You would think with how the environmental crises of climate change, overfishing, plastic pollution, and coral reef bleaching have gone off the rails this decade, especially in the last couple years, that these themes would be ubiquitous in global pop culture. But apart from Leo DiCaprio’s Before the Flood and a few songs here and there, environmental themes haven’t really figured that heavily in 2010s culture.

Do you think that’ll ever come to be the case, especially as runaway climate change forces massive migration from third-world countries? What do you suppose that will look like? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

When the Climate Change Protesters hit London earlier this year, it got me thinking. Certainly the Climate is changing, the UK has had it's hottest ever July day last month. But I had always thought, that the hot summers and freezing winters came in cycles, but bad with the good?

Summers are getting hotter, winters are getting colder, and weather events from storms to hurricanes are getting more frequent and severe.

Climate changes are indeed cyclical, but usually on the timescale of centuries or even millennia. In the modern case, we’re seeing rapid changes in more individual years.

Edit: See the below for a concise - and terrifying - summation of the changes currently occurring. Note that the rate of change has also increased over time.

http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/climate-lab-book/files/2016/06/spiral_2017_large-1.gif

Summers are getting hotter, winters are getting colder, and weather events from storms to hurricanes are getting more frequent and severe.

Climate changes are indeed cyclical, but usually on the timescale of centuries or even millennia. In the modern case, we’re seeing rapid changes in more individual years.

Edit: See the below for a concise - and terrifying - summation of the changes currently occurring. Note that the rate of change has also increased over time.

http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/climate-lab-book/files/2016/06/spiral_2017_large-1.gif
The graphic seems to be precise, and terrifying.

Latest from the UN:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49238749

Switching to a plant-based diet can help fight climate change, UN experts have said. A major report on land use and climate change says the West's high consumption of meat and dairy produce is fuelling global warming. But scientists and officials stopped short of explicitly calling on everyone to become vegan or vegetarian. They said that more people could be fed using less land if individuals cut down on eating meat. The document, prepared by 107 scientists for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says that if land is used more effectively, it can store more of the carbon emitted by humans.

Hunger Games was based on a world that had suffered from climate change. I think it's a common thread in many dystopian books and movies, actually.

Hunger Games was based on a world that had suffered from climate change. I think it's a common thread in many dystopian books and movies, actually.
"Waterworld" comes to mind too?

Yeah, but you see how few and far in between those are. The only other major pop culture work in recent years I can think of with an environmental theme was the 2011 The Lorax film.