creeping disappearance

I’ve selected ten TV series that have intrigued me, moved me, and stayed with me for various reasons that touch on: abuse of justice, including eco-justice and environmental abuse; technology use and abuse; and the effects and horrors of climate change.

Some are well known; others not so well known. All approach storytelling with a serious dedication to depth of character, important themes, realistic world building, and excellent portrayal by actors. The world-building is extremely well done—in some cases rivalling Ridley Scott’s best—with convincing portrayals of worlds that are at times uncanny in their realism. Worlds that reflect story from an expansive landscape to the mundane minutiae of daily life: like the cracked phone device of Detective Miller in The Expanse or the dirty fingernails of engineer Juliette Nichols in the Down Deep of Silo. Stories vary in their treatment of important themes from whimsical and often humorous ironies to dark and moody treatises on existential questions. In my opinion, these TV series rival the best movies out there, often reflecting large budgets (but not always) and a huge commitment by producers. The ten TV series I’ve selected in this series come from around the world: Brazil, Germany, France, Norway, Canada and the United States.

In Part 2, I focus on five TV series that explore issues to do with resource allocation, adaptations to climate change and corporate / government biopolitics.

EXTRAPOLATIONS: A Journey into A Climate Changed Future

Extrapolations is an intelligent and vividly filmed mini-series of eight interconnected moral tales told over thirty-three years that extrapolate how our planet’s changing climate will affect family, work, faith, and—ultimately—our survival. Each episode focuses on the perspective of a few key characters whose choices often have significance consequence: from the myopic exploitation of greedy corporate moguls and feckless concessions of bureaucrats to the solidarity of common folk breaking the law to survive and scary solutions of eco-terrorists with messianic complexes. Emotions run raw and these characters you will either love or hate.

*Rebecca Shearer (Sienna Miller) braves a wildfire in “A Raven Story”*

Each episode adds its own installment of personal choice and tragedy. The first episode takes place a decade from now and is named “A Raven Story.” This first installment sets the tone of the entire series with an unsettling tirade of self-serving human actions to a sweeping tide of brewing climate disasters. What follows is a bleak procession of climate change calamity from growing wildfires and powerful hurricanes to sea level rise, melting glaciers, species extinction, and acidifying oceans. A few characters, trying to address environmental disaster, struggle with choices to either gamble the present for the future or gamble the future for the present. In the last scene, a climate activist Carmen Jalilo (Yara Shahidi) sums up the trajectory of the entire series. “What does an increase in global temperatures by two degrees Celsius mean to you and to me? It means that when the temperatures go up, our imagination must increase even more. It means that when the sea level rises we must rise up as well. It means that when forest fires obscure the horizon we must look toward each other and find our way forward. We cannot give up and go home for one simple reason. We already are home; this is our only home.”

Each episode in the procession of climate change is both a literal and metaphoric fable of our relationship to our environment, the creatures that live with us—our nonhuman relatives—and to each other: the real cause—and potential solution—to the calamities of climate change.

Episode 2, “Whale Fall”, features a beautiful heartfelt interaction between marine biologist Rebecca Shearer (Sienna Miller) and the last humpback whale in 2046. It is a solastalgic dirge on the sixth extinction event. When the whale asks the biologist “how might it be different” Shearer answers simply: “It will only change if we do, if we stop lying about the world, if we stop expecting the ones who come after us to fix it because we did not.”

*Gurav (Adarsh Gourav) buys a puff of clean air in Mumbai*

Episode 4, “Nightbirds”, oozes with such vivid visuals and angles, you can almost smell the stink in the air of Mumbai in 2056. Venders on the streets sell oxygen masks by the puff and real rice doesn’t exists; just the “synthetic, processed crap.” Driver Gurav (Adarsh Gourav) and handler Neel (Gaz Choudhry) flout the daytime curfew to transport illegal cargo (stolen seeds free of corporate branding) and a crazed geneticist to where they can be used in Varanasi. The drive becomes a nightmarish journey that touches on many aspects of ordinary life under the heel of climate change and the lengths that people will go to simply survive.

In Episode 6, “Lola”, the metaphors continue as this episode in 2066 explores the devastating memory loss of a main character through vascular dementia brought on by excessive carbon dioxide and heat. In the end, he has forgotten enough to forget that it even matters.

In 2017, I wrote an article about environmental generational amnesia. A term coined by Peter Kahn, professor of psychology at the University of Washington to explain how each generation can only recognize—and appreciate—the ecological changes they experience in their lifetimes.

In witnessing the collapse of large fish populations on the west coast, University of British Columbia fisheries biologist, Daniel Pauly observed that people just went on fishing ever smaller fish, resulting in what he called a “creeping disappearance” of overall fish stocks. He called this impaired vision “shifting baseline syndrome,” a willing ignorance of consequence based on short-term gain. This is because we are not connected. And because we aren’t connected, we simply don’t care. Environmental generational amnesia is really part of a larger amnesia, one that encompasses many generations; a selective memory driven by lack of connection and short-sighted greed.

Extrapolations ends in 2070 as Crypto mining has radically increased carbon output, higher temperatures are killing and disabling people en masse, and the weight of water in the higher oceans has altered the tectonic plates. While an element of hope glimmers in each episode, even if just through personal triumph and resilience, it is particularly notable in the last episode for reasons you need to watch to understand.

Each episode showcases an intimate personal journey woven into the larger story and strung in an anthology driven by a relentless changing climate and unruly environment. Make no mistake; the planet Earth, in the throws of climate change, is the main character here. This ambitious series dared to be more than human-centric, transcending beyond anthropocentric and androcratic worldviews in an attempt to elicit empathy for our entire world particularly the non human world. The series pointed to a more eco-centric view of this precious and beautiful world we live in. As a result, it suffered criticism.

Extrapolations was generally panned by critics and viewers alike as less than potent or even uninteresting and “flat” because it apparently traded character depth for scientific extrapolation and exposure. I couldn’t disagree more. I was gripped from the start by this large story. Characters throughout the episodes provided a panoply of understated archetypes to represent a cross section of humanity in the throws of climate catastrophe. Characters I either loved or hated or wanted to smack to wake them up. And I couldn’t help cheering when a certain miserable cruel human was offed by, of all things, a walrus mother protecting her pup.

I found the series incredibly potent for its realistic portrayal of a tortured environment at the hands of human apathy and fecklessness. I felt solastalgia creep into my bones as I witnessed this bleak future. There was something utterly tragic about a young corporate executive escaping her stressful job by retreating to a pretend autumn forest in a virtual chamber—when the real thing was no longer available. The loss of our wildlife and trees. Pure fresh air. Blue skies. Healthy oceans and freshwater. These are all things most of us still take for granted or don’t even care about.

Individual scenes lingered long after they were gone: people wearing galoshes to attend a drowning synagogue in Miami; two seed smugglers defying day curfews against overwhelming heat and noxious air quality to deliver contraband seeds to farmers in Mumbai; a news reel listing the extinction of the Polar Bear and the African Elephant as a young boy cuddles his stuffed animal version. I cried for these majestic creatures, fallen at our hands. And I cried for us at our great loss.

Ultimately, this series is all about the choices we make for this planet and our survival on it. Extrapolations makes it clear that choices, any choices, can be key to saving life on this planet. This series is not just a clear clarion call but a heartfelt exhortation for us to be brave and act now. In any way we can.

Ten Significant Science Fiction TV Series:

Biohackers (Germany)
Orphan Black (Canada)
Occupied (Norway)
Missions (France)
Expanse (USA)
Incorporated (USA)
3% (Brazil)
Snowpiercer (USA)
Silo (USA)
Extrapolations (USA)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Wir müssen uns immer verändern, erneuern, verjüngen; sonst verhärten wir.—Goethe

Nina reading “How to Read Water” on Algonquin Island, Ontario (photo by Nina Munteanu)

In his book, How to Read Water, Tristan Gooley describes a phenomenon called clapotis gaufre. Also known as “waffled clapotis”, the term comes from the French word (clapotis) for “lapping” and describes a standing wave phenomenon created by the troughs and crests of waves as they hit and reflect back from a barrier. The incoming and reflected outgoing waves, in passing each other, form a waffle-pattern that bobs up and down but otherwise appears stationary.

In fact, it is far from stationary.

But we like “stationary.” So much so that, despite the magnitude of planetary-scale change, everything appears stationary to us. People go on with their daily lives as they have for generations: driving cars; living profligately; wastefully consuming energy, disposables and water; bickering about fuel taxes and job security. But this is an illusion, a very dangerous one. Surface inertia hides a depth of motion. In a river, where high-velocity water roars over a steep river-bottom depression, a frothy stationary breaker forms; it is the most dangerous part of the river. What we can’t see, we think won’t hurt us. But what if we could see the ominous dark cloud of carbon dioxide and methane blotting more and more of our sky? What if we could see the fumes billowing out of our cars and the heat radiating from our homes? Or smell the toxins spilling into our rivers and lakes? Or the quiet extinctions happening by the minute in the wilderness?

Photographs of same Beijing location over a year showing smog days

Old oak tree in Deer Lake Park, BC

What if we could see the fractal signs of change?

Nothing in nature stays the same. If it does, that’s because change has brought it back to what it once was. Trees move. They grow wider and taller; they just do it at a pace beyond our impatient lifestyle. Because their motion is invisible, they are invisible. We think of trees as stationary objects, not living beings. Like a standing wave of frozen time. We observe through the hurried lens of human impatience and self-preoccupation. A quick glance takes in a scene. We forget that we can “see” with other senses. Smell. Touch. Taste. Hearing. As hyposmia and disinterest dulls our senses, we grow less able to recognize the verisimilitudes of Nature’s trompe l’oeils. Trapped by our preordained notions, we no longer see the changes we’re not prepared to see. And that’s the change that kills us.

In witnessing the collapse of fish populations on the west coast in the ‘90s, UBC fisheries biologist Daniel Pauly noticed that people just went on fishing ever smaller fish. The collapse occurred through what he called “creeping disappearance.” Pauly named this impaired vision “shifting baseline syndrome,” a willing ignorance of consequence based on short-term gain.

One could argue that the inability to feel and connect beyond our immediate line of sight can be a good thing—a kind of selective memory that allows us to adapt to each “new normal.” Mothers of several children can testify to the benefits of “forgetting” their hours of labour to give birth. Hence the ability and willingness to repeat this very painful experience. Is this part of successful biological adaptation in all of us? The ability to reset?

Author and her son enjoy an outing

Or is it rather that our mother chooses not to forget but to relegate her memory of the previous birth behind something far more beautiful and wondrous to remember and something she is deeply connected to: the miraculous birth of her child—her investment in the future. Shifting baseline syndrome is part of a larger amnesia, one that encompasses many generations; a selective memory driven by short-sightedness that comes mostly from lack of connection. But to successfully invest in our future, that is precisely what we must do: connect.

If only we could see the fractal signs of change…

Bill McKibben wrote in The New Yorker, “Climate change isn’t just a threat. It’s an opportunity for us to live happier, more fulfilling lives.” True happiness comes with long-term fulfillment, not short-term material wealth and comfort. When we focus from ourselves to embrace the changing world—to connect—we discover a well-spring of altruistic happiness. When we embrace, we transcend. When we transcend, we become fluid with change. That is when we succeed.

quote by Goethe: “We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.”

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” will be released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in 2020.

Nina Munteanu Writing Coach

Ten Significant Science Fiction TV Series—Part 2, Shows that Touch on Climate Change, Resource Allocation and Environmental Justice: #10 — “EXTRAPOLATIONS”

Investing in The Future by Embracing (Climate) Change