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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." 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. 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. 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.

An important tool for evaluating the presence of climate change in popular culture is the Climate Reality Check. Like the Bechdel Test, it is a simple tool for evaluating climate change in any form of media, and consists of two conditions: "Climate change exists" in a narrative, and "a character knows it." An analysis of 250 of the most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 and set in the present, recent past, or future found that only 12.8% passed the first part of the Climate Reality Check, and 9.6% passed the second part.

Art

Film

Fictional films

A study of 250 of the most-watched fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 found that climate change existed in 12.8% of these films, while a global environmental problem (climate change, freshwater pollution, marine pollution, air pollution, deforestation, species extinction and biodiversity decline, or toxic waste) existed in 26%. The presence of climate change, as well as common climate impacts, increased substantially over time. But when climate change and other environmental problems were present, they were generally mentioned in just one or two scenes, and their gravity and/or urgency was not emphasized.

Similarly, research analyzing 32 commercially and culturally significant fiction films released between 1972 and 2023 found that portrayals of environmentally-motivated violence—‘eco-tage’ and eco-terrorism’—tended to present more extreme acts of climate defense as morally illegitimate, with more recent and commercially successful films generally favoring binary hero–villain characterizations over morally complex narratives.

Some films that have been identified as containing descriptions of or references to climate change include:

Documentary films

Literature

Non-fiction

This refers to the classification non-fiction, without regard to whether the books are accurate or intended to be accurate.

Fiction

Music

Climate change has been a topic of some popular music, particularly during the 2010s. The topic has been discussed in various genres, including pop, folk, electronic music and heavy metal. The New York Times found 192 references to climate change in English-language songs that entered the Billboard charts between 1999 and 2019, with around half of those (87 songs) between 2015 and 2019.

Theater

Television

Television documentaries

Fictional television

  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers had numerous episodes which dealt with global-warming including "Two Futures", "Heat Wave", "Domes of Doom", "The Ark", "Summit to Save Earth", "Greenhouse Planet", "A Perfect World", and "Planeteers Under Glass".
  • , 2014 TV series episode
  • South Park spoofed global warming in seven episodes:
  • "Spontaneous Combustion" (1999) - Randy Marsh wins a Nobel Prize by discovering that a string of spontaneous combustions around South Park was caused by partners refusing to fart in front of each other and solving the crisis by having the town's residents fart every few seconds, only for the resultant methane emissions to cause global warming and a massive heat wave.
  • "" (2001) - Environmentalists host an Earth Day festival at South Park to raise awareness about global warming, brainwashing its residents into supporting propagandistic slogans using Jedi mind tricks. The boys struggle to arrange for Canadian comedians Terrance and Phillip to perform at the festival.
  • "Goobacks" (2004) - Climate refugees from the year 3045 begin using a time portal to travel to Earth in 2004 for work, leading to a controversy mirroring the debate over illegal immigration as they work for low wages.
  • "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow" (2005) - Stan Marsh pretends that a flood caused by him crashing a boat into a beaver dam was caused by global warming, leading to a panic. The episode was meant to parody the government response to Hurricane Katrina, as well as explanations that it was caused by climate change.
  • "Smug Alert!" (2006) - Drivers of hybrid cars cause massive emissions of "smug," causing a superstorm which annihilates San Francisco and South Park.
  • "ManBearPig" (2006) - Al Gore visits South Park warning about a giant carnivorous monster known as the ManBearPig and takes the protagonists to search for it in the Cave of the Winds, only for it to become evident that Gore is using the incident to get attention. The episode parodies Gore's climate change activism and reflects series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone's climate change skepticism at the time of the episode's release.
  • "Time to Get Cereal"/"Nobody Got Cereal?" (2018) - ManBearPig is revealed to have been real and begins attacking South Park's residents, some of whom nevertheless remain skeptical of its existence. The boys are forced to apologize to Gore to get him to help, although he remains self-aggrandizing. At the end of the arc, the townsfolk finally admit that the ManBearPig was real and begin negotiating for it to leave, but are unable to accept the creature's terms for its departure. Parker and Stone wrote the episode as an apology for the show's previous depictions of climate change, and Gore himself praised the episode.
  • ' had several global-warming themed episodes:
  • Episode "Deja 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.
  • Episode "" (Season 5 EP 9) - A passing cloud of dust from an asteroid causes global cooling on a planet, the crew of the enterprise use a phaser to release frozen deposits of carbon dioxide on the planet.
  • "" (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. The episode won a Hugo Award and is considered one of the series' best episodes.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) 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 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 world's 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: "The 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.
  • The TV series Utopia (2013–14) is a violent thriller about a fictional conspiracy that has a number of secret agents embedded in key places in government and industry. The conspiracy, known as "The Network", seeks to frighten the populace into taking a vaccine which will, as a side-effect, cause mass infertility. Their aim in doing so is to reduce the number of humans on the planet, in order to tackle climate change, resource shortages and other environmental issues.
  • The Simpsons:
  • "On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister" (2005) - Springfield Elementary School goes on a field trip to the Springfield Glacier, which is almost completely melted because of climate change.
  • "The Good, the Sad, and the Drugly" (2009) - Lisa is assigned to write a report on the year 2059 and becomes depressed after learning about the future effects of climate change, terrifying the class with her reports.
  • "White Christmas Blues" (2013) - Global warming causes no snowfall on Christmas for the entire United States except in Springfield, which is cooled by smog from Mr. Burns's nuclear power plant and the local tire factory
  • The science fiction TV drama Life Force (2000) depicts much of Earth flooded by runaway global warming in 2025. The vast majority of its ecologically driven plot aspects spring naturally from this situation, such as climate refugees being brutally used for farming slave labour in episode 4 ("Greenhouse Effect"), civilians turning to look for old parts for electricity generators at scrap heaps or local markets using Euros and bartering as currency instead of pound sterling in episode 7 ("Beware of the Dog"), and manipulative sun-worshipping cults luring people in with rare natural ingredients for protective cream in episode 9 ("Siren Song").
  • In the Loki episode "The Variant" (2021), Earth experiences a series of climate-related natural disasters in the mid-21st century implied to have been caused by climate change. Mobius M. Mobius mentions that the extinction of the swallow at that time resulted in ecological collapse.
  • Doctor Who, "Orphan 55" (2020) - The Thirteenth Doctor takes Graham O'Brien, Ryan Sinclair, and Yasmin Khan to a spa in the future which proves to be a trap on the abandoned planet Orphan 55. They later discover it is an abandoned version of Earth wrecked by climate change and nuclear warfare, and inhabited by mutant humans known as "Dregs." The episode ends with the Doctor telling them that although it is only one possible future she cannot guarantee it will not come to pass.
  • The first ever crossover episodes of rival British soap operas Casualty, Coronation Street, Doctors, EastEnders, Emmerdale, Holby City and Hollyoaks aired in 2021, which all featured references to climate change in the lead up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
  • The opening timelapse animation of The Expanse shows sea level rise covering Liberty Island until a sea wall is built by the United Nations which has become a world government.

Late-night television

Comic books

Video games

Stand-up comedy

Other

  • Climate fiction is a popular media genre which frequently features stories of climate apocalypse. Examples include Ishmael, a 1992 philosophical novel, and ', a 2015 action film.
  • Concern over a climate apocalypse has been the subject of satirical news articles. One theme is popular revolt against power brokers. Another are fantasies about the romance and adventure of people experiencing the chaos of ecological and societal collapse.

See also

Footnotes

References