To celebrate Earth Day yesterday, YouTube video creator Nick Kazden released a new video titled “Superman: The World’s Most Famous Climate Refugee,” which Superman fans might enjoy watching.
More than most other DC superheroes, Superman understands the dangers climate change poses for the people of Earth. Superman is often celebrated as the inspirational refugee and humanist that he is, but one angle of his story that is often overlooked is the fact that the legendary member of the Justice League is specifically a “climate refugee.” Superman may be strong, but he can’t punch the ice caps back to normal, and he understands how important the fight against global warming is and how destructive its impact on people’s lives can be.
I’m not sure a planet exploding falls under climate change.
Well it does fall under being a disaster that a highly-regarded scientist tried his damndest to warn the leaders of his world about only to have it fall on deaf and willfully ignorant ears.
That’s still not climate change though. Just natural disaster. Which you could claim climate change would lead to, but that’s a stretch.
Still, it’s pretty tryhard to try to push that narrative. Modern comics seem to have lost their nuance.
I’m just saying that’s where the similarity is. Basically people denying science in favor of what they would rather hear much the way the Kryptonian council did. Superman is a refugee but I don’t think that I would call him specifically a climate refugee and I’m in some agreement with you about comics losing nuance. I would say you have the metaphor without needing to do something like retcon Krypton’s destruction into being a result of climate change because that’s just needlessly on the nose. The fact the council would scoff at their most renowned scientist because he gave them… Read more »