Storytelling and Climate Change: Imagining Solutions Beyond Documentary or Dystopia

Fifteen years on, as hurricanes, tsunamis and record-breaking heat waves increasingly make newspaper headlines, we still look to these two films as landmark media on climate change. That is to say, the most pressing issue of our time continues to be explored primarily through fact-driven documentaries – few of which reach audiences beyond the festival circuit – or bombastic dystopian fiction – which tends to exaggerate already alarming science to the point of incredulity and paralysis.

As storytellers continue to grapple with the challenge of both accurately and compellingly portraying our climate emergency, innovative approaches are finding success in tying climate change to other social issues – and in the world of gaming, making solutions interactive and possible in real-time.

Documentaries dominate environmental film festivals and “best climate change movie” listings. They rarely break into the mainstream, however, or overcome perceptions that the genre is preaching, dull, or both – a view echoed by environmentalist Naomi Klein in her own climate documentary This Changes Everything. The genre’s impact on audience behaviour is also debatable – and no more assured than that of blockbuster fiction.

George Marshall argues that our brains are “wired to ignore” the climate change narratives that rule most documentaries: complex science, uncertain outcomes and calls for personal sacrifice with intangible rewards. While daunting in magnitude, the threat of climate change is “exceptionally ambiguous”, explains Marshall, with no obvious “external enemy with an intention to cause harm.”

The presence of movie stars does not guarantee engaging content, however, as Leonardo DiCaprio’s The 11th Hour (2007) and Before the Flood (2016) attest. In fact, climate media anchored by celebrities might be counterproductive, as they often promote elite solutions and white-saviour narratives that obscure grassroots activists’ voices – including of the people most impacted by climate change.

Notable documentaries buck these trends by adopting more relatable – and more engaging – approaches. Mossville: When Great Trees Fall (2019) weaves together local stories of personal struggle with a historical exploration of environmental racismand corporate power with international reach. Kenyan-Norwegian co-production Thank You For the Rain (2017) touches on related themes through a very different aesthetic. Shot over five years in video-diary style by climate activist, rural farmer and co-director Kilisu Musya, the film asks subtle, searching questions of the mainstream environmental movement.

In the late 1970s, the imagined dangers of ozone depletion fuelled B-movie thrillers like Day of the Animals (1977) and The Billion Dollar Threat (1979). By the early 1990s, the consequences of global warming was providing backdrops for dystopian adventures including Highlander II (1991) and Waterworld (1995), two mega-budget box-office flops that nonetheless reflected the zeitgeist – though the latter case may have been ahead of the curve.

Meanwhile, children watched and played as Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990-1996) battled CFC-toting villains, while Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992) cast pollution and deforestation as terrifying animated antagonists. Silly, spectacular, and scientifically spurious, these stories still helped to ensure the terms “ozone”, “CFCs” and “global warming” lingered “in the air”, complementing news reports and factual programming.

Temporally, these films depict worlds on the brink of disaster and employ the “ignored expert” trope – be it scientist, alien, archivist, or psychic everyman – whose warnings of impending destruction are fatally ignored. As similar scenes unfold in real life, these films may be seen as cautionary tales. Many cli-fi movies ultimately remain cynical about humanity’s ability to respond to the identified danger, however. Such pessimism may be counterproductive if viewers sense that urgent calls to action are always doomed to fail.

Similarly, when the apocalyptic damage wrought by climate change is presented in the same cinematic language as countless other disaster movies, it risks joining the ranks of other spectacular threats – from earthquakes, to comets, to alien invasions – understood by audiences as either unlikely, inescapably devastating, or both.

Post-apocalyptic cli-fi can offer an even bleaker view of humanity. In Snowpiercer (2013), after an experiment fails to prevent a new ice age, earth’s last survivors reside in a high-speed train organised by class hierarchies and propelled by extreme exploitation. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), a revival of the  1980s Australian franchise, weaves a commentary on gender into its desert wasteland survival narrative. Here, toxic masculinity and climate change go hand in hand. Fast Color (2018), in which black women protagonists save the earth from an 8-year drought, has been similarly praised for subverting paradigms of male power.

A meteor is on a collision course with earth. You have 30 days to stop it. Can you do it? This is not the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster, but the premise of Eco, a collaborative open-world video game in which each player’s survival matters. Destroying an ecosystem, or putting the economy into overdrive, could cause a “server-wide perma-death” and end the game for the entire team.

One of the top-reviewed games of 2018, Eco is only the latest independent video game to tackle the issue of climate change. Blue Planet II spinoff Beyond Blue simulates deep-sea diving to “educate players on how to interact with the ocean in a way that enriches it”. In The Climate Trail, an update of the iconic 1971 educational game The Oregon Trail, players must survive a 1,000 mile trek across a United States torn apart by tornadoes, heat waves, and food shortages. Cities including Flint, Michigan feature prominently, nodding to real-world socio-economic inequalities and failing water infrastructure that has been exacerbated by climate catastrophe.

Now, says game developer Karn Bianco, more gaming companies are interested in climate themes, “from simple, pick-up-and-play arcade romps to deep, richly detailed simulations.” The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle expansion pack, for example, lets players produce their own electricity, launch eco-activist campaigns, and “upcycle” furniture and clothing. Rather than focus on macro climate change issues, the game leans into changing individual habits. In 2018, Minecraft introduced climate change mechanics, including carbon dioxide emissions, into its open world setting – host to 91 million monthly players. Both Anno 2070 and Frost Punk, two popular post-apocalyptic city-building simulators, feature melting ice caps, volcanic winters, and refugee crises specifically as outcomes of climate change.