The prevailing wisdom has been that there's very little we can actually do about climate change. Even environmentalists are prone to admit, after strenuously arguing the opposite, that there is little hope given the amount of money controlled by the fossil fuel industry. As the International Forum on Globalization observed in Outing the Oligarchy, "Cooperative global action to address the most daunting challenge humanity has ever faced is being held hostage by a handful of profiteers who wield decisive power over our governments."
The Koch Brothers, oil and coal profiteers and founders of Koch Industries, a fossil fuel extraction leader, were featured on Friday's New York Times front page for their new advertising strategy. Through Americans for Prosperity, the conservative nonprofit that has spent $30 million on advertising in Senate races over the last several months, they've been presenting "(Obamacare) as a case study in government ineptitude." But the organization's president Tim Phillips, explains his real agenda: "The president's out there touting billions of dollars on climate change. We want Americans to think about what they promised with the last social welfare boondoggle and look at what the actual result is."
That's a pretty ingenious positioning for a couple of guys who made their fortune from coal: Government is inept and fossil fuels are the smart economic choice.
That message may fit perfectly with the conservative small government agenda, but it makes for lousy entertainment.
On the other hand, we have climate change's "hopeless" idea, which makes great entertainment. For example, last year's movie The Promised Land featured the lovable star of The Office John Krasinski as the anti-fracking hero -- who turns out to work for the gas company too. There's no way out. Many of the teen action movie dystopias from Avatar to dystopian Hunger Games and Divergent could be said to depict a post climate-change world. They're all built on the idea that there's little we can do.
But in just the last week or so, I've run across a new idea, a new meme that supports a collective struggle against the causes of climate change::
- Showtime announced a new 8-part mini-series on climate that launches on April 13 called Years of Living Dangerously. Directed by hit-maker James Cameron and starring Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, and Harrison Ford, KC Golden of Climate Solutions calls it a "smart, ambitious public engagement strategy."
True, my examples are random and not representative of mass culture, but I believe they mark a distinct change in our climate change conversation. It's no longer "game over, nothing we can do." It used to feel naive to talk openly about your actions to mitigate climate change. "It's all meaningless" would be the response. Watch now as the questions change from "What can be done?" to "What is being done... and what are you doing?"