Edward Burns, Meryl Streep, Forest Whitaker, Sienna Miller, Marion Cotillard, Matthew Rhys, Judd Hirsh: what do all these sterling actors have in common? They’re all part of an ensemble cast in Apple TV’s 8-part miniseries, Extrapolations. From my perspective as a long-time climate activist and cutting-edge climate psychologist, this is the best drama yet on the climate crisis — but it almost feels like there is a corporate media conspiracy to play it down.
What exactly is going on here?
Since there’s a really good chance you haven’t even heard of this series, here’s Apple’s own description of the series: “Eight interconnected stories told over 33 years explore how our planet’s changing climate will affect family, work, faith - and survival.” Sounds rather relevant, no?
My own take? This is the most terrifying “reality tv” series I could have imagined. And not because of any CGI special effects, either. It is terrifying precisely because it is so believable. It is a look at future scenarios that have much to say about the banality of our present culture and the life-altering decisions we make anew every day of our lives.
Each show begins with an animated graph showing the continuing acceleration of either global temperature, atmospheric CO2 levels, climate-related deaths, and/or displaced human beings. Just to give you a flavor, the series begins in 2037. Global temps are now +1.55, and a young Greta-like Earth protector riles up a crowd of protesters, holographically, outside the COP-42 climate talks in Israel, where “the corporations that control our world” are re-negotiating acceptable levels of temperature rise from 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius.
While +1.55 Celsius in 2037 may seem a bit optimistic, given that we’ve been at +1.5 for almost a year now, the scenario of industry-friendly countries lowering the climate bar to sanction ongoing severe droughts and widespread famine in the Global South, along with climate fires and flooding everywhere else, is exactly what we would expect, given the nauseating post-Paris Accord capitulations by COP ‘leaders’ to fossil fuel interests.
Maybe we should re-brand ‘COP’ (Conference of Parties) as ‘PIG’ (Partners in Greed)?
The only way climate concerns seem to penetrate the corporate media’s ongoing fixations with endless war and toxic politics is when the leading candidate for President of the United States promises fossil fuel fat cats that he will remove all protections just as soon as they bankroll his financially challenged campaign.
OH WAIT! Turns out, that story was NOT reported on CNN, FOX, CBS, NBC, or ABC! Selling out the planet? Promising an unlivable future got 30 pieces of silver? Not newsworthy, according to our servile, corporate-controlled media.
So did something happen since “Don’t Look Up” (2022) that has news entertainment divisions on board with climate denial now?
The second episode of Extrapolations, “Whale Fall,” is my favorite on the prescience-meter. It’s now 2047, average global temps are +1.8C, and we join a marine biologist engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the last whale left on Earth.
Sound a little far-fetched to you?
We’re only a year or two away now from making our first ever contact with a species that is alien to us - yes, whales - utilizing machine learning, billions of recordings of whale song data points (currently being collected), and artificial intelligence (see, e.g., “The scientists learning to speak whale”). We already know that whales have distinct names for individuals, communicate with one another over vast distances (as do elephants), and that mother whales sing lullabies to their offspring. Objectively considered, their brains are superior to our own. So this is a big deal.
We also know that big fish populations have plummeted by 90% since the middle of the last century, and that we’re on pace, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Science, to rid the oceans of all marine life by the middle of this century.
About half the planet’s oxygen is produced by marine life. Which is why the world’s leading oceanographer, Sylvia Earle, says humans are whistling past the graveyard here. In Extrapolations, we’re treated to a world where people are forced to carry their own oxygen supplies when they leave their homes.
What do you suppose the whales will have to say to us?
In Whale Fall, the biologist is being funded by the world’s largest tech corp, Alpha, to create a database of behavioral information to be used for proprietary purposes (e.g., to clone whales if and when the oceans can support life again). She is conflicted because she’s using recorded mating calls to fool the last whale matriarch into believing that she still has a chance to reproduce.
Sounds about right, doesn’t it?
Move along - nothing to see here, sheeple…
Okay, so let’s see what the critics have to say about this star-studded, science-based drama series:
Extrapolations’ Good Intentions Aren’t Good Enough (Vulture)
‘Extrapolations’ and the Peril of Climate Cringe (NYT)
Extrapolations mistakes realism for insight (TIME Mag)
Even Meryl Streep can’t save this convoluted eco drama (first episode is “wildly convoluted”) (Guardian)
treating climate change absolutely literally, paradoxically struggles to make us care (Variety)
indigestible in its over-cooked virtue (Independent)
Ho Hum, in other words. It’s the end of the world as we’ve known it, but we critics feel just fine.
As someone who was groomed by my teachers in the Communications School at SIU to be a media critic, I find all of these criticisms more than a little specious, exhibiting a profound lack of self-reflection and social conscience. I’m not contending that there’s some grand conspiracy to suppress this series. Instead, I wonder if this emotionally reactive deflection is not an expression of the subtle denialism that is endemic to corporate culture.
In other words, given the depiction of the unlivable future that scientific consensus tells us we are actively creating for our children, are these critics subconsciously refusing to look up, searching instead for any reason to ignore this deeply reflective look in the mirror at the monsters we’ve become?
We see this kind of emotional reactivity reflected in the audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes as well:
Not a lot of reactions between “hate it” and “love it,” is there? And at the same time, it looks like most of the people who ignore the critics (it merits a ‘razberry’ based on critics 44% score) actually find the series quite compelling - as did I.
Yes, We Are Insane!
Let’s look at another timely example of the corporate media’s obvious climate denialism in support of my thesis here. A recent Opinion from the Editorial Board of the Washington Post asks: “Are smartphones destroying childhood?” The issue being addressed here:
“Forty-two percent of high school students in a 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. "Eighteen percent said they had made a suicide plan in the past year. Teenage girls especially are at risk."
It never occurs to the WaPo editors that perhaps the fact that these children are the first generation ever to be told that we are actively depriving them of a livable future might have something to do with their demoralized state and suicide ideation! It’s not even mentioned.
Is this not fucking nuts? Sometimes I feel like the only sane person in this global sanitarium!
Do yourself and your family a favor. Ignore the media critics, and watch Apple TV’s brilliant series, Extrapolations. I’ve only briefly discussed two of the eight episodes here. While Don’t Look Up was clever and painfully funny, Extrapolations is a serious meditation on the bleak future we are still actively manifesting, and which we still have time to avoid. The fact that it could be greeted with a collective shrug from the corporate media, I think, says a lot about our own lack of shared responsibility over the existential crisis that is defining our lives right now.
Doing nothing, or going along with the new normal, is simply not an option for sane actors on the world stage. True art is meant to make us feel uncomfortable.
Apparently, media critics have forgotten that lesson.
I've been around whales a lot in my kayak over the years - orcas and grey whales have both approached me. In the 80s, I was alone in my kayak on the outer coast of Vancouver Island when a lone grey whale came straight at me, dove, and passed completely under my kayak as it turned on its side to gaze at me through its gigantic cosmic eyeball. That night, I had a dream in which the whale spoke to me about nuclear testing in the Pacific. He/she/they made it clear that they had vast knowledge of what was happening, the sixth great extinction, and the awareness that human society was out of balance. I was urged to take the message back to my people and help society seek corrective action.
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Jordan Van Voast, Licensed Acupuncturist
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That's so cool, Jordan - would you be so kind as to cut and past that into the comments? I'd love to hear what people think the whales will have to say to us, and I think my readers would really appreciate your experiences.