History Main / ClimateChangeAllegory

* ''WesternAnimation/StrangeWorld'': The fictional nation of Avalonia depends on the use of Pando, a plant that gives off bio-electricity, to provide them with power for airships, cars, lights, and radios. [[spoiler:Eventually, however, it is revealed that Avalonia is located on the back of a giant tortoise and that Pando is a disease that is slowly attacking the poor creature’s heart. Avalonia’s dependence on Pando is literally destroying their world.]]

** In ''Anime/PrincessMononoke'', humanity's unchecked growth and use of resources is represented by a conflict between Iron Town, a human settlement, and the massive forest it borders. Iron Town's presence is gradually driving the [[TalkingAnimal Talking Animals]] of the forests insane; being shot by man-made bullets is likened to a curse that slowly corrupts the injured into mindless beasts incapable of speech. Lady Eboshi, the leader of the town, dreams of going even further by outright killing the Great Forest Spirit and claiming his territory for herself, although unlike most examples, she's shown to have [[NobleDemon noble motives]] and genuinely believes that humanity's expansion over nature is itself a natural process. [[spoiler: In the end, Lady Eboshi ''does'' kill the Forest God, but in doing so turns him into a WalkingWasteland that nearly destroys every living thing, humans included. When the problem is solved, Eboshi remarks that she and her people will have to find a way to balance their needs with nature's, rather than simply attempting to completely dominate it.]]
** In ''Anime/SpiritedAway'', human pollution is causing all manner of trouble in the Spirit World. A massive Stink Spirit that comes to the bathhouse turns out to be a river god whose "body" was dammed up with garbage and junk, transforming him into a monster. [[spoiler: It's later revealed that Haku is a former river spirit as well, but his own river was drained so buildings could be constructed over it, making him lose his name and therefore his identity.]] Unlike more cynical examples, though, Miyazaki offers a bit of hope--Chihiro is able to cleanse the Stink Spirit and restore him to his true form, suggesting that while humanity is quite literally mucking things up in nature, it's not too late for them to fix their mistakes.
* Creator/JunjiIto's short series ''Manga/BlackParadox'' tells the story of four people who discover a seemingly miraculous power source in the form of a gemstone called "Paradonite". However, Paradonite is actually comprised of people's souls, and the protagonists realize that using too much of it will result in humans going extinct as their souls are destroyed. At the end, they decide the only way to prevent the inevitable apocalypse is to warn the world of how dangerous its fuel source is.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* ''WesternAnimation/StrangeWorld'': The fictional nation of Avalonia depends on the use of Pando, a plant that gives off bio-electricity, to provide them with power for airships, cars, lights, and radios. [[spoiler:Eventually, however, it is revealed that Avalonia is located on the back of a giant tortoise and that Pando is a disease that is slowly attacking the poor creature’s heart. Avalonia’s dependence on Pando is literally destroying their world.]]
[[/folder]]

* In ''Film/ColorOutOfSpace2020'', a mysterious alien meteor crashes nearby a secluded suburban farm, and under its influence (represented by [[BrightIsNotGood the titular psychedelic "Color" emitting from the meteor]]) the farm gradually turns into a barren wasteland, its inhabitants are DrivenToMadness, and the local animals become creepy mutants. Though the movie is based on [[Literature/TheColourOutOfSpace the eponymous 1927 story]] by Creator/HPLovecraft, the director Creator/RichardStanley stated in an interview that he reimagined it as a metaphor for climate change.
* The film ''Film/DontLookUp'' is an ''Film/Armageddon1998'' copycat as a Climate Change discussion, with the discovery of an asteroid the size of Mount Everest [[ColonyDrop in a collision course with Earth]] dismissed by the HeadInTheSandManagement of the United States government (led by a media-obsessed {{Trumplica}}, to make the allegory more blunt) and the typical mission to blow up the asteroid [[HopeSpot terminated mid-launch]] by an Elon Musk {{Expy}} who [[DeathByMaterialism detects the asteroid is full of rare Earth minerals and tries to exploit this]], leading [[spoiler:to [[DownerEnding the complete extinction of all life on Earth]] except for a ColonyShip full of one-percenters which, it is heavily implied, is going to [[LethallyStupid screw themselves up to death]] in their attempt at colonizing another planet.]]
* ''Film/Mother2017'' has the invasion of masses of obsessive fans as a metaphor for climate change alongside the already-mentioned WholePlotReference to Literature/TheBible. Him (aka God) and Mother ([[AnthropomorphicPersonification Earth]]) live blissfully alone in a deserted house in the middle of luscious green woodland. After He writes his bestselling book (the Bible), they are completely overrun with people and obsessive, violent fans. It also counts as a CompressedAdaptation, as the whole of modern history is compressed into a single night. The house is trashed, people fight and eventually end up filthy and in cages, they kill and eat Mother and His newborn baby, and Mother, realizing that her paradise is destroyed, sets herself on fire and appears to kill everybody except Him in the process.

* ''Film/TakeShelter'' could be interpreted as being about severe climate change anxiety. Curtis is haunted by an obsessive intrusive conviction that AStormIsComing, including possible {{Psychic Dreams|ForEveryone}} about refugees and unstoppable rain. Sam tries to convince him that he's hallucinating and/or having some sort of breakdown. Various interpretations of the ending leave it open as to whether the ending implies that [[spoiler:his hallucinations (and climate change) is real, or that the anxiety is merely catching.]]
* The Franchise/MonsterVerse has dabbled with this, especially where Franchise/{{Godzilla}} is concerned. Perhaps it's best shown in ''[[Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019 King of the Monsters]]'' with its take on King Ghidorah. Here, it is human folly that frees the [[spoiler:alien]] monster Ghidorah, and the three-headed dragon proves so powerful that the situation quickly spirals out of even the human antagonists' control, especially after Ghidorah provokes a global [[{{Kaiju}} Titan]] uprising. The fact that Ghidorah creates powerful weather phenomena wherever he goes sells this further. Not to mention, humanity's attempts to use technology to control Titans (the ORCA) or to simply exterminate them (the [[spoiler:Oxygen Destroyer]]) just make things worse. In the end, it's only when the human protagonists assist Godzilla, the embodiment of nature at its most powerful (and most wrathful), and work ''with'' him and not against him, that they stand a chance.
-->'''Ishiro Serizawa (in ''Film/Godzilla2014''):''' The arrogance of man is in thinking nature is in our control, and not the other way around.

* ''Literature/MollyMoon'': ''Molly Moon and the Morphing Mystery'' revolves around a bunch of villains planning to gain control of the weather, which would result in millions of deaths. In the postface, the author Georgia Byng says that she intended the book's storyline as a metaphor for climate change to familiarize younger readers with the problem and let them know what they can do.
* The Trisolaran Crisis from ''Literature/TheThreeBodyProblem'' cycle has often been interpreted as an allegory for the climate crisis, especially by Western readers. In the novels, a powerful alien civilization decides to invade and conquer Earth... but they still need 200 years to get here, during which humanity has enough time both to give in to despair and to try to come up with a solution. The above covers the "global" and the "slow" criteria, but the crisis is also man-made, as the aliens have learned about Earth in the first place from a renegade human who despised humanity, and were later helped by her followers.

* ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}'': A nuclear reactor explodes and spreads radiation across much of Eastern Europe, directly threatening the lives of millions of people. Corrupt and complacent Soviet authorities try to cover up the disaster at first, and even after being forced to accept the gravity of the situation, continue to deliberately suppress any public knowledge of the design flaws that caused it all. Curiously, series writer Craig Mazin actually supports nuclear power as an alternative energy source to help combat climate change, just not the way the Soviets did it:
->'''Craig Mazin:''' The lesson of ''Chernobyl'' isn't that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism is dangerous.

** An aging, unchanging ruling class refuses to acknowledge or even take action to slow a scientifically unavoidable calamity while a young, diverse, and math/science-literate group prepares to build a better world after the coming collapse. If it wasn't obvious enough, Producer David Goyer has come right out and said the show is an almost direct allegory for climate change.
** An even more blatant example (which wasn't in the pre-Global Warming books) in the planet of Synnax, which ignored the scientists who predicted a global flood and declared them heretic sorcerers after the flood actually happened.

[[folder:Puppet Shows]]
* In the ''Series/{{Dinosaurs}}'' GrandFinale "Changing Nature", MegaCorp WESAYSO builds a factory in a beetle mating ground, leading to a chain of environmental disasters in which, ''every time'', the dinosaurs choose a short term solution which actually causes the ''next'' disaster, until they've triggered an ice age and, it's implied, [[TheDinosaursHadItComing their own extinction]].
[[/folder]]

* [[VoidBetweenTheWorlds The Pale]], from ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium'' is a supernatural phenomenon that surrounds the known landmasses of its world. According to [[spoiler:Joyce]], it is "the transition between being into nothingness" and it is slowly expanding, threatening to cover all known matter. Although the creators of the game have not explained exactly how it works, [[spoiler:it is quite apparent that it arises from the collective subconscious of humankind. This is another factor that makes it similar to climate change, since humans are ultimately responsible for the phenomenon]].

* ''VideoGame/GreedFall'': Towards the end of the game, it is revealed that [[spoiler:the Malichor -- a pandemic slowly decimating the populations of the developed world -- is an example of this trope. Namely, De Sardet discovers that it is a direct consequence of the colonial powers' overexploitation of both alchemy and magic and of the resultant pollution weakening their citizens' bodies and spirits (hence why the isolated natives of Teer Fradee are seemingly immune). And just to drive the allegory home, the only one of the game's MultipleEndings where the Malichor is successfully cured is where ''all'' nations of the world set aside their rivalries and join forces to defeat it.]]

* The Reapers from the ''Franchise/MassEffect'' main trilogy are a galaxy-level threat to all forms of life as their "goal" is [[spoiler:to act as a hard reset on life whenever organic beings reach a technological singularity after the robotic beings they will eventually create gain sentience and the two sides fall into never-ending war with each other]]. Shepard, however, is treated as TheCassandra by the galactic Council, who deny Shepard's claims and reject the loads of evidence Shepard provides them. In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', your job shifts from straight ActionHero territory to diplomat, as you are forced to resolve ''centuries'' long conflicts between the different alien races in order to gain the resources and cooperation necessary to tackle the Reaper forces. [[spoiler:You also learn in this game that the Reapers themselves were created by a long lost organic race, which furthers the comparison between them and climate change.]]
** The allegory was a bit more direct in the well-known "Dark Energy" plot that ultimately became an AbortedArc. In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', Tali's personal missions revolve around the mystery of a star prematurely aging due to the influence of dark energy. The third game would've revealed that the galaxy's use of [[FasterThanLightTravel Mass Relays]] resulted in an increase in the level of ambient dark energy, which is now accelerating the death of the universe, a parallel to how fossil fuels have undoubtedly massively advanced human technology at the expense of the environment. The Reaper's motivations would've been to prevent civilizations from abusing the Mass Relays until a solution to the dark energy problem can be found.
* The beginning of ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney'' shows our world in a state of worldwide crisis, with pollution, riots, economic crises, and criminality covering the entire world; this ends up summoning the Schwarzwelt, a supernatural, expanding phenomenon in the south pole that acts as a portal to a dimension full of demons. Your team was sent to find a way to enter and stop the Schwarzwelt before it becomes too grave of a threat, and the Game Over screen makes it clear that if you lose in this effort it will swallow the entire planet. [[spoiler: And even should it be destroyed from within, so long as humans continue to ruthlessly exploit the natural world it will always come back.]]

* In ''Film/ColorOutOfSpace2020'', a mysterious alien meteor crashes nearby a secluded suburban farm, and under its influence (represented by [[BrightIsNotGood the tutular psychedelic "Color" emitting from the meteor]]) the farm gradually turns into a barren wasteland, its inhabitants are DrivenToMadness, and the local animals become creepy mutants. Though the movie is based on [[Literature/TheColourOutOfSpace the eponymous 1927 story]] by Creator/HPLovecraft, the director Creator/RichardStanley stated in an interview that he reimagined it as a metaphor for climate change.
* The film ''Film/DontLookUp'' is an ''Film/Armageddon1998'' copycat as a Climate Change discussion, with the discovery of an asteroid the size of Mount Everest [[ColonyDrop in a collision course with Earth]] dismissed by the HeadInTheSandManagement of the United States government (led by a media-obsessed {{Trumplica}}, to make the allegory more blunt) and the typical mission to blow up the asteroid [[HopeSpot terminated mid-launch]] by an Elon Musk {{Expy}} who [[DeathByMaterialism detects the asteroid is full of rare Earth minerals and tries to exploit this]], leading [[spoiler:to [[DownerEnding the complete extinction of all life on Earth]] except for a ColonyShip full of one-percenters which is heavily implied is going to [[LethallyStupid screw themselves up to death]] in their attempt at colonizing another planet.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' episode "Something Ricked This Way Comes", Morty and Jerry are abducted by Plutonians who mistake the former for a scientist that still acknowledges Pluto as being a planet instead of a dwarf planet. The Plutonians treat Jerry like a celebrity because excessive mining of the planet's core by corporations has led to its reduced size and eventual collapse and no one wants to acknowledge the problem. When Morty tries to publicly debate Jerry using scientific arguments, Jerry merely shoots back with a crass AdHominem attack and everyone takes Jerry's side.
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': The titular cryptid in the episode "[=ManBearPig=]" is a metaphor for climate change, in the sense that it's not so much a threat as it is a way for UsefulNotes/AlGore to feel important. Years later, when climate change became a more urgent issue, the two-parter "Time to Get Cereal" and "Nobody Got Cereal?" criticizes the lax attitude towards climate change, serving as Creator/TreyParkerAndMattStone's ''mea culpa'' for their previously dismissive attitudes towards the issue. It reveals that [=ManBearPig=] was RealAfterAll (despite having previously appeared in Imaginationland) and very dangerous, emerging after baby boomers made a selfish DealWithTheDevil to get ice cream and fast cars, both of which are said to increase global emissions. Despite [=ManBearPig=] going on killing sprees across town [[spoiler:and '''''killing Satan himself''''' in their DuelToTheDeath]], people are still hesitant to believe that it's a big deal.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': The titular cryptid in the episode "[=ManBearPig=]" is a metaphor for climate change, in the sense that it's not so much a threat as it is a way for UsefulNotes/AlGore to feel important. Years later, when climate change became a more urgent issue, the two-parter "Time to Get Cereal" and "Nobody Got Cereal?" criticizes the lax attitude towards climate change, serving as Creator/TreyParkerAndMattStone's ''mea culpa'' for their previously dismissive attitudes towards the issue. It reveals that [=ManBearPig=] was RealAfterAll (despite having previously appeared in Imaginationland) and very dangerous, emerging after baby boomers made a selfish DealWithTheDevil to get ice cream and fast cars, both of which are said to increase global emissions. Despite [=ManBearPig=] going on killing sprees across town, people are still hesitant to believe that it's a big deal.

* [[VoidBetweenTheWorlds The Pale]], from ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium'' is a supernatural phenomenon that surrounds the known landmasses of its world. According to [[spoiler:Joyce]], it is "the transition between being into nothingness" and it is slowly expanding, threatening to cover all known matter. Although the creators of the game have not explained exactly how it works, [[spoiler:it is quite apparent that it arises from the collective subconscious of humankind. This is another factor that makes it similar to climate change, since humans are ultimately responsible for the phenomenon.]].

* The film ''Film/DontLookUp'' is an ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'' copycat as a Climate Change discussion, with the discovery of an asteroid the size of Mount Everest [[ColonyDrop in a collision course with Earth]] dismissed by the HeadInTheSandManagement of the United States government (led by a media-obsessed {{Trumplica}}, to make the allegory more blunt) and the typical mission to blow up the asteroid [[HopeSpot terminated mid-launch]] by an Elon Musk {{Expy}} who [[DeathByMaterialism detects the asteroid is full of rare Earth minerals and tries to exploit this]], leading [[spoiler:to [[DownerEnding the complete extinction of all life on Earth]] except for a ColonyShip full of one-percenters which is heavily implied is going to [[LethallyStupid screw themselves up to death]] in their attempt at colonizing another planet.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': The titular cryptid in the episode "[=ManBearPig=]" is a metaphor for climate change, in the sense that it's not so much a threat as it is a way for UsefulNotes/AlGore to feel important. Years later, when climate change became a more urgent issue, the two-parter "Time to Get Cereal" and "Nobody Got Cereal?" criticizes the lax attitude towards climate change. It reveals that [=ManBearPig=] was RealAfterAll (despite having previously appeared in Imaginationland) and very dangerous, emerging after baby boomers made a selfish DealWithTheDevil to get ice cream and fast cars, both of which are said to increase global emissions. Despite [=ManBearPig=] going on killing sprees across town, people are still hesitant to believe that it's a big deal.