English Digital Exhibit Main Menu Introduction Timeline A timeline of the ecohorror genre Interstellar Oryx and Crake: Climate Change Eco-Horror in Dystopian Fiction A drawing of the Crakers, the man-made super race created by Crake, dancing in the face of humanity's destruction at the hands of a violent plague. Dark Souls: An Overview A glance over the themes, ideas and potential complexities of Dark Souls as we analyze it through an climate change lens. The Last of Us An overview of the ecohorror themes of The Last of Us video games series (2013-now) and The Last of Us show (2023-now) The Day After Tomorrow Works Cited

Climate Change in Interstellar

42556 Oryx and Crake: Climate Change Eco-Horror in Dystopian Fiction A drawing of the Crakers, the man-made super race created by Crake, dancing in the face of humanity's destruction at the hands of a violent plague.
Climate change is the driving force behind the plot of the movie. Without it, the entire mission to find a new home for humanity would not be needed. Despite this, the film places majority of its focus on the exploration of outer space, leaving the beginning to depict the climate change that is tearing society apart at the roots. Diseases are killing crops and causing massive food shortages driving humanity to the edge of extinction. The most profound example of climate change is the dust storm that ambushes Cooper and his family when they are watching a local baseball game. Take a look at the following clip:

This dust storm is based on the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when overfarming caused there to be loose soil that was picked up by the wind to create massive dust storms that did a lot of damage to the Great Plains. The situation that Earth finds itself in Interstellar is similar to that of the agricultural Midwest during the Great Depression, as both share a lack of resources and desperation towards the situation with governments doing little to help at the time. In fact, an article published by History.com in 2004 says, "Roughly 2.5 million people left the Dust Bowl states—Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma—during the 1930s (Dust)." This mass migration of those in the states ravaged by the Dust Bowl to California is very similar to Cooper migrating from Earth so that the rest of humanity could follow. This suggests an ideology of running away from the problem rather than preventing it the first place. 

A big question when it comes to climate change in Interstellar is whether it addresses climate change effectively. On one hand, it could be argued that it makes an argument for investment in space exploration, which could be a possible solution to save humanity. But what about Earth? Film critic Noah Gittell argues that by focusing on humans leaving Earth and finding a new home rather than saving their current one, Interstellar is not delivering the appropriate climate change message. He writes, “The heroes in Interstellar do not talk much about their mistakes on Earth…And so it stands to reason that whatever planet the humans in Interstellar end up colonizing, they will destroy it just as surely as a virus destroys its host. (Gittell)” Essentially, this can be applied to humanity in our universe, that if we do not learn our lesson about climate change properly, it could continuously plague us even if we escape to other planets. This means that we need to take the steps to solve the climate change problem now while there still is time instead of dreaming about moving to and colonizing another planet.

The themes relating to the human instinct to fight for survival as well as the natural stubbornness of humanity that creates denial both link with climate change. Denial is a large part of the reason why climate change becomes such a destructive problem in Interstellar, as people were just hoping for a solution to it instead of trying to take any sort of direct action against it. Now, since preventative measures were not taken, the climate change worsened to the point that human instincts for survival kicked in, and only then were measures taken to try to save the human race. This shows the inner selfishness of humanity and how we as a whole do not give enough care or attention to the environment until it is too late, and our own survival is threatened. Interstellar speaks volumes to this despite being a movie about space and time on the surface, and only once we dig deeper can we find insights to our own race which may be what we need to preserve our beautiful but fragile environment.

This page has paths:

  1. Interstellar Aman Patel

This page references: