Popular conceptions of global warming

Popular and scientific conceptions of global warming have often diverged. Popular portrayals of global warming have been shaped by political agendas, commercial interests of both fiction and nonfiction content producers (including the news media), and incomplete understandings based on fragmentary data. These popular potrayals and viewpoints have influenced political rhetoric and action, including some legislative initiatives.

Background

A popular ecological mind-set was put into place by such pioneering 1960s bestsellers as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), although the mind-set’s ideological roots could be said to go back much farther, to the Enlightenment and Romantic movements of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A tradition developed out of these movements that portrayed a split between nature and culture in which nature was seen as pure and benevolent, while human intervention was corrupting and destructive. This tradition was refined by the environmental movements of the late 1960s, blossoming into the green movements of the late twentieth century.

These movements entailed, among other things, alterations in attitudes toward and definitions of progress that called for people significantly to alter their lifestyles. The new valuations developed by the green movement were reminiscent of Enlightenment ideals relating to the figure of the noble savage and natural law. This image of an unsullied natural world jeopardized by misguided human intrusion proved to be a seductive vehicle, one with tremendous potential for commercial exploitation, not the least by the film industry. One avenue for its exploitation has been anxieties about global warming and climate change.

Nightmare Scenarios

The popular concept that links global warming and climate change to potential worldwide disaster has played out most strongly in the film medium. In Waterworld (1995), a future Earth is depicted as covered almost entirely by ocean after a catastrophic melting of the polar ice caps. The film’s protagonist struggles violently in his drearily boring aquatic environment to find a mythical thing called “land.” The film ends with his success, as a colony is established on a piece of dry land (indicated, in some of the more complete versions of the film, to be the tip of Mount Everest), to begin civilization afresh.

Waterworld illustrates the nearly universal popular conception of global warming as a potentially disastrous problem, holding dire consequences for future generations. The scenario’s likelihood is seriously questioned from scientific quarters. A total meltdown to the extent that all land is inundated except for part of Mount Everest surpasses all but the direst of environmental claims. Fiction films tend to modify facts based on their genre conventions and on the requirements of a visual medium. Narrative and spectacle are more important to filmmakers than is verifiable science.

The blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) fully defined the mass cult image of the possible consequences of climate change. That film depicts a sudden worldwide disaster, brought on by the abrupt melting of polar ice. Floods strike much of the world, as tidal waves are portrayed sweeping over downtown Manhattan. In addition, massive hurricanes and tornadoes are generated, and an ice age rapidly develops across the Northern Hemisphere. Here again, the film’s is extremely improbable, as it is generated by the requirements of blockbuster disaster films rather than scientific meteorological knowledge.

The documentary Before the Flood (2016) was created by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who is also the co-founder of the organization Earth Alliance, and National Geographic. The film treks across the globe, so viewers can see how different people and places are affected by climate change. It calls for world leaders to work toward a sustainable future.

In Don't Look Up (2021), a science professor and a student discover a fast-moving comet, a metaphor for climate change, that is about to decimate Earth. They try to convince the government and the public of the impending danger but find that people do not take the threat seriously. The film also seeks to illustrate that world governments and politicians are not doing enough to curb the effects of climate change before it destroys Earth.

Noncinematic Popular Culture

Commercials and advertisements have played upon environmental themes by advertising their products as being environmentally friendly. This is particularly true of automobile producers and dealers who market their motor vehicles as being fuel efficient and therefore ecologically responsible. Consumers are encouraged by marketing campaigns to “buy green,” thereby limiting their impacts on the environment. Consumers who value environmentalism thus pay not only for the product but also for the feeling of socially constructive engagement that accompanies their purchases. So prevalent did commercial exploitation of conservationism become that in 1986 conservationist Jay Westerveld introduced the term “greenwashing” to denote this phenomenon.

Global warming is just one of many issues that the mass media has been accused of sensationally manipulating for profit. The media are too diverse to be encompassed by simple blanket statements, but one general assumption appears to be that scientific facts are sometimes moderated or overlooked for the sake of headlines. Media content is often driven by a cycle of crises because such cycles have proven commercially desirable. As a result, newspapers and television news tend to convert stories into disaster stories whenever possible.

Popular interest is always maintained by a good, keen rivalry, especially when high-profile individuals pit themselves against one another over emotionally charged topics. Thus, when notables such as former vice president Al Gore—author of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and The Assault on Reason (2007)—and celebrity author Michael Crichton—author of State of Fear (2004)—added their literary polemics to the debates on global warming, they increased the market for such polemics, causing many lesser-known authors to take sides as well.

Myths and Half-Truths

Though most scientists accept the likelihood of some anthropogenic global warming associated with greenhouse gas emissions, they differ widely on both its extent and its probable results. The most glaring discrepancy between popular representations and the scientific consensus centers on the notion of sudden, cataclysmic change. The ecological Armageddon exemplified in The Day After Tomorrow and other disaster films and novels is a lucrative scenario but one with very slight basis in scientific fact. Rapid global deterioration resulting from melting polar ice caps and sudden climatic shifts is considered unlikely. Theories of gradual climate change are far more widely embraced, as even “abrupt” changes in the context of Earth’s climate usually take decades to occur. Such gradual changes, however, do not fit the conventions of disaster films.

Three popular suppositions have most frequently come under challenge. First, polar melting is unlikely to occasion a sudden and extreme rise in sea level, causing massive inundation and loss of life. Far more likely is a rise in sea level of around 40 centimeters, impacting coastal areas and possibly forcing gradual relocation and resettlement. Second, temperature change is often portrayed as far more abrupt than it is likely to be. The most widely accepted scientific scenario views vast areas encompassing most of Africa, South America, the continental United States, southern Canada, southern Europe, and Asia from Siberia to the Himalayas as becoming drier. At the same time, the Caribbean, Mexico, the southeastern United States, northern Europe, India, southern China, Japan, and Southeast Asia would become wetter. Neither change would result in the nearly instantaneous transformation of to desert portrayed in some works of science fiction.

Context

It remains to be seen how popular representations of global warming might meet and mesh with scientific consensus or whether the divide between the two will narrow. Looked upon from a more positive perspective, one might foresee that the differing views could continue to generate greater debate, maintain heightened interest, and in time lead to genuine efforts aimed at addressing real problems while avoiding the extremes of either position.

Key Concepts

• greenwashing: the exploitation and appropriation of environmental concerns and issues by corporations, government agencies, and political operatives to advance self-interested agendas
• masscult: the dominant, mainstream culture as disseminated by the mass media
• noble savage: an idea popularized during the eighteenth century Enlightenment that stressed the purity of early human beings and nature untainted by modern technology

Bibliography

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