☀'Extrapolations' imagines a dystopian climate future leading to nowhere. Because humans suck.

Is this really the best Hollywood can do?

“I think that our pulp fiction has done us a disservice, creating a commonsense assumption that we are one power failure away from Mad Max: Fury Road. The reality is ever so much messier, full of people trying to do the right thing—which still causes high-stakes, serious conflicts, but they’re conflicts of good faith and sincere disagreement.”- Cory Doctorow.

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The Essay

☀ 'Extrapolations' imagines a dystopian climate future leading to nowhere. Because humans suck.

Full transparency: I’ll admit to being genuinely moved by a plotline in Extrapolations, the new Apple TV+ anthology series about a future climate-change dystopia, where an animal DNA archivist converses with the last humpback whale. (In the sultry year 2046, humans have cracked the code of all those clicks, whistles, and pulsed calls of Megaptera novaeangliae, as did the protagonist aliens in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.) Maybe it was the premise of anticipatory melancholy or saudade or maybe it was the top-notch voice acting of Meryl Streep as the forlorn momma whale, but the whale-whispering scenes worked for me.

But not much else in Extrapolations worked for me despite the star-spangled cast and great visuals. The budget is all there on the screen. Unfortunately, show creator Scott Burns displays little growth in understanding the evolving climate issue since he produced An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s 2006 documentary film about global warming. Nor has he cracked the code on effectively communicating the importance of the issue to that species of American who’s either uninterested or skeptical. And that’s still a lot of us, despite a drumbeat of scientific warnings and Hollywood treatments. Remember, it was only back in 2021 when Don’t Look Up, another big-budget, star-studded effort, was supposed to change public perceptions.

Yet look at where we are nearly two decades after An Inconvenient Truth: In a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken just before the midterm elections last year, just 46 percent of independents and 27 percent of Republicans said climate change was very important to their vote. Making more flashy media that appeals to the 80 percent of Democrats who already worry a lot about climate change seems like a waste of money and star power. While ongoing climate impacts may eventually change that polling, even 100 more episodes of Extrapolations with even more stars and even bigger budgets would be highly unlikely to. At times Extrapolations almost seems to be intentionally trolling the big chunk of the American public that remains unmoved by the threat of climate change.