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]
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."[7] 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.[8]
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.[9]
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",[10] as well as engage viewers politically and environmentally.[11]
Some climate change art involves community involvement with the environment.[10] Other approaches involve revealing socio-political concerns through their various artistic forms,[12] 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".[12]
Climate change art is created both by scientists and by non-scientist artists. The field overlaps with data art.
Climate change has been an occasional topic in fictional cinema.[13] 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]
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 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?"[17]
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.[13]
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.
Bo Burnham: Inside (2021), the special includes several references to climate change and the danger of a climate apocalypse.[22] 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.[23]
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.[24]
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.[25][13]
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
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
The term "cli-fi" is generally credited to freelance news reporter and climate activist Dan Bloom, who coined it in either 2007 or 2008.[32][33] References to "climate fiction" appear to have begun in the 2010s, although the term has also been retroactively applied to a number of works.[34][35] 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.[36]
University courses on literature and environmental issues may include climate change fiction in their syllabi.[37] 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.[38] Lists of climate fiction have been compiled by organizations including Grist, Outside Magazine, and the New York Public Library.[39] Academics and critics study the potential impact of fiction on the broader field of climate change communication.
Climate change has been a topic of some popular music, particularly during the 2010s.[5][40][41] The topic has been discussed in various genres, including pop, folk, electronic music and heavy metal.[6]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.[5]
American thrash metal band Testament released a song titled "Greenhouse Effect" on 1989 album Practice What You Preach[6] and later referenced climate change in "Fall of Sipledome" on The Gathering (1999).[5]
American rapper Mos Def's "New World Water" (1999) on Black on Both Sides discusses the history of water access and scarcity, including the impact of climate change.[5]
French metal band Gojira have released several songs about climate change and environmental issues, particularly "Global Warming", "World to Come" and other songs on From Mars to Sirius (2005).[6][42]
Indonesian band Kotak through the 2012 album Terbaik contains a song called "Hijaukan Bumi", the lyrics and music video contain every cause and impact of climate change.
The Contingency Plan (2009) by Steve Waters is a diptych of plays first performed at the Bush Theatre in London. They are set in the near future, at a time during which severe tidal surges begin to submerge parts of coastal Britain.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers had numerous episodes which dealt with global-warming including "Two Futures" Part 1 & 2, "Heat Wave", "Domes of Doom", "The Ark", "Summit to Save Earth" Parts 1 & 2, "Greenhouse Planet", "A Perfect World", and "Planeteers Under Glass"
"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.
"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) - The ManBearPig proves to have actually 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 constantly 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.[60][61][62]
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 "A Matter of Time" (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.
"The Inner Light" (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. This Hugo Award winner is among the 5 most popular out of all 178 episodes in the TNG series.
The 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon 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 Red 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 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.
The science fiction TV drama Life Force (2000) depicts much of Earth flooded by runaway global warming in 2025.[63] 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").[63]
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.[citation needed]
Civilization (1991) is a strategy game in which the pollution created by industrial production and transportation, if left unchecked, leads to desertification and coastal regions becoming swamps.[68]
Fuel (2009) is a racing video game set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by extreme weather fueled by global warming.
In 2008, the TamaTown website featured a game that taught children how to prevent global warming.
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.[74][75]
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