We Are All Going to Die Really Soon, But Do You Care?

By Brian Khaneyan

The idea of measuring an issue like climate change isn’t a difficult one. We have statistics and general data to look at, and scientists can make a clear conclusion based on this data. What the data shows is that the earth is on a very, very bad path. This is something that scientists and environmentalists have known for a while now. Figuring out the state that our environment is in is a relatively easy issue. The difficult issue that we face as a human race is how to convey this issue to the general public, through media, so that people will understand the dire situation we are in.

An interesting example of how the media could deal with this issue is shown in Season 3, Episode 3 of The Newsroom. The scene starts off with a news anchor who is interviewing an administrator of the EPA about climate change, and the state of our environment. They establish his credibility, and then move onto the questions. The administrator then speaks of findings that show the CO2 level in Mauna Loa, Hawaii are around 400ppm. The interviewer then asks the administrator how severe this issue is. The administrator replies bluntly that: “a person has already been born that has died due to catastrophic failure of the planet.” The camera cuts to the staff member and crews astonished at this bluntness. The interviewer keeps on pushing, asking how dire the situation is, and what we can do to fix it or reverse it. The administrator keeps on responding that there is nothing we can do, using analogies to stress this point. This goes on for a few minutes with the same back and forth and the crew and anchor being incredibly disturbed and disgruntled by his bluntness. At one point, the anchor insinuates that the administrator may get in trouble for responding in such a way.

While this is all from a fictional show, with writers and a script, the data is not fake at all. The US Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have published the findings that the CO2 levels in Mauna Loa, Hawaii are in fact 399.96 ppm as of January 2015, an increase of 2.16 from last year’s levels. In fact, the general sentiment of the administrator from the fictional video is true for our real-world planet. In The August 2012 issue of Rolling Stone titled: “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” the author, Bill McKibben, speaks about the dire state our Earth is in and how it is portrayed to us through media. A quote from the conclusion of this article refers to a campaign to urge oil companies to change their business practices dramatically and states: “Even if such a campaign is possible, however, we may have waited too long to start it.” This goes in line with what was shown in the fictional interview. But how effective was this interview? Not very effective. Sure, this will alarm some people, but generally the approach of saying that everything is doomed and there is no hope means that people will keep going about their business, and not try to change anything. We know that if we all group together and try to put a dent in our global warming problem, we can improve it, we may not be able to completely fix it, but we owe it to the generations that come after us to reduce this problem that we’ve caused.

So, what is the best solution for informing people of what is going to happen to our planet? One great solution for this is animation and video. The movie Wall-E was definitely an eye opening one. The movie concentrated on the love story of two robots in space, but stressed greatly the impact that we’ve had on our Earth, and what it may look like down the line if we don’t change our consumeristic ways. Anything can be portrayed through film, and the story of the future of our planet needs to be told.

Earth 2100 does exactly this. The film is about what our earth will look like in the year 2100. The way they do this is through a sort of animated graphic-novel style. This makes the movie extremely approachable. It is told in the tone of a story. There’s a special narrator, named Lucy, for this story when the animated scenes come up, and it is told from the her point of view. This makes the movie feel as though you are really experiencing the diary of someone who went through this fictional, but possible, fantasy. The movie reinforces its points by having interviews with scientists and informed people who can talk about how real these situations are. This is the perfect way to convey the urgency and necessity of action to the general public. The movie was aired on TV, on the ABC Network on a Tuesday night. This is both a channel and a time slot that can reach a wide variety of audiences including both adults and children. The format was easy to listen to, and incredibly interesting for all ages while still retaining great amounts of information through the real-world interviews. Once the public is able to visualize the situation we are heading towards, I believe that progress will be able to occur.

On the other hand, the movie Everything's Cool goes about discussing this issue in a different way. The film focuses on the politics of the global warming issue. It follows several people, including an expert in the field who is entering a TV host position, and the progress of a man trying to make his own bio-fuel. The latter served as comedic relief much in the same way that Earth 2100 anchors their graphic novel segment with real-life content. The movie follows different people in government, and their relation to fuel companies and show how it most likely influence their own political policies and viewpoints. The movie take a somewhat sarcastic approach to this issue but does a good job on informing the audience on the political issues. Unlike Earth 2100 this movie did not air on a TV channel. This means it has reached a less diverse audience since people who watch this film will have gone out to look for a film highlighting these issues, instead of flipping through channels and finding something interesting. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The film contains an amount of pertinent data that can compel you to take a closer look at what is happening in our government in regards to climate issues. This is a film someone should watch once they understand the incredibly dire situation our Earth is in.

However, the movie also shows how environmental issues are shown to the general public through Dr. Heidi Cullen, the climatologist who was starting out on The Weather Channel.  A particular scene shows how she was unable to say exactly what she wanted, because the term she was using was too specific and would be lost on the audience. She didn't have enough air time to have the ability to clarify this term. This is an example of how some details are lost on us when they are reported through the media, and how we are not always getting the full picture. Everything's Cool  does a good job of highlighting issues like this, but it is not the greatest way of convincing somebody who knows nothing about climate change to go out and do something.

Unfortunately, Earth 2100 is one example of the media demonstrating a positive method of conveying this information. In Mckibben's article, he states that there are three numbers constantly shown when traditional news media talks about global warming. These numbers are: 2 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature, 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and 2,795 gigatons of carbon contained in coal, oil, and gas reserves. However, these numbers don’t really mean anything to the average person. What is a gigaton of carbon dioxide? If the media told people that one gigaton of carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere as opposed to 565, no one would question it. This is because no one can realistically understand these numbers, so no one can realistically care about these numbers when they are mentioned on the news. The fact of the matter is that people respond to things they can see. That is why the approach that movies like Earth 2100 have taken can be incredibly effective.