[The Fountain] Climate disasters more real than the movies

We must not let the climate disaster movies become our daily lives again.

CHOI HYUN-JOOThe author is a stock market news reporter of the JoongAng Ilbo. In the early summer of 2004, I watched “The Day After Tomorrow” at the theater because my friend was a fan of Jake Gyllenhaal. A climatologist detects the signs of climate disaster while exploring Antarctica. Rapid global warming cause glaciers in the South and North poles to melt, seawater becomes cold, the currents change, and the entire Earth is covered with ice.

Director Bong Joon-ho’s “Snowpiercer” (2013) is also set on an Earth frozen due to climate change. The inequality and struggle of the people on the train circling around the earth in the new Ice Age is terrible. “Interstellar” (2014) also deals with the space adventures of an explorer searching for a substitute for the Earth, devastated by climate changes. In “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015), after a nuclear war covered the world in sand, people are dying from a water shortage. Until then, these films were nothing more than movies.

Such movies about climate disasters no longer seem to be only movies today. Chills ran down my spine as I watched “Geostorm” (2017). After a weather control program based on manipulating satellites to prevent climate disasters malfunctions, mankind faces a crisis of climate change such as volcanic eruption, extreme cold and heat. The film looked like a documentary.

We are living in a reality similar to the plot of “Flu,” released 10 years ago. In this movie, people wear masks to prevent the spread of a respiratory virus. After the city gets put under lockdown, people fight for survival. I was suddenly reminded of the mask shortage at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We already hear a lot of news that sound like movies. Venezuela, a Caribbean nation known for intense sunshine and its jade sea, recently saw snowfall. It is a warm region with an average temperature of over 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) even in winter, but snow piled up in the middle of summer. In the same South America, Chile is suffering from an extreme draught, and in Colombia crops are dying from heavy rains. At the same time, heavy snow caused casualties in Japan.

The biggest cause of climate change is global warming caused by fossil fuels. Let’s start by changing detergents and shampoos right away. We must not let the climate disaster movies become our daily lives again.