The Webster Groves “Eco-Ed” Series continues its 2024 program with a discussion of Missouri environmental issues at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, at the Webster Groves Public Library.
Environmental Missouri author Don Corrigan will present issues and discuss how movies like Erin Brockovich, Day After Tomorrow and The China Syndrome have raised public awareness on environmental issues.
The contention that popular culture can play a role in saving the planet from environmental mayhem and degradation was taken up at the annual conference of the national Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association in Chicago in late March.
Movies, novels, youth books promoting sustainable living, environmental streaming services, cable series programming – are all contributing to increased public awareness of environmental issues, according to a PCA session on “Ecology and Culture: Coping with a Changing Planet.”
Jeffrey Barber of the Integrative Strategies Forum for Ecology and Culture presented his schema on sustainable and unsustainable futures. His diagrams illustrated that trending lines toward a sustainable future have been influenced by popular culture.
Barber charted popular culture offerings, produced since the first Earth Day, that have tended to bend trend lines and public awareness toward a sustainable future. These offerings include films such as Soylent Green and Avatar, and books such as Ecotopia and The Sixth Extinction.
On the other hand, Barber charted historical events that have bent trend lines toward an unsustainable future. These have included environmental catastrophes such as the Cuyahoga River fire, Love Canal, Bhopal chemical leak, Chernobyl, Hurricane Sandy and other weather-related disasters.
Sarah McFarland Taylor, an author and professor at Northwestern University gave a presentation in Chicago entitled, “When Wildfires & Climate Disaster Come to Mayberry.”
Taylor described how raging wildfires are not only alarming the public, the infernos are actually impinging on producing movies and series offerings. Wildfires have become “actors” on shows in progress, “uninvited guests” to live filming.
She described situations in which show characters have had to be rescued from life-threatening wildfires, and the wildfires have become part of an unintended story line.
Professor Taylor’s book, Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology won two awards from the Catholic Press Association, including Best Book on Social Concerns. Green Sisters highlights religious sisters and their environmental activism, including Genesis Farm and Green Mountain Monastery.
Taylor’s most recent book, ECOPIETY: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue, makes the case that digitized popular culture plays a role in the “greening” of American moral sensibilities. ECOPIETY covers the process of remaking our world in a time of environmental crisis.
At the Chicago PCA Conference, Taylor explained her work with the Hollywood Climate Summit. She said pop culture climate narratives are evolving and more values-aligned companies are actually entering the entertainment industry.
They produce entertainment that inspires grassroots activism, through funding, branded content partnerships and education campaigns. They are bring awareness to the plight of a finite planet and how to address its needs in a stressful time of climate change.
At the Webster Groves “Eco-Ed” session on May 7, Corrigan will discuss the PCA Conference and the work of Barber and Taylor on environmental programing and its impact.
He also will ask session attendees to react to St. Louis and Missouri’s multiple environmental issues, and which ones may lend themselves to treatment in popular culture to heighten public awareness.
The next “Eco-Ed” session will be presented June 4 by Nicole Miller-Struttmann on the role of pollinators in the ecosystem. She is an associate professor of biology at Webster University and has a special interest in pollinators.
After a brief hiatus in July and August, the “Eco-Ed” series will pick up on Sept. 3 with a session titled: “The Results are in: Webster Groves Greenhouse Gas Inventor
The session on the inventory program will be presented by Sharon Locke, professor of environmental sciences at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville; and by Shawn Finnegan, who serves as sustainability coordinator for Webster Groves.
Environmental Echo 