Marta Montojo
Madrid (EFE).- Year 2037: COP42 brings together governments to contain global warming, which is already 1.55 ºC warmer than in the pre-industrial era; meanwhile, extreme heat, massive fires or lack of water claim millions of victims and over the Arctic, already melted, a new casino is projected.
It is the beginning of “A challenging future” (“Extrapolations”), a fictional series that shows the consequences of the increase in global temperature as the decades go by based on the repeated warnings of the reports of the international scientific community.
Thus, the production transfers to fiction the forecasts for the near future of the IPCC -the UN group of climate experts- if the world does not reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and in a “deep, rapid and sustained” manner. .
Directed by the American filmmaker Scott Z. Burns, who also worked on the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”‘, the cast of this drama includes Hollywood stars such as Maryl Streep, Sienna Miller, Marion Cotillard, Edward Norton and Tobey Maguire.
reality caught up with fiction
As a technical adviser, the American environmentalist and founder of the NGO 350.org, Bill Mckibben, focused on asking producers to hurry up in issuing Extrapolations, since “reality was catching up with fiction”, as he stated to EFE McKibben himself.
“This is going to be the challenge of our era. We will be remembered above all for how we address this issue of ecological sustainability and if we put measures in place that will affect future generations, “Edward Norton claimed on the television program” The Tonight Show.
The first six chapters -each one, a reflection of a decade- can already be seen on Apple TV, while the rest will be broadcast throughout the month of April.
In this series, the “cliffhanger” effect -the suspense that is created at the end of each chapter- is not resolved in an immediate time frame but in the following decade, as it happens in reality, since the effects of current decisions on the climate crisis are perceived in the long term.
The rise in sea level, forced displacement, the extinction of species, speculation and the profit that some may obtain from climatic disasters, as well as the confidence in technological solutions, are some of the issues that the Extrapolations series addresses.
Dystopian literature expert Gabriel Saldías explains that what is known at this point about “A challenging future” is not enough -according to literary theory- to qualify the series as a “dystopia”, since at the moment it does not propose a social reorganization “planned according to principles worse than ours.”
Instead, the series anticipates the worst forecasts of science for a continuist scenario, in which the world is still trying to stop greenhouse gas emissions in the middle of the century.
“It seems easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”, argues this doctor in Theory of Comparative Literature, quoting the literary critic Fredric Jameson.
Saldías appreciates that what makes a dystopia interesting and useful is that it offers a “critical and reflective” narrative that invites us to think about how to avoid disaster or to imagine “what happens after the catastrophe”.
Dystopias play an interactive role in the viewer’s consciousness
However, he believes that “very simplistic” narratives predominate in commercial film and television products that do not reflect the contradictions or complex solutions that alternatives to collapse need to outline: “We want to consume destruction, but not stop to think about reconstruction”, judgment.
The professor at the University of Talca (Chile) and expert in dystopian fiction, Claire Mercier, agrees that dystopias are not “mere aesthetic products” but rather have a role of “interacting with the critical awareness of the viewer” and delving into how solve those challenges.
But, he warns, they can also produce an “anesthesia” effect when compared to the current situation with much worse future circumstances.
