One more thing for science-denying politicians to contend with. As climate change becomes more obvious to the public at large, popular entertainment begins to reflect our shared experience, expectations, and fears.
I’ve posted about Cli-Fi as an emerging genre – upcoming movies like “Interstellar” (apparently) integrate climate change as an essential plot element. Snowpiercer has gotten a fair amount of press.
Here are some I had not known about.
Above: The Young Ones – with Nicholas Hoult, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Shannon and Elle Fanning. I’ll see this one for Michael Shannon alone. This guy is the new De Niro – for lack of a better comparison. If you have not seen “Take Shelter”, its a performance you won’t forget, with a creepy climate subtext.
After we used the term “cli-fi” in a post the other day to describe the growing sub-genre of dystopian sci-fi movies focused on the effects of climate change, we heard from climate activist Dan Bloom on Twitter, who told us that he coined that catchy term!
There are finally enough cli-fi films being made that Bloom says he is working to create an Oscars-type award to honor and draw attention to the top movies in the genre. By top movies, he means “most engaging and meaningful” as cli-fi cinema, Bloom says via email from Taiwan, where he’s lived since 1996.
Bloom’s Cli Fi Movie Awards, nicknamed the Cliffies, are taking nominations from now until Dec. 31. The nominations will be announced on Jan. 1, and winners will be named in 10 categories on Feb. 15, 2015. He says he’s assembling a jury of film studies professors, academics and sci-fi novelists to choose the winners, and while there won’t be an awards event the first year, he hopes that will come in the future.
“The Cliffies are not about glitz or glamour or movie stars. They are about the very future of our planet. Hollywood has a big role to play and indie movies, too,” he says, adding that the winners’ “statuette” will be a small blow-up globe, made in China.
Into the Storm
School buses, barns and airplanes are sent spinning into oblivion when an onslaught of tornadoes touches down. Special effects are skillfully wrought, scary and exciting. As a meteorologist in the movie puts it, nothing has been quite the same since hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. “While the words “climate change” are never uttered — most likely for fear of turning off non-believers and limiting box office potential — the concept hangs over the movie like the darkest of clouds,” Puig notes.
The Rover
Since we’ve decided, apparently, to go down this path, we need IPCC and the Climate models to tell us, in as much detail as possible, what lays ahead of us. The many consequences: massive canals from North to South, seawalls along the Eastern Seaboard, have costs that we need to begin adjusting for right now. Cli-Fi can perform a similar role for spiritual and social adjustment.
The ‘Free market’ faithful make a big deal about how capitalism engages in ‘creative destruction’. I think its useful, ahead of time, to picture just what they mean by that (although such depiction would probably not be needed by an American Indian).
“….capitalism engages in ‘creative destruction’. I think its useful, ahead of time, to picture just what they mean by that (although such depiction would probably not be needed by an American Indian)”.
Well said, although you should expand that to ALL aboriginal peoples and all of Earth’s biomes, every one of which have been “destroyed” to greater or lesser extent as capitalism seeks to “profit” from their exploitation.
What confounds me is how anthropocentric so much of the debate is on almost any topic. We see a movie where NYC is destroyed and 15 million people die, and simply go “WOW”, and “tsk-tsk”, never thinking it could really happen. In reality, NYC and every other big city on the planet could disappear tomorrow along with 80% of the Earth’s human inhabitants and it would matter not at all except to us humans, and most of the survivors would probably just be grateful they survived and not spend much time mourning. In fact, in terms of the “greater good” of the biosphere, it would be a plus if that occurred.
I’m very much awaiting new climate models that realistically incorporate more of the positive feedbacks identified but not in IPCC AR5 or earlier modelling. Like “dark snow”, moulins, thawing tundra methane, shallow continental shelf methane, and even the newly identified methane leaks from our fracking and oil exploration. I plead that they give a best-guess, good-faith effort at SOMEthing for each of these and others, so that we at least have an unbiased, if uncertain, guess at what we face. We’re not sufficiently alarmed at the realistic future. Even if the Abrupt Methane Apocalypse is now pretty much off the table, the relentless thawing that the paleo data shows even at current temperatures, simply hasn’t gotten through to the average folk, who I believe still think we can buy a Prius and solar panel our roof and that solves the problem.
Film is a powerful medium. A film which shows realistically what is ahead, and has compelling characters and story, and which is explicitly and carefully endorsed by real climate scientists, would be a powerful means of communication.
“The Day After Tomorrow” we don’t need, thanks, with apologies to Dennis Quaid.
How about a thriller, where terrorists use bioweapons made from thawing bacteria gleaned from melting Arctic ice to contaminate the food in the cafeteria of the US Congress, causing the brains of our politicians to slowly dissolve, with the first victim being Senator James Inhofe. Scary part is even after his IQ drops to 25, nobody notices.
I mentioned recently that I had just finished reading a Sigma Force novel about something very much like that—-The Sixth Extinction—-bioweapons made from bacteria gleaned from beneath the ANT-Arctic ice. I will spoil it a bit by saying that the goal was to do just what you propose—-lower the IQ of all humans so that they would subsist as just plain animals and live within the laws of nature rather than continue to destroy the planet. The terrorist was a BIO-terrorist with good intentions but who had gone more than a bit crazy.
(And not to be picky, but is Inhofe’s IQ even above 25 right now?)
#INTERSTELLAR as ”cli fi” movie goes global news in Chinese news cycle now! – http://news.ltn.com.tw/news/entertainment/paper/824656 … #clifi #scifi
ubrew12, above, first comment above re ”Since we’ve decided, apparently, to go down this path, we need IPCC and the Climate models to tell us, in as much detail as possible, what lays ahead of us. The many consequences: massive canals from North to South, seawalls along the Eastern Seaboard, have costs that we need to begin adjusting for right now. Cli-Fi can perform a similar role for spiritual and social adjustment.” EXACTLY! Part of my work with cli fi meme is to start planning now for the mental, spiritual preparations future generations will need to make to confront the Climapocalypse when it comes, maybe 30 generatsions from now, but need to start THINKING about this now, and also they need to prepare to DIE, because in truth, as we all know but are loathe to say out loud, they will ALL DIE, in a massive human die-off around 500 years from now, maybe 1000 years from now, but they WILL DIE. we are doomed doomed. and we of the NOW need to try to help the future victims of all this prepare to face it and the prepare to die. It’s very very tragic, but we can help. That is partly what the cli fi meme is all about. It is not just a buzzword to sell movie tickets. It is also a CULTURAL PRISM!
indy222, so well said and it needs repeating re ”I plead that they give a best-guess, good-faith effort at SOMEthing for each of these and others, so that we at least have an unbiased, if uncertain, guess at what we face. We’re not sufficiently alarmed at the realistic future. Even if the Abrupt Methane Apocalypse is now pretty much off the table, the relentless thawing that the paleo data shows even at current temperatures, simply hasn’t gotten through to the average folk, who I believe still think we can buy a Prius and solar panel our roof and that solves the problem.
Film is a powerful medium. A film which shows realistically what is ahead, and has compelling characters and story, and which is explicitly and carefully endorsed by real climate scientists, would be a powerful means of communication.
“The Day After Tomorrow” we don’t need, thanks, with apologies to Dennis Quaid.”
Currently assisting my son with revision for Marketing Research Examinations, I realise how ridiculously rigid science is to real life situations. Things are accepted in Marketing but not in science.
Quote from textbook (Marketing Research: Naresh K. Malhotra)
Concept of Causality:
Ordinary Meaning:
It is possible to prove X is a cause of Y
Scientific Meaning:
We can never prove that X is a cause of Y. At we can infer that X is the cause of Y.
No wonder idiots like Watts and Monckton can keep on spouting their mind dulling doubt and get away with it without being locked up, put the marketing guys on the issue, Cli-Fi films are excellent too. We are in a fix, hurry ! No time to delay. Svante August Arrhenius gave you the formula in 1896 for God’s sake, how much time do you need. ?
mistype should be :At best we can infer that X is the cause of Y.
And when a series of independent inferences all converge, the probability of X causing Y increases into the realm of ‘high certainty’…
The time is now, yeah she speaks for me