As I kid growing up in the Cold War, the Soviets were the stock villain in movies, with the threat of nuclear war being embodied by monsters like Godzilla.
Then, as the Cold War faded across the late 1980s, you started noticing this new, more opaque villain: the Evil Corporation. Every movie where the villain was unclear and only revealed in the end tended to finger the Evil Corporation, and every time, the viewer had to pretend they didn’t see it coming — boring.
Then, with 9/11 — a plot successfully pulled off by some seriously Evil Supervillains, we got Superheroes combating the same.
And now, with weather chaos grabbing headline after headline, we’re switching over to the Damaged World and various heroes (or crazed villains) trying to fix it, or villains trying to speed it along to its logical conclusion (making humanity pay for its sins).
Too many people, damn it!
From the DBKNEWS story:
Hollywood’s recent focus on climate change as an antagonizing force is a dramatic shift away from the 2010s. Climate change was often used as motivation for an environmentalist villain instead of the villain itself.
“Kingsman: The Secret Service” saw a British spy organization face up against Samuel L. Jackson’s Valentine, a billionaire hellbent on depopulation as a means of ending the climate crisis. Thanos, from Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” had a similar goal as the extermination of half of the universe’s population to reduce resource overconsumption.
Other comic book films, such as “Venom” and “Aquaman,” contained villains that wanted to evolve humanity away from their destructive ways or vanquish the polluting species altogether. These films took environmentalism to its most extreme, turning admirable beliefs into villainous motives.
A post-pandemic Hollywood responded to growing anxieties about the climate crisis by axing this trope, replacing the eco-terrorist with the ecological disaster itself. In some cases, such as “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” those formerly villainous characters become morally gray protagonists fighting for a better world. Film, like all art forms, is a reflection of the world we live in. As the climate crisis worsens, its presence in popular media will likely grow to create a new kind of disaster movie: the climate change film.
The data proves this out: academic analysis cited in the LAT story notes that the percentage of movies mentioning climate change doubled from about 1-in-20 to better than 1-in-10. Apparently, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) actively works this angle in Hollywood with its Rewrite the Future effort.
All good stuff on the awareness front, but likewise just Hollywood reflecting our growing angst back on us.
“We are killing pasture that a lot of farmers need,” said Josias Araújo, a former cowboy who now works in reforestation, as he stood on a patch of soil he was helping to fertilize. “It’s all strange.”
The new company, which is also Mr. Araújo’s new employer, is a forest restoration business called Re.green. Its aim, along with a handful of other companies, is to create a whole new industry that can make standing trees, which store planet-warming carbon, more lucrative than the world’s biggest driver of deforestation: cattle ranching.
It’s the holy grail of the forest economy. And now, it might be within reach.
The stakes are high. About a fifth of the great rainforest is already gone. And scientist warn that rising global temperatures could push the entire ecosystem, a trove of biodiversity and a crucial regulator of the world’s climate, to collapse in the coming decades unless deforestation is halted and an area the size of Germany is restored.
Tree seedlings on former pasture in Mãe do Rio that borders rainforest. (from NYT)
I got a question about the Amazon (“world’s lungs”) at Throughline’s executive roundtable on America’s New Map Wednesday and — damn it — I wish I had processed this article by then!
The “size of Germany” bit is really helpful in visualizing, like my bit about two Australias’ worth of Middle Earth lands being lost to unlivability/un-farmability and the rough same amount magically appearing in the New North.
Jim Nuttle illustration from “America’s New Map”
Getting people to understand the scale is key, along with the timeline.
Broad-framing is all about identifying the inevitability (Amazon tipping point) and then introducing the inconceivable (ending a beef-production practices that’s gone on for decades by somehow convincing the world to price trees above cattle).
It’s crazy stuff UNTIL the inevitability of it all overwhelms the inconceivability of it all.
We’ve all heard about the corporate retreat from the term, and yet …
Here, from the exec summary of a recent industry report:
There is no turning back. Corporate focus on long-term value inextricably links to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Despite “anti-woke” sentiment heightened by state and federal politics, the business case for adopting sustainability strategies is reflected by the growing number of companies in multiple geographies and industries that incorporate sustainability measures into their incentive plans.
Even so, companies are having to navigate anti-ESG sentiment … corporate leaders are responding to pushback in three general ways:
■ Changing how they talk about ESG: Some companies are modifying their terminology to avoid using the term “ESG” altogether. Instead, they favor other words or terms that do not attract the same sort of political attention, such as “sustainability,” “social responsibility,” or “impact’ …
■ Focusing on “material” ESG factors tied to shareholder value …
■ Doubling down in support.
ESG is basically America’s New Map: my E is climate change, my S is demographic aging, and my G is the superpower brand war over an emergence global majority middle class.
Jim Nuttle illustration from “America’s New Map”
None of this reality can be wished away. It’s the world America created and now has to live in. No nostalgia-fueled retreat into the past (e.g., MAGA) will alter this pathway whatsoever. All it can accomplish is to sideline America and, by doing so, make this a future largely of China’s creating.
5) Immigration crackdown! Trade wars! How’s that working for ya Wisconsin?
Central Wisconsin farmers said a trade war with China and potential immigration crackdowns make it harder for them to stay afloat.
A group of farmers came together Thursday for a discussion at Miltrim Farms in Marathon County. The discussion, part of a series of listening sessions by the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, included a range of agriculture sectors: dairy farmers, ginseng farmers, a maple syrup producer, the owner of an apple orchard and an organic produce farmer.
It centered on how U.S. foreign policy and policies on immigration are felt by producers and small businesses in the region.
Big surprise: cracking down on immigration during an intense labor shortage is a lose-lose. Farmers tends to be uber-pragmatic, as I relearned when I presented my brief to the Dairy Board Association in January in Green Bay (my future retirement target):
“It seems foolish to just pretend that foreign-born workers aren’t here and that we don’t need them,” said Hans Breitenmoser, whose dairy farm outside of Merrill has about 460 cows. “We need a means by which their presence here can be legal and sustainable, and also provide them with the dignity that they deserve.”
As for trade wars, they end up locking US ag exporters out of foreign markets:
More than 90 percent of U.S. production of ginseng comes from Wisconsin’s Marathon County, and the great majority of that product is exported to China. The multimillion-dollar industry has been decimated by the trade war with China.
And yet, Trump’s hold on America’s farmers is pronounced, proving yet again the genius of the GOP in getting voters to vote against their economic interests in the name of culture wars.
Article attracted my attention because it cited Madison WI parishes I know well, having coached against them in girls volleyball, etc. as a parishioner myself (all six of my kids went to parochial school).
It is a vibe and a movement long in the making. For years-bleeding-into-decades I could feel it creeping into mass on a weekly basis: subgroups being a bit holier than moi by adding in some special movement or gesture or sotto voce prayer. It always gave me a sort of body-snatching feel and created a sense of walls going up within the parish — a tiering of faith that was a decided turn-off for me and mine.
Eventually two of my kids came out as non-straight and that was that, because we are a package deal (take it or leave it) and so we left.
It’s a natural and entirely predictable movement for American Catholicism — this retreat into tradition. Latinos crowding in tend to be more old school. Then there’s the reality of a progressive era looming on the horizon — called into being by economic inequality.
Churches, and especially the Catholic Church, tend to serve as a drag on these inevitabilities. If it’s a choice between a progressive future versus a retreat into the past … bet on the church retreating.
This is reflected in the rising percentage share of the unchurched in America: believers without an acceptable faith venue.
Channeling Norma Desmond : I am big. It's the church that got small.
This is climate velocity: it used to make sense to grow sugarcane in Texas, but now that climate has shifted poleward, and it’s not like Texas’ sugarcane farmers can simply follow it northward.
The Army has talked about how unmanned systems and sensors will largely perform such a mission along with the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter when required, but little money is programmed to be spent on the aircraft in the coming years.
Between the lines: it’s nuts to go with this FARA program if we don’t invest enough in unmanned systems to PROTECT it — seriously, our super-expensive Apache helicopter isn’t worth fielding (at very high cost) UNLESS we pair it with oodles of unmanned aerial vehicles (drone bodyguards, basically). Otherwise, it could just end up being another platform too vulnerable to fly in a post-human battlespace.
I mean, there has to be a cheaper unmanned way to accomplish the same reconnaissance, right?
Wake up and smell that coffee!
9) The global silver tsunami = shrinking-workforce phenomenon
The demographic transition runs like this: baby boom —> youth bulge —> demographic dividend —> silver tsunami.
That is a one-way street, the result being an inevitable decline in working-age population. Key economies in Asia are already there. Most of Europe is already there.
America cheats by allowing immigration, thank God, and yet we insist on maintaining our broken system and xenophobia despite being short about 3 million workers right now (smart, that).
Brilliant bit of analysis from AXIOS:
"That shift helps explain a U-shaped relationship between aging populations and attitudes towards migrants in Europe," writes [cited study author] Kenny. "First, aging is associated with a rise in anti-migrant sentiment but then, as concerns over who is going to look after all the old people begin to rise, that trend reverses."
The bottom line: Don't hold your breath waiting for pro-immigration sentiment to rise in the U.S. We aren't going to reach the point of negative working population growth until 2054.
Inevitabilities yielding — from today’s perspective — inconceivable responses.
Article says India needs to increase its GDP six fold to achieve true development as it plans by the year 2047 — the centennial of the modern Indian state.
Inconceivable!
Except China increased its GDP by six fold over a similarly long timeframe by successfully leveraging its demographic dividend.
The potential is there. We await the execution.
I am cheering for India, despite its flaws (and Modi’s). A rise such as this is a brutally difficult journey that typically requires rather brutal and difficult leadership.
Becoming a superpower ain’t for scaredy cats.
11) New Delhi joins the club on extrajudicial killings
India got fingered for an effort in Canada targeting a regime opponent and now gets named in another involving a US citizen (Sikh activist lawyer).
We can call it India’s “dark side,” but it’s pretty much every great power’s dark side today.
China polices beyond its border — brazenly if stealthily
Russia assassinates with aplomb.
Israel, the Saudis, and Iran does too.
America is without peer in this regard, if we are being honest with ourselves. After all, what was the Global War on Terror but one long list of high-value targets to be erased? And yes, per David Ignatius, the need remains.
Does anyone think America is getting out of the targeted killing game any time soon?
Breathless reporting in the West makes it sound like India has left the building on democracy but, quite frankly, it’s headed in the same direction as a lot of democracies right now when it comes to perceived threats.
War and conflict have shifted downward systematically across my short lifetime from system-level scenarios (WWII, WWIII, nuclear armageddon) to state-on-state warfare (going the way of the dinosaur in frequency) and down through to civil/subnational/individual killing (the booming field).
All states have followed this trajectory.
Yes, we still build and train and scenario-size the Big One, but the vast majority of our most important work is conducted on an individual-case basis.
This is not a bug but a feature of our multipolar world.
Yet at the same time, the world may be closer than ever to turning a corner in the effort to corral climate change.
Namely, the point of peak emissions is near.
Does this change our climate trajectory this century?
Not really. We are pretty much locked into the next half-century or so.
But it does speak to a better world on the far side of this experience: embracing that distant reality but steeling ourselves concerning the journey is what America’s New Map is all about.
Jim Nuttle’s illustration for the Preface of “America’s New Map”
