Introduction. Imagining the Future of Climate Change

Abstract

In Bong Joon-Ho’s 2013 international blockbuster Snowpiercer, a single train traverses the globe, protecting the fi nal remnant of humanity from an Ice Age that made the planet seemingly uninhabitable. Set in 2031, the fi lm begins by squarely placing the blame on humans for this catastrophic climate change. As the opening credits roll over dark, starry space, we hear crackling, fuzzy excerpts of news broadcasts from all over the world telling how, despite protests from environmental groups and “developing countries,” on 1 July 2014, seventy countries dispersed the artifi cial cooling substance CW-7 into the upper layers of the atmosphere. Because “global warming can no longer be ignored,” one of the disembodied voices explains, seeding the skies with CW-7 was a lastditch eff ort “to bring average global temperatures down to manageable levels as a revolutionary solution to mankind’s warming of the planet.” But before the real action of the fi lm even starts, we learn the grim outcome of this desperate international scientifi c experiment. Two short sentences loom large on the screen: “Soon after dispersing CW-7 the world froze. All life became extinct.” Introduction