Green wave surges onto pop culture's shores

Former US Vice President Al Gore's

EDINBURGH - Environmental causes championed by scientists and watchdog groups are reaching wider audiences as they gain prominence in popular mainstream media.

The British film and television industries feted Al Gore and David Attenborough at the weekend for recent pop culture contributions to the global warming debate that attracted millions of viewers.

Brazil's biggest television network started filming a soap opera this month set in the Amazon, hoping to stir global debate on the world's biggest rainforest and its mostly impoverished residents.

And a documentary filmmaker who has tried to expose the car industry for shutting down production of electric cars was invited earlier this month to chat with Jon Stewart, whose comedy news show is a favorite among younger TV watchers.

The Environmental Media Association, a Los Angeles-based non-profit group that encourages the entertainment industry to focus on green causes, has seen a surge in activity, gauged by submissions for its annual awards.

"In 1989, the environment was really hot, and then other charities, diseases and causes came to the forefront," said Patie Maloney, EMA's vice president.

"In the last few years, the environment has come to prominence again," she added. "Some of the viewing we used to have was pretty painful. But now, the number has increased and the quality has improved."

A range of environmental issues have featured in some of the most popular TV series, including gas-guzzling cars on "The West Wing", farm-raised salmon on "Boston Legal", global warming on "The Simpsons" and pesticides on "House".

Attenborough awarded

Attenborough, the 80-year-old naturalist, was honored as TV personality of the year on Saturday by British industry executives. After decades of producing in-depth nature series, he linked humans to climate change in a program for the BBC earlier this year.

Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" became one of the most popular documentaries in US history this year with more than US$21 million of tickets sold.

The former US vice president has given his climate change lecture hundreds of times, and told Reuters that he was invited last week to discuss the issue on an American soap opera.

"As the climate crisis enters the zeitgeist and takes up residence on a permanent basis, that is a very good thing," Gore said in an interview on Sunday in Edinburgh.

It is disaster movies such as "The Day After Tomorrow", which raked in more than US$300 million worldwide, that tend to be the source of information for more people, however, and much of the science in them tends to be exaggerated.

Gore said he saw little risk of environmental issues being trivialized or of bad information being spread by mainstream entertainment outlets because the issues often spark wider debate in the media.

"The way our culture operates, people get news from late-night comics and internet joke sites, so it's inevitable that issues this important will appear in all parts of the culture."

Maloney, from the EMA, said the more mentions the better, regardless of genre or medium, even though there is no clear way to know if such messages are spurring people to action.

"The public needs to be hit over the head with something seven times before it sinks in, however it is you hit them."

- REUTERS