohead explored climate change themes on their 2000 song Idioteque and 2016 album A Moon Shaped Pool. Thirty Seconds to Mars filmed a music video for A Beautiful Lie in Greenland highlighting impacts of climate change on the island. Billie Eilish released All the Good Girls Go to Hell in 2019 making reference to California wildfires and sea level rise. Grimes created Miss Anthropocene as a concept album about an anthropomorphic goddess of climate change and human extinction in 2020. The 1975 featured a spoken word passage by Greta Thunberg adapted from her Our House Is on Fire speech in their eponymous 2019 song.

  3233343536

• 6. Television And Interactive Media Representations

  ›

  Captain Planet and the Planeteers had numerous episodes dealing with global warming including Two Futures, Heat Wave, and Domes of Doom. South Park spoofed global warming in seven episodes starting with Spontaneous Combustion in 1999 where Randy Marsh discovered spontaneous combustions caused by partners refusing to fart. The episode ManBearPig aired in 2006 featuring Al Gore warning about a giant carnivorous monster known as the ManBearPig. Years of Living Dangerously was a nine-part Showtime documentary television series released in 2014 exploring environmental crises globally. Civilization VI: Gathering Storm included mechanics where carbon emissions lead to sea level rise and permanent coastal flooding. Battlefield 2042 set in 2041 depicted a global military conflict driven by resource depletion and extreme weather caused by climate change. A massive influx of climate refugees and category six hurricanes led to economic depression in 2034 within that game's narrative. Late-night television hosts Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, James Corden, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon devoted portions of their shows to climate change material on the 22nd of September 2021.

  5455566364