TV Culture Environmentalism

or,

How I learned everything I need to know about Climate Change from Saturday Morning Cartoons.

Hey, remember that Twilight Zone episode where the earth was losing its orbit around the sun (or something) and it was getting hotter and in the end, everybody fried and when the guy woke up he discovered it had all just been a bad dream, but it was just the opposite and the world was moving away from the sun and we were all freezing to death?

The 'climate change" thing reminds me of that, cause it seems like they can't make up their minds which way it's going.

Anyone old enough to remember when we were kids and before environmentalism there was "the ecology" and before "global warming" there was "the coming little ice age". 'Cause see, the industrial pollutants were supposed to be pouring into the atmosphere and making a big sort of smoke cloud thingy that would block out all the sun and all the crops and trees and things would die and we would go extinct...oh, hang on, or was that the dinosaurs?

Anyone else remember the big winter of '78 when we all nodded knowingly and said, "yep, this is it, the start of the Big Freeze, just like that Twilight Zone episode."

And remember when the hole in the ozone layer was going to give us all skin cancer? Wasn't that the point of the closing scene of THX 1138?

And remember when DDT was going to kill all the bugs so the birds that ate them were going to die and we would all get to a "silent spring"?

And remember when the Amazon rainforest was going to be wiped out by slash and burn agriculture and the world's oxygen was going to be depleted and we were all going to be on O2 tanks? Yeah, I think that was in Blade Runner, wasn't it?

I swear that the best movie I've ever seen about climate change was that one where they destroyed New York with a GIANT TIDAL WAVE, man that was GREAT! And then there was this big super-freeze and Bilbo Baggins and the Royal Family got caught in it and the guy froze on the spot like that woolly mammoth they found in Alaska?

Now that was cool.

Yep.

I'm an expert.

I really ought to be working, instead of reading Kathy.

Child of the Cold War, Me

I laugh because I just realized that every time there is a bit of dead air on BBC Radio 3, the first thought is, "Oh, hey. I wonder if someone has nuked London."

That early childhood training will never never leave you.

BTW: anyone old enough to remember them,

you know those "Emergency Response Test" things they used to have on TV? You know, "This is a test. This is only a test. If there was a real emergency, you would be given instructions..."

Then that long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

then, "This has been a test of the emergency response system..."

you may now return to your regularly scheduled Saturday morning cartoons.

Was I the only one to wonder, "If the emergency came when no one had the TV on, is there some master switch somewhere that would turn them all on so we would know something was happening? How would we know what to do if we didn't happen to have the TV on at the moment the Emergency Response System came on."

It was not until years later that I realized the whole thing was a scam. The "emergency" was nuclear war, and with or without your TV telling you to put a paper bag over your head, there wasn't going to be a lot of point anyway.

I'd be interested to see a study done on people who were raised with the 15 Minute Spectre. You know the one where we were all told that any given 15 minute period could easily be our last. I have often wondered if it resulted in the "slacker" phenomenon where people my age, raised by hippies, simply made no plans for their lives because we all thought there wasn't any point.

I've probably written about this before.