Crypto News: Climate, actually, is all around

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There's never a bad time to watch a movie focused on the future of the planet. And as 2022 draws to a close — friends and family gathering together — you may find yourself looking for a film everyone can agree on that isn't another showing of Elf or Die Hard (yes, it's a holiday film). The Bloomberg Green team has got you covered.

From all-time classics and silly action flicks to serious documentaries and science fiction, you might be surprised by the number of films in which climate change has a major part. Here's a list of 13 to consider. (Is your favorite climate movie not on this list? Tell us on Twitter or Instagram and share this story on the web here.)

David Attenborough reflects on how the Earth has changed during his lifetime. Source: Netflix

In this 2020 documentary, David Attenborough tells audiences how the Earth has changed just during his lifetime. In his more than 90 years on the planet, the British broadcaster and biologist has visited many natural wonders and also witnessed the loss of wildlife firsthand. This movie is good for families, including little children, and provides food for thought and conversation. —Coco Liu, reporter, @cocojournalist

A film about the worst that can happen if the ice caps melt feels uncomfortably on the mark these days. The opening scene with Kevin Costner distilling his own urine for drinking water may make you squeamish, but today you can buy beer made from recycled sewage. Waterworld is feeling more true to life with each year that passes: There's seemingly always too much or too little of our most precious resource. —Siobhan Wagner, editor, @swagner33

Geoengineering has failed. Earth has entered a catastrophic ice age. The vestiges of the human race circumnavigate the world on a train on infinite loop, and order is maintained by a malevolent Tilda Swinton. Directed by Oscar-winning Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, Okja), Snowpiercer is a dystopian thriller where the class system dictates all, and the omnipresent cold is the least of passengers' worries. —Oscar Boyd, podcast producer, @omhboyd

Chasing Coral shows climate change's consequences on the fragile ecosystems. Source: Netflix

If you've never seen coral reefs or if you love them, or both, this is a must-watch. Seeing corals changed my life, and this movie goes some way to do justice to one of the world's greatest wonders. It also shows what climate change's consequences look like in visceral detail. You want to look away, but you can't. —Akshat Rathi, reporter, @akshatrathi

The inhabitants of Interstellar's parched, dusty America might not talk about climate change, but the parallels between their world and ours are uncanny. At the end of the 21st century, a scientist-turned-farmer sets off on a desperate mission to find a new home for humanity after Earth's agriculture fails. It's visually stunning, based on theoretical physics and almost three hours long — the perfect Christmas movie. —Olivia Rudgard, reporter, @oliviarudgard

Before there was Avatar, there was FernGully. Loggers and an evil entity that feeds on pollution threaten an Australian rainforest inhabited by fairies. One fairy, Crysta, befriends and accidentally shrinks a logger named Zak who then helps lead the fight against the forces trying to destroy the rainforest. —Bernadette Walker, web producer, @BdetteMW

Soylent Green is a dystopian thriller set in 2022. Source: United Archives/Getty Images

Before the first UN climate science reports (1990), before the US published its first official estimate of how high the Earth's temperature might reach (1979), the iconic American actor (and later gun-rights advocate) Charlton Heston starred in Soylent Green. This classic dystopian thriller predicted a future of overpopulation, dead oceans and year-round heat and humidity that makes water, food and shelter all scarce. The year it's set in? 2022. —Eric Roston, reporter, @eroston

The conflict between commerce and nature is at the heart of this 1997 animated classic. Director Hayao Miyazaki deliberately jumbles traditional questions of good and evil, right and wrong. The artwork is also stunning. It has a few violent moments, which might be too much for some of the younger viewers. —Brian K Sullivan, reporter, @weathersullivan

It's impossible not to fall in love with Wall-E, the adorable garbage-collecting Pixar robot with a curious personality and a knack for adventure. The movie is set 700 years into the future and all humans have left the planet, now a wasteland covered in litter. Wall-E is the last robot standing, but his lonely life is shaken when a sleek, egg-shaped robot named EVE lands on Earth. —Lin Noueihed, editor, @linnoueihed

The Nice Guys has no plot without car pollution. Source: Warner Bros

I'm fairly sure this is the only time you'll see a catalytic converter play a pivotal role in a film. The Nice Guys is ostensibly an action-comedy about the search for a missing girl in 1970s Los Angeles, but really it has no plot without car pollution. Hopefully one day the tailpipes in this film will seem as quaintly archaic as Ryan Gosling's polyester trousers. —Siobhan Wagner, editor, @swagner33

End-of-the-world movies are one of my guilty pleasures and this modern classic has it all. Humans messing with the climate, giant waves, tremendous storms, great action scenes, a pack of wolves and Jake Gyllenhaal. You've seen it already? Me too, and I'm probably watching it again. —Laura Millan, reporter, @lauramillanl

Alcarràs won the the Golden Bear for best film at this year's Berlinale. Source: Avalon

The life of a family of peach growers is shaken when the landowner decides to cut the trees, install solar panels and switch to farming clean power. Shot in Catalan and featuring non-professional actors from the Spanish fruit-growing region of Lleida, this year's winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival is an intimate portrait of a rural way of life that's disappearing, and of the disruptive side of the clean-energy transition. —Laura Millan, reporter, @lauramillanl

This is absolutely not a climate movie. I will not make the case that director Frank Darabont or Stephen King, who wrote the novel, had carbon dioxide in mind when putting together this silly gem of a B-movie in which what looks like, uh, sinister air proves to be ridiculously deadly. But just try to watch the scenes of social turmoil, denial of evidence, and failure of collective action in the face of a supernatural disaster without seeing it as a climate-ish metaphor of sorts. Find the more recently released black and white cut. — Aaron Rutkoff, executive editor, @aaronrutkoff

--Written by Laura Millan with assistance from Siobhan Wagner, Kira Bindrim, Aaron Rutkoff, Lin Noueihed, Brian K Sullivan, Eric Roston, Bernadette Walker, Akshat Rathi, Oscar Boyd, and Coco Liu.

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If you didn't see Bloomberg Green's coverage of the COP15 biodiversity conference in Montreal earlier this week you can catch up on the biggest takeaways from the landmark deal reached at the summit here. Also read why Wall Street has suddenly gotten so hot for biodiversity.