Ethics of Environmental Activism and Gauging Audience Responses

Recalling the need for new ‘creative imaginaries’ to speak to audiences, The Last Ice Age uses ‘early family photographs and footage’ of Magnason's family's exploration of Iceland's glaciers to tell an engaging story. Glacier loss is often regarded as the ‘canary in the coalmine’ in both detecting and measuring climate change. Addressing climate change is further illustrated across so many genres, including otherwise pedestrian cautionary thrillers like The Decline which advocates for a do it yourself (DIY) attitude and response, promoting knee-jerk solutions to complex environmental and other problems. This is followed by a more measured and nuanced real-life case study supporting direct climate action, focusing on the 2022 feature How to Blow up a Pipeline . At the other end of the spectrum, the chapter examines a local Irish series focused on climate change – Rising Tides: Ireland's Future in a Warming World , a three-part eco-documentary (RTE: March 2024). This is examined to explore its potentiality to nudge audiences, while also assessing its limitations in addressing the growing complexity of the climate crisis.