Yale Climate 360 The climate is changing, and our journalists are here to help you make sense of it.
Hollywood: Bring back Captain Planet
The climate needs a superhero now more than ever
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It happens every time a superhero goes into hiding: In their absence,
a world falls apart… Crime is rampant, the sky is ominous, and disaster
looms... since the “disappearance” of Captain Planet, the Earth’s climate
has gotten dangerously hotter. Wildfires across the globe are out of
control, oceans are boiling, and weather disasters are devastating the planet.
But in the years that broke temperature records for the hottest ever
recorded, our hero is nowhere to be seen...
In Captain Planet’s absence, both fictional and nonfictional narratives are
often dominated by doomsday undertones with plots that frequently take
place in a dystopian sci-fi version of a scorched planet… This genre of
programming fails to create the world we’d like to see. That contributes to
rising psychological distress over climate change — and a widespread
attitude that it’s too late to solve the problem. We can and should write a better ending.
Entertainment can be a powerful advocacy tool for climate and behavior
change and shifting public opinion... We saw this with the “ Will and Grace effect ,” which helped reduce homophobia and familiarize audiences with LGBT issues… And we saw it once more this year, in a collective smash of the patriarchy through the
new Barbie movie.
Yale University "Public Voices on the Climate Crisis" Fellow
Rwaida Gharib served the Obama Administration in multiple capacities
