Green Planets by Gerry Canavan Page B

civilization attempts to steal unobtainium from the Pandora, only to be forced off the planet by a Gaia-like global consciousness uniting plants, animals, and the indigenous Na’vi.
    Battlestar Galactica (Ronald D. Moore, 2003). Humans and their robot servants are locked within a cosmic cycle of destruction.
    The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963). Sublime allegory of our absolute dependence upon nature, as well as its radical alterity and unknowability.
    Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006). Outstripping its source material, this adaptation of the P. D. James novel depicts the human race eighteen years after it has been spontaneously struck infertile.
    The Colony (Beers and Segal, 2005). Reality TV series about people living in a simulated post-apocalyptic environment.
    The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012). The conclusion of Nolan’s Batman trilogy sees billionaire Bruce Wayne mothballing a cold fusion device that would end class struggle and usher in universal global prosperity out of fear that it might be turned into a bomb. The series started, of course, with Batman Begins (2005), in which the main villain is deep-ecological ecoterrorist Ra’s al Ghul.
    Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978). U.S. consumer culture literally consumes itself.
    The Day after Tomorrow (Roland Emmerlich, 2004). Abrupt climate change brings an instant ice age to New York City, convincing even a sinister Dick Cheney analogue of the seriousness of the problem.
    Daybreakers (Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, 2009). Ten years after a viral epidemic has turned most of the global elite into vampires, humanity’s successors now face critical shortages after hitting Peak Blood.
    The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest, 1961). Nuclear testing throws Earth off its axis, hurtling it toward the sun.
    The Day the Earth Stood Still (Scott Derrickson, 2008). Updated remake of the Robert Wise–directed 1951 original has Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) issuing a grim warning about humanity’s failure to protect its ecosystem.
    District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009). An alien spaceship arrives over Johannesburg, bringing not the untold riches of the future but an even more wretched version of the present: miserable, starving insectoids called “prawns,” who are promptly housed in a concentration camp until some more permanent solution can be found.
    Doctor Who: “The Green Death” (Michael E. Briant, 1973). The Third Doctor confronts the mad computer running Global Chemicals, which is hell-bent on polluting the planet. See also (among others) the Tenth Doctor’s “The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky” (Douglas Mackinnon, 2008) in which carbon-dioxide-free cars turn out to be poisoning the atmosphere even faster.
    Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964). U.S. Cold War militarism absurdly reaches its logical conclusion.
    The End of Suburbia (Gregory Greene, 2004). Documentary depicting the coming collapse of fossil-fuel-intensive infrastructure in the United States.
    Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964). U.S. Cold War militarism logically reaches its absurd conclusion.
    Firefly (Joss Whedon, 2002). The backstory for the Western-cum-space-opera has the “Earth-that-was” being “all used up” before the remnants of humanity takes to the stars in search of a new home.
    Fringe (J. J. Abrams, 2008). Contact between parallel universes causes the environment of one to catastrophically degrade.
    Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1954). Monster awoken by undersea nuclear testing ravages Tokyo.
    The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan, 2008). In an effort to protect itself from destruction, Nature generates a disease that triggers mass suicide in humans.
    Idaho Transfer (Peter Fonda, 1973). Time travel allows a small group of teenagers to skip over the ecological catastrophe that will soon wipe out humanity and start civilization anew fifty-six years in the