Watching Climate: An In-Depth Review of Climate Representations on TV
Source: Apple TV/Netflix
As we have predicted, 2023 has given us more climate change entertainment.
It is exciting to finally see climate change stories in mainstream media. In fact, Hollywood recently hosted their annual Hollywood Climate Summit, which is an opportunity for cross-sector entertainment and media professionals to take action on climate. It is encouraging to see the industry gathering to figure out the best way to tackle this issue.
It’s about time the entertainment industry gave climate topics their due. The Media Impact Project at USC’s Norman Lear Center analyzed 37,453 scripted television episodes and films released from 2016 through 2020 and found that just 2.8% of them included any mention of climate change — or a long list of related keywords, such as “greenhouse gas,” “sea level,” “clean energy” and “fossil fuel”.”
People also want more climate action in their entertainment. According to a recent study by Rare, 7 out of 10 Americans want climate-friendly behaviors in film and TV.
Netflix and AppleTV have content such as Extraploations and Don’t Look Up that focuses entirely on climate change and shows such as Unstable, and even Ted Lasso that feature a climate-focused subplot. But are these shows communicating climate reality in ways that educate, inspire, educate while also entertaining? The Universal Truths of Communication, from our Climate Communications Toolkit, provide a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of these shows.
Truth 1: Know Your Audience
Yale University’s program on Climate Change Communications has created a spectrum of Global Warming’s Six Americas. The program was created to recognize ”that people are different and have different psychological, cultural, and political reasons for acting – or not acting – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” The graphic below illustrates this spectrum and the percentage of the U.S. population that belongs to each.
Source: Yale/GMU
When it comes to mass communication–whether in the form of a TV series or a press release– the target audience influences your content. For example, it may be tempting to target dismissives with doom and gloom to get them to care as much as we do, but dismissives are a small group that is almost never worth targeting, according to Katherine Hayhoe’s book Saving Us. She says their “identity is built on rejecting climate change.” She also posits that “bad-news warnings are more likely to make people check out than change their behavior. And the more vivid and dire the picture painted, the less responsive the recipient.” According to Scientific American, stories of Constructive Hope are more likely to spur action and build support for climate policies. “Raising feelings of hope involves boosting a sense of efficacy—that what we do as individuals and as a society can truly make a difference. Rather than promoting stories of doom and deprivation, we can tell stories that illustrate the many benefits we will reap from the clean energy transition and from protecting nature.”
Truth 2: Know Where To Reach Them
In Katherine Hayhoe’s TED Talk, she describes the most effective way to talk about climate change as connecting over shared values and meeting your audience where they are. Content focused on climate change, especially the harsh realities of it, will have a harder time bringing in new viewers. Only people who are alarmed or concerned about climate change are likely to seek out climate content. They, however, aren’t the only ones who want it. The Rare study found 75% dissmives they spoke to wanted to see more climate behaviors modeled. To reach this segment of the population, content needs to have an appeal besides educational value.
A great example of this is the Netflix show Unstable. This show is advertised as a father-son workplace comedy set in a fictional climate tech company. The show frequently references the “Carbon Project” they are working on and how it will have positive impacts on climate change. The project, however, is a small part of the show, so subtle you could miss it. It’s a great example of creating solutions-focused climate media that will reach a wide audience. Having a big star in a funny show will keep viewers watching and hoping Rob Lowe will succeed in pulling carbon from the atmosphere, whether they care about the climate crisis or not.
Climate doesn’t have to be a central theme of a show to be successful in reaching a large audience. Reaching people where they are often means including climate themes in shows they are already watching. A fan favorite on AppleTV, Ted Lasso, features Sam Obisanya a character who’s a Nigerian soccer star on an English team and environmental advocate. Spoiler Alert: He participates in a photo shoot for an airline that sponsors the team, and when he excitedly tells his family back home they tell him that the airline is contributing to widespread pollution in his home country. Sam not only pulls out of the photo shoot, but in a true heartwarming Ted Lasso moment, he convinces the team to cover the airline logos on their kits (uniforms) during their next game. The protest is a success not only in its facilitation of team bonding, but also in getting the team a new sponsor and causing the airline to change its ways. While not all environmental advocacy is that easy, the storyline depicts a hopeful conclusion and could help convince viewers to fight for change. It shows that it is possible to move from ignorance to action.
Both Ted Lasso and Unstable show that while climate change is not a fun problem, the content can be joyful and entertaining.
Source: Tenor
Truth 3: Know Your Goal
AppleTV’s Extrapolations is notably less heartwarming than Ted Lasso. The show follows “eight interconnected stories told over 33 years to explore how our planet’s changing climate will affect family, work, faith-and survival.” But warming hearts isn’t the goal of the show. As co-showrunner Dorothy Fortenberry explains on The Climate Pod the goal of extrapolations was to “show the messy middle of climate change,” a reference to the next few decades when climate impacts will gradually intensify but not veer into outright global catastrophe. The beginning of the series shows what it could be like to live through the almost certain effects of climate change. This means characters going on with their lives and experiencing major milestones such as bat mitzvahs while adapting to the changes. People working in climate may find it difficult to watch, especially when international diplomat characters still cannot make progress at COP 40-something. Far from an easy-to-watch comedy, the presumed goal of Exptrapolations is to get people thinking about the near-to-mid-term future and what they can do to influence how it will look. AppleTV has partnered with a number of environmental organizations to provide resources for those looking to learn more.
After years of few to no features of climate change in mainstream media, we need all of the climate change stories we can get. Using the Universal Truths of Communication can help filmmakers and TV producers reach their climate communications objectives, whether they are exposing a broad audience to climate stories or creating a stark call for us to change our ways. Check out the Environmental Media Association's monthly Green Streaming Series for the latest climate content.
