Only a sliver of screen fiction, 2.8%, refers to climate change-related words, according to a new study of 37,453 film and TV scripts from 2016-20.
Waves of celebrities have been sounding the climate alarm, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Fonda, Don Cheadle and Shailene Woodley.
“We describe it as a spectrum, everything from showing the impact with solutions in the background,” such as including solar panels in an exterior shot of a building, she said.
“Climate change is something that right now is affecting people who aren’t necessarily the people that Hollywood tends to write stories about.
For the first decade, it felt like “screaming into the void” because of the lack of response, Joyner said.
“We’ve all gone through a kind of awakening,” she said.
As part of the study that’s yet to be released in full, researchers checked for references to 36 key words and phrases including “climate change,” “fracking” and “global warming” in TV episodes and movies released in the U.S.