Pop Culture And Climate Change
Speaker 1: 00:00 The book, world war Z and the film contagion accurately predicted many aspects of today's current pandemic and even suggested ways to better prepare for such global catastrophes, but since they were works of fiction, most people dismiss them as mere entertainment. Kbps arts reporter Beth Aqua commando says, pop culture has been considering the notion of climate change for more than a century and has this look at some of their offerings from the earliest civilizations. You can find myths, fables and religious tales about a world besieged by apocalyptic events such as floods or fires, sometimes in the forms of punishments followed by redemption. Later, science fiction pondered how earth might become uninhabitable, maybe the extinction of the dinosaurs or theories about the ice age inspired writers to think about what could wipe out humanity or drastically change our world in the 18 hundreds Jules Verne may have been the first to consider the notion of climate change in a pair of books suggesting the tilting of the Earth's access could produce a change in global weather storytelling, especially when it takes the visual form of TV or film offers uniquely engaging ways of presenting hypothetical simulations of possible futures. And though some people may be immune to facts, most people are susceptible to a good story, especially when it taps into fears and anxieties. Speaker 2: 01:19 One month ago, the earth suddenly changed its elliptical orbit, and in doing so, it began to follow a path which gradually moment by moment, day by day, took it closer to the sun and all of man's little devices to stir up the air. I know no longer luxuries. They happen to be pitiful and panicky. Keys to survival. Speaker 1: 01:37 Rod Serling is 1961 Twilight zone episode gave us an act of God that changed the world's climate, but in that same year, the British film, the day the earth caught fire suggested climate change was the result of two countries conducting nuclear tests that threw the earth off its access causing temperatures to rise. Speaker 3: 01:55 Supposing the combined thrust of explosions shifted the tilt of the earth come on bill. That would alter the climatic regions, the complete change in the world's weather and new eyes age for some new tropics and you were quite tough. I don't know what else. It's all guesswork. It's all science fiction, so we're rockets to the moon and man satellites. Speaker 1: 02:15 Those works were early Harbinger's of climate change. It would be another decade before scifi films would tackle the issue with more Gusto. 1972 silent running had a spaceship carrying the last of the Earth's forests. Bruce Dern rails against those that let the environment get so bad that nothing can grow on the planet anymore. Speaker 4: 02:34 Look on the wall behind you. Look at that little girl's face. Do you know what she's never going to be able to see. She's never going to be able to see the simple wonder of the leaf in her hand because there's not going to be any trees. You think about that Speaker 1: 02:53 following year, Soylent green famously served up a scenario about drastic climate change leading to food with ghastly consequences. Speaker 5: 03:01 They're making our photo to paper X thing. They'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You gotta tell them, you gotta tell em promise Tyga I promise. I'll tell the exchange. You tell everybody listen to me. You don't gotta tell them silent [inaudible] Speaker 1: 03:22 but it's not just science fiction that addresses these issues. Documentaries play a crucial role in raising awareness. Al Gore's 2006 documentary, an inconvenient truth showed that audiences will flock to a well-delivered lecture on the devastating impacts of climate change. Speaker 6: 03:38 The Arctic is experiencing faster Melbourne. If this work to go sea level worldwide will go up 20 feet. Speaker 1: 03:46 Phil Mark, the beginning of a golden age for documentaries, exploring the topic of climate change films such as before the flood chasing ice. And the 11th hour, but global warming is slow and hard to see. That's why the film, the day after tomorrow, sped up the process to make it more dramatic. It imagined what could happen in a cataclysmic scenario. It may have been more fiction than fact, but images of a tsunami hitting New York city stirred imaginations and media interest about the topic. Science fiction, especially in cinematic form, is great at taking any hypothetical situation and actually visualizing it in a way that you can't do if you're constrained by rules of reality or physics in suggesting the worst that can happen. Science fiction can deliver a very potent warning. He can also inspire people to come up with solutions. That's Armando KPBS news check. Beth hug ammonia is blog post about climate change films at kpbs.org/cinema junkie.
