Do We Need More Climate Films Before Reality Becomes Just Like Fiction?

Pompeii: Photo Credit ShutterstockMitchell Peran, a soon to graduate senior at Brandeis and a 2022 alum of Scarsdale High School is majoring in environmental studies and minoring in psychology and hopes to go to grad school in an environmental studies or climate science program. He recently wrote the following opinion pieces for his class, "European Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and What to do About It, “ and asked us to share it with you.

AI causes a lot of concern about its use in education whereas some embrace AI to reconstruct history. In June 2026, a news article discussed how the Pompeii Archaeological Park and the University of Padua employed AI to depict the final moments of the Roman city destroyed by the Vesuvius volcanic eruption 2,000 years ago. Romans fleeing the ashes eerily resemble today’s people escaping hurricanes, floods, and other extreme weather events accelerated by climate change.

In 2024, the US experienced 27 weather catastrophes costing over $1 billion in damages each, making it imperative to address climate change. Hollywood should produce more climate films because they emotionalize scientific warnings, motivate public engagement, and increase pressure for political action.

Watching several documentaries and disaster films impressed me about how they disseminate scientific recommendations appealing to emotions. “Merchants of Doubt” does not merely describe the climate denial playbook — it makes you feel the outrage watching how fossil fuel companies deliberately sow doubt about whether climate change was really happening to stall climate action, borrowing tactics straight from the tobacco lobby. Both industries questioned the science behind the fact that their products were harmful, while knowing the truth all along. The “Thule/Tuvalu” documentary is even more effective, by showing the direct impacts of climate change, centering around two locations with opposite climates impacted by melting glaciers and rising sea level. Melting glaciers destroyed hunting grounds around the Greenlandic village of Thule, limiting the indigenous community’s food and movement. A Pacific archipelago, Tuvalu, vulnerable to sea level rise because of its narrow islands, is at risk of being completely flooded due to rising sea levels. The film connects the global impact of climate change, demonstrating how events in one area affect the opposite side of the planet.

Fictional films can also be very effective, by showing the emotional burden of climate change’s impacts. “The Day After Tomorrow,” despite its scientific exaggerations, illustrates how extreme the weather can get. Paleoclimatologist Jack Hall discovers that a slowdown in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could trigger a new ice age and that ends up altering people’s lives. I was outraged by the neglect of politicians towards the impact of extreme weather events, as the US Vice President ignored Hall’s warnings. Many politicians today still deny anthropogenic climate change is really happening.

Some will argue that climate films address audiences who seek them out already believing in climate change - while skeptics avoid them. There is some truth to this. But it misses the larger point. Films do not just inform; they build empathy and moral urgency across political lines. Minoring in psychology, I read research on narrative persuasion consistently showing that stories change minds where statistics fail. Somebody unmoved by temperature charts may weep watching an Inuit elder describe a landscape their grandchildren will never know. That emotional shift is the foundation of political will, and political will is crucial at a turning point for climate action.

In 2015, countries signed the Paris Agreement pledging to limit warming to 20 Celsius from pre-industrial levels, and ideally 1.50. Climate scientists have warned about the drastic impacts to the climate if the 1.50 threshold is breached. Luckily, great films can visualize what happens when climate action isn’t taken so coral reefs like Great Barrier die off, the ocean acidifies, and the glaciers melt. Climate films can also demonstrate the sea level rising 1 to 3 feet causing permanent flooding in coastal areas, and the sixth mass extinction. On the other hand, cinema can inspire the positive effects of climate action outlining net zero carbon emissions, renewable energy, ocean-based carbon capture methods, such as macroalgae and microalgae cultivation, and restoration of natural habitats and wildlife populations threatened by extinction. Politicians can be convinced to fight climate change if their constituencies mobilize and demand action. If you have ever wondered what the climate apocalypse is like, climate films will show you — the bleached coral reefs, the vanishing glaciers, the flooded streets of Miami, displaced indigenous people — and what it will take to pull humanity back from the point of no return. The question is no longer whether the climate will change — it's whether a film will finally make enough people care before it does.

Sources

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319262/ or https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/435-the-day-after-tomorrow
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11079236/ or https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12248972_The_Role_of_Transportation_in_the_Persuasiveness_of_Public_Narratives
https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Patricia-Callahan/dp/B00YO2IC3W
https://oceanvisions.org/macroalgal-cultivation/
https://oceanvisions.org/microalgae-cultivation/
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2024-active-year-us-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/08/1052198840/1-5-degrees-warming-climate-change
https://www.yidio.com/movie/thuletuvalu/104681
https://www.popsci.com/science/ai-pompeii-victim-with-mortar-recreation/