Haboob sweeping across Phoenix, Az.
The movie "Interstellar" begins with the premise that something has gone terribly wrong with the Earth. Humanity is no longer able to feed itself, so even a former NASA astronaut has been forced into farming to help grow enough food to avert mass starvation. Giant dust storms (called haboobs, from the Arabic word for such things) sweep periodically across the farms and bury small towns. The future Earth in the movie Intersteller is something that looks like the Oklahoma dustbowl of the 1930s. The only thing that still seems to work right is the hero's indestructible Dodge Ramcharger Truck, in an inspired bit of product placement by Chrysler-Fiat.
While the movie never explains whats gone wrong with the Earth, there clearly has been some kind of environmental degradation. Lets see if we can figure out just what has gone wrong. Haboobs are occurring more frequency in places like Phoenix Az now as a consequence of higher temperatures and increasing aridification brought on by Greenhouse Warming. California is in a massive drought due to Greenhouse Warming. And crop blights and famines are predicted to occur as the planet warms. The future Earth of Interstellar is our Earth, with CO2 emissions, Greenhouse Warming, and other current trends extrapolated into the future.
Fortunately, in the movie NASA has secretly relocated to a new location just a short drive away from the former astronaut in his redoubtable Dodge truck. At NASA an elderly scientist played by a charming Michael Caine has been laboring fruitlessly for 40 years to solve an equation describing gravity while the earth's environment has been progressively destroyed.
And that raises fundamental questions. The Interstellar film is to be applauded for championing the merits of science and science education. Thanks to NASA science and technology and a huge dose of movie magic a small fragment of humanity is saved in Interstellar. But why the heck doesn't lovable scientist Michael Caine devote maybe an hour a day trying to figure out how to save the earth? Why does no one in the movie ever question the assumption that saving the earth is impossible? Why hasn't NASA or some other agency or somebody somewhere done anything to counteract the changes in Earth's climate? Why does the film want us to cheer because a few hundred select people successfully flee the dying earth, leaving billions behind in an ecological death trap? Why does everyone assume the earth is headed for climate disaster and nothing can be done?
Why is the idea of Planetary Geoengineering completely missing from Interstellar?
No comments:
Post a Comment