The Pandora Problem

Some people got depressed enough to consider suicide after Avatar, because Pandora seemed more worth living in than Earth. This is real. Cameron apparently took it as a sign. He made a documentary about climate change—Years of Living Dangerously, coming to Showtime, featuring Jessica Alba, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Matt Damon.

The logic is there, sort of. If people can get suicidal over a fictional planet, maybe you can make them care about the real one by slapping famous faces on the problem. Make climate change feel like a story with stakes and recognizable characters. Make it as compelling as Pandora looked. People don’t respond to statistics. They respond to a face they recognize saying this matters. A graph doesn’t carry the same weight.

Cameron seems to believe that if you can make global warming feel as urgent and beautiful as Pandora, some percentage of viewers will actually do something. Maybe he’s right. Probably not, though. Most people will watch, feel the appropriate emotions, feel good about themselves, and then go back to how things were. It’s like liking a post about something you care about and thinking you’ve helped.

But maybe that one percent is worth it. Maybe that’s the wager.