Tackling Climate Change in Films is an Ethical Responsibility, Like Ending Slavery – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Greens equating their cause to the role of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in the liberation of the slaves.

‘It affects everything’: why is Hollywood so scared to tackle the climate crisis?

David Smith in Washington
Sat 20 Jul 2024 20.06 AEST

Twisters is the latest in a long line of movies that fail to address the environmental emergency – experts say it’s a missed opportunity.

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A study published by the nonprofit consultancy Good Energy and Colby College’s Buck Lab for Climate and Environment analysed whether the climate crisis was present in 250 of the top-grossing fictional films between 2013 and 2022. In only 32 of the films (12.8%) was it clear that climate change exists, and in only 24 of them (9.6%) was it clear that a character knows it.

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“We’re talking about 8 billion people reacting to oil companies destroying the entire livable climate. We need stories in hundreds of different languages, reflecting a thousand times more cultures experiencing varying degrees of awareness and emotional processing.”

He adds: “But if a film-maker is reluctant to let climate be in some way a part of their movie, I always tell them that it’s a guarantee within the next five years their film will play as irrelevant as movies do today about how noble the war against the ‘American Indians’ was.”

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Asked whether film-makers have an ethical responsibility to tackle the subject, Lipsky identifies a parallel with slavery: “The model is Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That issue had to be addressed and so Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that novel. When Lincoln had an audience with her at the White House, he said, so you’re the woman who caused this civil war of ours. Sometimes the expression of something can be so astonishing and so direct that it makes people take action.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jul/20/hollywood-climate-crisis

It is difficult to overstate the cultural and political influence of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin“. The book sold millions of copies. The portrayal of the main character, Uncle Tom, as a decent Christian man who helps his friends and steadfastly lives by his beliefs, in the face of unspeakable cruelty, brutality and betrayal, had a profound impact on people’s attitude towards slavery in the United States.

We’re used to green arrogance, but in my opinion this effort to equate their climate pseudoscience propaganda with such an important historical work is unconscionable.