The Media's View of an Apocalypse

How often do you hear the words, “going green,” “save the planet” or “stop global warming?” These phrases have become part of our everyday language, especially since the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” came out. Now, “going green” has become almost the focus of our lives. We teach school children the importance of protecting our planet and have even made “going green” a fashion statement. Nowadays, everything can and is related to climate change. We are constantly reminded of our role in the health of the environment, with grocery stores telling us to bring our own bags, t-shirts telling us to save the planet, and websites giving advice from showering to recycling.

Now, even the environment itself seems to be telling us to do something. Warmer winters, visible air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity are just a few of mother nature’s warnings to us all. But even these might not have been real problems, if not for our own human intervention. They're not problems until we say they are. With scientists telling us these are unnatural events, we have made it our duty to save the environment. We have even become almost paranoid that the world is ending, that every unpredicted event is now a major issue, whether it really is or not.

I’m not exactly sure how we got to this point, but I know we couldn’t have gotten here without the help of the media showing us evidence of things like drowning polar bears, melting icecaps and major floods. Google searches of "Apocalypse" shows us pictures of fiery or barren landscapes, and other environmental catastrophes. I think it is these images that have mostly shaped our views about global warming and the end of the world. These pictures make an idea or far-away concept more real and closer to home. They make us want to act, to do something to prevent future destruction of the earth, but at the same time, they make us more worried than maybe we need to be. These warnings give us the motivation to change our ways for the overall good, but it is not necessarily nature that’s telling us this, but ourselves through the media. How long will this last?