subscribe to this pageGlobal warming and overpopulation can have serious health effects on people. Soylent Green avoids this key topic, making it based less upon fact. An article released by the Canadian Medical Association Journal discusses the events likely to occur in the event of overpopulation; the possibilities include zoonotic diseases, decreased access to water, waterborne diseases, and airborne disease. The most important of which are issues with water. Although much of the earth is covered in water, approximately on 3% of this water is drinkable. Overpopulation posses a threat to access to water, the effects of which are already wide spread in population dense India.
In Soylent Green the chief concern of the characters is food. It is unlikely that food would become a problem before water. Humans can last great lengths of time without food, but only three days without water. If New York City’s population had reached the film’s prediction of 44 million, then access to water would most likely be impossible. It would have been both educational and exciting to discuss water quality and the potential problems incurred with overpopulation.
I’ve expressed throughout these entries that there is still a market for a film like Soylent Green. If the film were to be remade or a film like it were to come out these are important aspects to consider. Films like 28 Days Later do an excellent job of taking these factors in to consideration.
Greer, Amy. "Climate Change and Infectious Diseases in North America: the road ahead." Canadian Medical Association Journal, v.178(6) (2008). 11 March 2008 < http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov>.
Although it has been hotly debated, many believe that film can produce change. Al Gore did, and this past year he was recognized for it when he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the film An Inconvenient Truth. The film was recognized by several groups and was one of the highest grossing documentaries ever made. One of the members of the panel who awarded Vice President Gore stated that he hoped that because Gore had made the information so accessible that it might produce a change in perspectives both in the United States as well as abroad.
One can search for An Inconvenient Truth “Love Stories,” where after seeing the film people go out and create change. On New York Times article discussed how shortly after leaving the theater one man and his wife changed all of the light bulbs in their home to energy saving ones, because it felt like the “morally right thing to do.” Other women have been transformed, one article highlights the achievements of different groups of “eco-moms.”
Film reviews of Soylent Green make it clear that the film did not have quite the impact on the world as An Inconvenient Truth largely due to what appeared to be regressions in attitude from 1970’s culture. The book which the film is based upon (Make Room! Make Room! Written by Harry Harrison in 1966), has sexist elements to it and several reviewers chose to focus on that. Also, many focused on the theme of cannibalism as opposed to overpopulation, which is why the society engaged in it the first place. The reviews claimed that Soylent was predicting “yesterday’s future,” and not today. It’s not surprising then how many groups are calling for a remade updated version of the film. The ideas are still relevant today and global warming is a very popular issue right now. The fact that Gore one the Nobel Prize for his efforts reflects the importance of the issue in the international community.
Gibbs, Walter. "Gore Shares Peace Prize for Climate Change Work.” New York Times, 13 October 2007, 1-2. Brown, Patricia Leigh. "For 'Ecomoms,' Saving the Earth Begins at Home." New York Times, 16, February 2008, 1-2.
The article evaluates the impact of overpopulation on the environment. The author claims that up to this point most researchers have led people to that the impact people cause on their environment is roughly proportional to the population. This assumption fails to take into account “threshold effects, synergies, feedbacks, and other nonlinear phenomena which can amplify environmental impacts and cause them to grow considerably faster than population size.” These effects can continue to grow even if the population reaches a stasis.
The author explains each of the occurrences using several everyday examples. He theorizes that although population-impact equilibrium may appear to be at a steady state, that there is a possibility of reaching a threshold and that the impact may increase exponentially. Threshold occurs regularly in biological systems. Synergy is defined as when “the combined effect of two causes is greater than the sum of the effects of the two causes acting in isolation of each other.” Synergies can be either beneficial or harmful, but they can both act upon the environment. Positive and negative feedback loops can also be harmful or beneficial, but most important accumulate on themselves.
A film like Soylent Green could have benefited from tying in more factual information which would have been refreshing and entertaining even for 1970’s audiences. The theatrical trailer left little to the imagination and did not play up the science fiction aspect of the film. It instead focused more on the “evil cooperation” plot line which could be placed in any film of the past, present, or future. When the film was released overpopulation was a hot topic (it was when the first estimates of 6 billion people by the year 2000 were released by the UN) and ultimately filmmakers should have taken advantage of this.
Harte, John. "Human Population as a Dynamic Factor in Environmental Degradation." Population & Environment, 28.4 (2007).
11 May 2007
In the short essay, “From Loch Ness Monsters to Global Warming: Framing Environmental Risk in a Supermarket Tabloid,” Donnalyn Pompper investigates the framing used by supermarket tabloids to discuss environmental issues. She chose to focus on tabloids, because they target a lower class audience. It’s an important issue to analyze because a lot about effective environmental protection is unknown and how the stories are framed affect how we take meaning from them. Pompper found that there were 5 frames which encompassed the way that tabloids presented the issues, the frame of particular interest is that of “Elites and Destruction.” Stories within this frame “mocked authorties’ gloom-and-doom predictions about global warming…and polluted air and water supplies as having “no basis in fact” and instead encouraged readers to think positively and “make a positive future happen.” (Pompper, 125) Some stories called scientists’ predictions “wild and whacky,” another story quoted a researcher who called predictions for environmental destruction “all a pack of lies” (125). The danger in the framing of tabloids is that if it global warming and over consumption are problems, then much of the country will be trained not to care.
Soylent Green addresses these issues, in the character Sol. Sol is an older gentleman who remembers the world when it wasn’t hot, polluted, and overpopulated. He continually claims that people “knew,” referencing the heat and the greenhouse effect. In this sense, the film cautions people who do not believe in global warming and its effects. Sol’s characters of 2022, quotes information gathered by scientists of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Pompper, Donnalyn. "From Loch Ness Monsters to Global Warming: Framing Environmental Risk in a Supermarket Tabloid." Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture. Ed. Mark Meister and Phyllis M. Japp. Connecticut: Praeger, 2002. 110-140.
Climate science can be boring, but the author of “Warm, Warmer, Warmest,” warns us to take interest in it very soon. He and other climate researchers openly worry that the future historians of science will be “brutal to us…because right now we are in a state of deep denial about how severe the problem is.” Kristof also discusses the possibility of positive or negative feed back in climate change. He claims that the positive loop can potentially melt the Artic permafrost, release carbon dioxide and methane, which add to the amount of greenhouse gases, which would in turn melt more permafrost. A loop like this would account for the small changes we’ve seen in recent years, but would advance on an exponential level instead of the steady incline model favored by conservative scientists today. He concedes though, the possibility of the negative feed back loop wherein everything would end up pretty much “okay” in the world, ie no raging floods and glacier-less polar bears.
The downside to straight conservative outlook is that it fails to advocate for conservation and change. Whether Manhattan and other coastal cities will be covered in water in 20 years or a 100 years, the point that many conservative scientists miss is that these place are not supposed to be covered in water and if they are its due in large part to human actions. Films like Soylent Green, take the time to figure out “what if?” And present to the public the worst case scenario. If even a tenth of the destruction that was presented in the movie was lived out, people would suffer on a major scale. The films cautionary tale is an important, thoughtful, and entertaining perspective on the issues presented in “Warm, Warmer, Warmest.”
Nicholas D. Kristof. "Warm, Warmer, Warmest." Science and Society. Ed. Richard Grinnell. New York: Pearson, 2007. 148-153.
Sir Crispin Tickell’s account of crowded cities, overpopulation, and global warming is at first as bleak as Soylent Green. He then delves into the facts and steers clear of conjecture and we find that the overall outlook for the world is not as bad as he first made it out to be. He claims that although some small percentage of climate change is due to human activities it will cause water levels in the ocean to rise of 6 cm per decade (uncertainty ranging from 3 to 10 cm). He also claims that the earth is one of its warm swings and that there will be anywhere from a 1o to 3o rise in temperature by 2025. He connects all of these facts to the steady increase in population and the possibility of outpacing resources. Sir Tickell’s essay begins much like Soylent Green, using a convincing tone in order to highlight the dangers of overpopulation and global warming. His fervor weakens however during his presentation of the facts.
Sir Tickell also references the explosion of scientific and popular culture claiming that anxiety about the situation drove further research and follow up on the issue. Soylent Green capitalized on these fears, releasing an over the top dramatization based on fact, but very loosely following the time line of the scientists of the day. Soylent Green claims that overpopulation and pollution will effectively decimate the earth and dry up the sea, all by the year 2022. Scientists haven’t even gotten as far as to speculate as to when the sea would no longer be able to maintain life. Thus far, the main concern has been rising sea levels and the destruction of major coastal cities.
Using the tag line, “It’s 2022, but people still haven’t changed,” effectively describes the concern of the author and director that the message of global warming was going to be difficult to get through to the people.
Tickell, Sir Crispin. "Cities and Climate Change." Science for the Earth: Can Science make the World a Better Place?. Ed. Tom Wakeford. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995. 147-157.
Despite the fact that the term ‘global warming’ has been around for around 50 years now, many Americans are still unsure of what it is. A New York Times report on a study conducted at Yale University analyzes internet searches in order to draw conclusions about public opinion on global warming. They found that there was a surge in internet searches in January of 2008, right around the time when Vice President Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Shortly after, the number of searches about global warming fell back to 2007 levels.
Further analysis of the search terms was even more telling; they found that most people searched about global warming to be educated using terms like “about global warming,” and “al gore global warming.” Other terms in the top 100 most popular ways to search the subject were “global warming myth,” “global warming hoax,” and “the great global warming swindle.” Americans are still unsure of what exactly global warming is and because of that they haven’t drawn as many conclusions as conservationists would like. The same study found that when asked "which comes closer to your own view — most scientists think global warming is happening, most scientists think global warming is not happening, or there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening, or do you not know enough to say," 48% said "it's happening," while 40% commented that there is "a lot of disagreement." We can see from films like Soylent Green and the novel that it was based upon, which predates it by 10 years, that global warming is an issue that will not be easy for the public to decide upon. We can also see from these films, that the longer that the public takes to decide the more detrimental the outcome.
Tancer, Bill. "The Global Warming Learning Curve.” Time Magazine, 17 October 2007, 1-2.