Only around 2.8% of TV shows and films between 2016 and 2020 mentioned climate issues. But a new run of writers is looking to increase that
From hurricanes bearing down on Florida to megafires burning in the west, the climate crisis seems to be everywhere, all at once. But in TV shows and movies, mentions of climate are far rarer.
A study by the University of Southern California’s Media Impact lab examined more than 37,000 film and TV scripts that aired in the US between 2016 and 2020. It found that only 2.8% even mentioned climate-adjacent words like solar panels, fracking, sea level rise or renewable energy.
