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Published Nov 15, 2023

The 'Fall' of a Season: Environmentalism in Star Trek

As autumn progresses, we're looking at Trek's most environmentally prescient moments.

StarTrek.com

When Jake Sisko revealed his plans to attend the Pennington School for the fall semester in the alternate future depicted in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ’s “ The Visitor ,” the burgeoning author offered us hope that the weather-related term fall will still be in use by the 24th Century.

In the here and now, the autumnal season’s place as an equal among the four seasons and a buffer between summer’s warmth and winter’s icy conditions may be coming to an end. Increased levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere tend to delay leaf fall, while rising global temperatures prompt those same leaves to sprout much earlier in the spring than expected. As a result, autumn’s traditional influence on the calendar has diminished, even if our love of pumpkin spice has not.

Star Trek tackled sentient species’ detrimental impact on the galaxy in numerous episodes and films, so let’s examine these environmentally-conscious entries and determine how they correspond to our own predicament.

“ Future’s End ,” Star Trek: Voyager

"Future's End"

“Future’s End” juxtaposed Tuvok’s observation of an on-going crisis from the present with the potential for future natural disasters that could alter the North American continent’s shape.

The time-travel two-parter found U.S.S. Voyager ’s crew navigating their way through the year 1996. Tuvok made reference to high levels of thermal and ultraviolet radiation that emanated from the sun and penetrated Earth’s atmosphere. Chakotay mentioned that an earthquake in 2047 caused California’s southern region to sink below sea-level.

The correlation between climate change and seismic activity aside, coastal flooding due to heightened ocean waters has displaced entire communities and become a significant concern around the globe in our current time.

“ True Q ,” Star Trek: The Next Generation

"True Q"

The U.S.S. Enterprise -D embarked on a relief mission to help the Tagrans, who polluted their homeworld to the point that they deployed atmospheric filters simply to stop the situation from intensifying. Amanda Rogers contemplated the situation on Tagra IV and commented, “It's amazing to think that they go to such lengths to clean the air instead of regulating the emissions that cause the problem.”

The not-so-subtle reference clearly alluded to the issues plaguing Earth, with the Tagran crisis representing a worst-case scenario for our planet. Nevertheless, the prevailing message that halting climate change from advancing further ranks as an easier task than reversing catastrophic harm already done to our environment still rings true today.

“ Saints of Imperfection ,” Star Trek: Discovery

"Saints of Imperfection"

The jahSepp who took the form of May Ahearn became concerned about her home environment — the mycelial network — when an entity began devastating the realm. The "monster" that May feared turned out to be a reborn Hugh Culber, who prevented the jahSepp from breaking down his body by covering himself with the yeel tree’s bark.

Unable to consume Culber’s matter, the jahSepp fought back as the doctor’s presence inadvertently ravaged their ecosystem. The introduction of an unnatural element proved fatal to the jahSepp and spurred conflict, just as the mass migration that climate change produces can incite hostilities as it places a strain on valuable resources such as food, water, and habitable land.

“ Force of Nature ,” Star Trek: The Next Generation

"Force of Nature"

This episode offered a fascinating comparison between the toxic emissions released by automobiles and newly-discovered repercussions of warp drive. Warp travel created instabilities in the Hekaras Corridor which isolated Hekaras II from the rest of the Federation and negatively affected the planet’s climate.

The Federation’s initial hesitance to accept the claims of Hekaran scientists paralleled the reluctance shown by our political leaders to take immediate action and reduce the number of harmful substances released into the atmosphere. The Federation Council issued a decree that limited travel in areas of space that seemed susceptible to the instabilities and set a maximum speed limit of Warp 5 for all Starfleet vessels, just as current governments authorize regulations on car manufacturers to slow the tide of pollution.

“ Let He Who Is Without Sin ,” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

"Let He Who Is Without Sin"

A tropical haven for weary Starfleet travelers, Risa relies on planet-wide weather control systems and seismic regulators to transform its naturally rainy environment and geologically unstable surface into a paradise.

"Let He Who Is Without Sin" saw Worf aid the New Essentialists in their efforts to disable Risa’s fail-safes and demonstrate the Federation’s vulnerability to the Dominion and other rival powers. In The Next Generation ’s "True Q," Captain Picard also referred to the presence of a weather modification net that dissipated deadly tornadoes as they formed on Earth.

As conditions continue to worsen in the 21st Century, the development of artificial systems such as these may be the only way to repair the damage that humanity inflicts upon our planet. Seeding clouds with chemicals to increase precipitation is a modern, controversial variant of this technology.

“ Night ,” Star Trek: Voyager

"Night"

Seeking a cheap and convenient way to dispose of anti-matter waste, a Malon freighter willingly contaminated a desolate region of space and exposed the local inhabitants to theta radiation poisoning. After learning about Starfleet’s process for safely recycling antimatter, the Malon captain still refused to use the technology as he feared it would ruin his business.

The presence of massive landfills and a growing population have led our own society to ramp up its recycling efforts, but corporate interests and the bottom line fiendishly manipulate the actions of government officials. Residents in Flint, Michigan were subjected to lead in their drinking water when their leaders opted to save money and utilize the industrial pollutant-filled Flint River to supply the life-giving liquid. Much like the aliens that Voyager encountered in the void, Flint’s innocent civilians are now facing a lifetime of health issues that stemmed from political expediency and greed.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

When over-mining and insufficient safety protocols generated an immense explosion on the moon of Praxis, Spock estimated that the resulting pollution would deplete the air supply on Qo’noS within 50 years.

The United States’ reliance on fossil fuels — coupled with the lobbyists who encourage politicians to promote the continued use of those finite resources — sends many American workers into the dangerous and unhealthy confines of coal mines. While our nation’s endeavors could not initiate a disaster of Praxis’ magnitude, the process poses a threat to the surrounding land, air, and even the miners themselves. In addition to countless accidents that have plagued the profession, almost an entire town in Centralia, Pennsylvania was evacuated when an abandoned mine caught fire. Still raging after nearly 60 years, the underground inferno may continue to burn for centuries.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

As Spock questioned the logic of hunting a species to extinction, Dr. Gillian Taylor replied, “Whoever said the human race was logical?”

The fourth Star Trek film predicted that such a fate would befall Earth’s humpback whales by some point in the 21st Century. Humanity’s ability to employ our technological prowess to wreak havoc upon the animal kingdom is well-known, and our society demonstrates an uncanny knack for consuming Earth’s other natural resources at an alarming rate.

A trend toward purchasing reusable containers and recycling old materials stands as a sign that we are aware of the problem, and legislation designed to outlaw whaling and protect other endangered species serve as steps in the right direction. Educating the population about the benefits of conservation can ultimately help us avoid hearing the ominous thanks that James T. Kirk received after the captain successfully rescued the humpback whales George and Gracie. The Federation President expressed his gratitude by declaring, “You and your crew have saved this planet from its own short-sightedness.”

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This article was originally published on September 23, 2019.

Jay Stobie (he/him) is a freelance writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to StarTrek.com, Star Trek Explorer, and Star Trek Magazine, as well as to Star Wars Insider and StarWars.com. Learn more about Jay by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

“They are not the hell your whales.”

In 1986, Star Trek pushed a Greenpeace agenda as a blockbuster movie. It worked.

The legacy of 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage' is more than just a goofy movie time travel movie. Here's how it changed our world for the better.

After James T. Kirk stole Doc Brown’s ride, he decided to go back in time and save the whales.

You might think I’m describing some quirky fanfiction or a deleted scene from Ready Player One . But, the truth is, the Klingon ship Kirk and company commandeered in Star Trek IV to travel back in time to 1986, was owned by Klingon Commander Kruge, who, in 1984’s Star Trek III , was played by Christopher Lloyd (who went on to become much more famous as Doc Brown in 1985’s Back to the Future ).

By stealing that specific craft, the crew of the late Starship Enterprise was destined to go on a time-travel adventure. But unlike any other time-travel romp dating to the 1980s, this journey is a creative piece of commentary on a nascent environmentalism movement that put endangered species at its heart. In the fall of 1986, one year after Back to the Future , Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home not only became a transtemporal box-office hit, it also propelled climate change and concern for endangered species into the mainstream.

In short, Star Trek tried to literally save the whales in 1986, and it basically worked.

Welcome to FUTURE EARTH , where Inverse forecasts 100 years of possibilities, challenges, and who will lead the way.

Prior to J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot in 2009, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home held the record for the Star Trek feature film with the most successful box office, ever . The movie opened over Thanksgiving weekend in 1986 and went on to gross $109,713,132. To put this in perspective, Top Gun , which was the number one movie of 1986, made $176,781,728. Yes, Top Gun was the top gun, but The Voyage Home was right up there. Until J.J. Abrams, it was Star Trek’s most popular crossover film, which is saying something considering the film lacks both violence and sex. In 1986, the Trek franchise went toe-to-toe with the horror of Aliens and the sexy action of Top Gun and, while it didn’t quite win, it came out as a serious contender.

The mysterious probe in The Voyage Home . All it wants to do is to talk to some whales...

Co-written by Wrath of Khan maestro Nicholas Meyer , and directed by Leonard Nimoy, The Voyage Home was a political film imbued with environmental activism masquerading as a fish-out-of-water comedy. So, it turns out, humpback whales are just as intelligent as humans, and, at some point in the past, communicated only in whale song to this particular alien probe that looks like a smoother version of ʻOumuamua.

The movie sets out a humbling idea: If aliens were to make contact with Earth, they might not necessarily want to talk to humans. As Spock (Leonard Nimoy, directing himself) puts it “Only human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man.” When this alien probe rolls up on Earth, hoping to talk to some whales, the probe’s transmission sounds one way from the air, but totally different underwater. These signals are also destructive and require an answer that can’t be given because, in the Star Trek universe, humpback whales are extinct.

Once Spock and Uhura realize that the probe’s signals sound different underwater, there’s only one option; get some whales and hope those whales, as Bones says, “tell this probe what the hell to go do with itself.” Kirk decides time-travel to 1986 is the only possible solution. So, not only is their mission to find humpback whales in the past but also to bring them forward in time to the future. No one has ever called this movie Star Trek Some Whales Back to the Future , but that’s what happens.

The Voyage Home starts with this tough talk, and then, less than 15-minutes later, dumps the famous Starfleet crew into a comedy of errors on the streets of San Francisco in 1986. During the trip back in time, the stolen Klingon ship is broken (of course) and the crew has to figure out how to build a whale tank that can fit inside of their (broken) spaceship.

Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in a pawn shop, selling some antique glasses to have enough cash to get around in the 20th Century.

This means Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, and Chekov are super busy. Sulu flies a helicopter expertly but forgets how to use windshield wipers. Chekov gets mistaken for a quirky Russian spy. And, best of all, Spock tries out profanity for the first time, referring to swear words as “colorful metaphors.” There’s never been a science-fiction time-travel romp quite like The Voyage Home , probably best exemplified by the moment Spock uses a Vulcan nerve pinch to silence a rowdy punk’s boom box on a city bus.

But The Voyage Home’s overarching message comes to the fore in an over-the-top scene in which Spock literally connects his mind with that of a whale. The idea is elegant: If human beings possessed Spock’s telepathic powers, we too might connect with other creatures and, in turn, have a greater understanding and compassion for the other, defenseless denizens of our world. The heart of the movie is when Spock jumps into a giant whale tank and mind-melds with a humpback whale named Gracie. Later, when cetacean biologist Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) accuses Spock of “messing with my whales,” Spock fires back “They like you very much, but they are not the hell your whales.” The whales own themselves and Spock respects that.

The Star Trek characters come from a more enlightened future, and they’re ashamed of the actions of humankind in the “past” — the present for moviegoers of the ‘80s. In 1986, humpback whales really were on the endangered species list. In the movie’s final scenes, Kirk puts his stolen Klingon spaceship directly between a whaler’s harpoon and Spock’s new whale friends, saving them from humanity. For an audience unaware of environmental activism, it was a wake-up call.

“Greenpeace used to go out in rubber rafts in front of the Russian ships to try to prevent them from firing their harpoons, and that’s where that idea came from.”

“There’s a homage to Greenpeace in the movie because the idea of putting the spaceship between the whaling ship and the whales and being hit by the harpoon has Greenpeace roots,” Leonard Nimoy said in a 1986 interview. “Greenpeace used to go out in rubber rafts in front of the Russian ships to try to prevent them from firing their harpoons, and that’s where that idea came from.”

In 1986, Greenpeace representatives noted that while The Voyage Home played fast and loose with the truth, “the message is right on the money.″ After the movie’s release, there was an uptick in donations to Greenpeace, according to the organization. In fact, Greenpeace went so far as to say that the film “subtly reinforces why Greenpeace exists.”

Appropriately, Star Trek IV did not employ real whales in filming. Other than some stock footage toward the end of the film, the vast majority of the whales in the film were animatronic; a special effect so good that nobody noticed.

Star Trek IV’s influence on real conservation efforts in the 1980s is hard to quantify today. In 2016, the humpback whale was removed from a federal endangered species list, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the humpback whale comeback “an ecological success story.” When that happened, several publications pointed out a link between Star Trek IV and the resurgence of humpback whales. Quite literally, Star Trek’s cautionary tale seemed to usher in a better future in which whales didn’t go extinct in the 21st century.

It is impossible to prove a direct link between The Voyage Home and the de-escalation of whale hunting in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Correlation and causation are two different things, after all. In truth, years of dedicated environmental activism, political action, and education did the hard work. But it’s also true that Star Trek IV opened up a lot of people’s eyes to humanity’s cruelty toward whales and the perilous state of their survival.

At one point in the film, Bones quips that the 20th century is like “the Dark Ages” to his future, enlightened eyes. But, perhaps because of a quirky and bold Star Trek movie, some of us started to see the light.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is streaming for free on Pluto TV . It’s also streaming on Paramount+.

This article was originally published on April 20, 2021

• Environment
• Science Fiction

A Century of Science Fiction That Changed How We Think About the Environment

It has become axiomatic to say that the world is becoming like science fiction. From mobile phones that speak to us (reminding Star Trek fans of tricorders), to genetically modified foods, to the Internet of Things and the promise of self-driving cars, people in industrialized nations live immersed in technology. Daily life can thus at times seem like visions from the pulp science fiction of the 1920s and 1930s — either a world perfected by technology, manifested in events such as the 1939 World’s Fair , with its theme “The World of Tomorrow”; or a dystopian nightmare, such as Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (1932).

If we think about science fiction (sf) in terms of the genre’s connections to pressing issues in 21st-century culture, no topic is more urgent than climate change and the ways it promises to transform all aspects of human life, from where we live to how we cultivate our food to what energy sources will fuel our industries.

The issue is so pressing that some have started to use the term “cli-fi” for climate fiction — but this faddish coinage obscures a longer history of sf’s engagement with the environment and leaves unexamined the question of why sf has proven such a valuable genre for thinking about environmental futures. Even before the idea of climate change took hold, the genre embraced the geological and evolutionary timescales of 19th-century science and began to think of the planet as something that preceded our species and could conceivably continue without us. Such conceptualizations of the planet as a changeable environment turned the tradition of apocalyptic fiction toward mundane visions of environmental catastrophe instead of divine judgment.

A key early way such ideas circulated was through the changing imaginary about Mars: In the late 19th century, telescopic observations seemed to suggest the planet was covered in canals, which American astronomer Percival Lowell hypothesized were an irrigation technology, an idea taken up in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “A Princess of Mars” (1912), among other fictions. When this idea was disproven by better telescopes, sf often depicted Mars as a once-inhabited planet whose civilizations had died out due to drought, presaging a fate that might also befall Earth.

In Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy (1993–1996), about terraforming Mars to create an atmosphere and enable human colonization, technology is used to make these canals a material reality. The trilogy represents the viewpoints of several different factions over the decades-long process of changing the surface of Mars, including characters who argue in defense of leaving its environment unchanged. This is the best-known science fiction series about engineering planetary environments, most of which express themes about environmental protection and sustainability, but some of which celebrate a fantasy of total human control over the environment and planetary weather.

Early sf offered spectacles of disastrous destruction of cities and their populations but — unlike more recent works — did not posit anthropogenic causes. Disease rather than climate was more frequently imagined as humanity’s end in these works, including Mary Shelley’s “The Last Man” (1826) and M. P. Shiel’s “The Purple Cloud” (1901). At times such tales of massive destruction serve as opportunities to remake society without much environmentalism, such as Sydney Fowler Wright’s “Deluge” (1928), in which existing cultures are wiped out by earthquake-induced floods, distilling remaining populations into a hardier strain. This motif begins to take on a more environmentalist orientation in later works such as John Christopher’s “The Death of Grass” (1956), about a mutation that kills all cereal crops, a device that draws attention to humanity’s dependence on other species, a theme also present in George R. Stewart’s “Earth Abides” (1949), in which current humanity cannot survive, but the planet can.

Such works are interested in how the remnants of humanity might restore civilization and what form it might take, and thus remain anthropocentric in their focus. They are notable, however, for their emphasis on connections between humans and the natural world, resisting a technophilic tone of much contemporary sf that envisioned extensively mechanized futures. Moreover, they stand out from other contemporary postapocalyptic fiction in positing a premise other than nuclear war for the end of life as we know it and in explicitly linking images of destruction to environmental themes.

Ballard’s vivid depictions of the monstrosities inherent in industrialization, capitalism, and colonialism evoke topics that would usually be addressed in work by activist authors.

With the more experimental sf of the New Wave period and its relationships to contemporary countercultures, an overtly environmentalist sf appears, although here too fictions of apocalyptic collapses are sometimes more metaphorical than literal. This is especially true of J. G. Ballard’s stylistically compelling disaster novels, “The Wind from Nowhere” (1961), “The Drowned World” (1962), “The Burning World” (1964), and “The Crystal World” (1966), each of which depicts the world destroyed by what we would now call climate change — high winds, flood, drought, and a mysterious force that crystallizes matter, respectively. Ballard uses his transformed setting to interrogate the sterility and violence of the world prior to these disasters rather than comment specifically on environmental themes; nonetheless, his vivid depictions of the monstrosities inherent in industrialization, capitalism, and colonialism evoke topics that would usually be addressed in work by activist authors.

At roughly the same time, Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring” (1962), a trenchant critique of the use of pesticides in agriculture, which opens with “ A Fable for Tomorrow ” in which Carson depicts a future where a blight destroys all life in Anytown, USA, an outcome that Carson traces back to disruptions in the ecosystem caused by pesticides.

Carson thus demonstrates the rhetorical power of fictional, futuristic depictions to shape public understandings. In attempts to discredit her scientific credentials and disparage her personal character, Carson’s opponents were as vociferous and vile as any Ballardian antagonist. Nonetheless, her work, alongside the Club of Rome report “The Limits to Growth” (1972) published a decade later, fostered new ways of thinking about ecological futures, premised on sustainability.

“Silent Spring” energized a contemporary environmental movement, which had significant overlaps with contemporary antiwar and antinuclear activism. The first Earth Day was proposed in 1970, aimed at making air and water pollution a mainstream public concern, and eventually resulting in the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of legislation related to pollution and endangered species.

Earth Day drew on the sf imaginary both in terms of Carson’s use of futuristic narrative and in the image of the planet as seen from space as a symbol on a flag designed by John McConnell, which was intended to convey the interconnectedness of all life on the planet. The turn toward imagination as a powerful rhetorical technique in the environmental movement is also apparent in the launch of the Whole Earth Catalog, a countercultural magazine started in 1968 and published until 1998, which also featured an image of Earth from space on its first cover — indeed, this is the “whole Earth” of its title. An early example of DIY activism, the magazine fostered an imaginative community oriented toward an ideal of living more sustainably, addressed, in this way, to inhabitants of that future.

As with feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, environmental activists turned explicitly to sf and its relationship to the utopian tradition to promote countercultural values. The most famous example is Ernest Callenbach’s “Ecotopia” (1975), written as if it were the notebook of William Weston, a journalist who in 1999 is visiting and reporting on a society in the Pacific Northwest that seceded from America to establish a new polis defined by sustainability, recycling, minimal use of fossil fuels, localized food production, and gender equality. Like the authors of 19th-century utopias, Callenbach demonstrates an imaginative possibility for how one might live otherwise. Moreover, the novel suggests that changed relationships to environmental ideals require transformation of other aspects of social life, such as patriarchy and capitalism, themes that persist in ecological sf today. Similar ideas about the need to address problems of poverty and discrimination alongside pollution and environmental destruction are found in fiction by Kim Stanley Robinson, unquestionably the most important living sf writer addressing environmental themes.

There are then dystopian works of environmental sf such as John Brunner’s “The Sheep Look Up” (1972). Taking its title from a line in Milton’s “Lycidas” about hungry sheep failing to be fed by a corrupt church, the novel scathingly critiques the entrenched capitalist system that simultaneously destroys the environment and markets products designed to ameliorate the risks caused by contaminated air, water, and food. The plot concerns Nutripon, a manufactured food sent to developing countries as part of an American aid package. A shipment causes hallucinations that result in violent behavior, and some believe this is a deliberate attempt to eliminate people of color. Meanwhile, in the United States, money is less and less able to insulate the rich from contaminated food and water. Finally, we learn the Nutripon shipment was contaminated by toxic waste in the factory’s water supply, an accident. In a world of irresponsible polluters who value profit above all else, a conspiracy is not required to produce genocide. Brunner’s work stands out for its global scope and its recognition that the damage done by colonialism continues in and is exacerbated by pollution.

Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) is often understood as a prescient novel about climate change, given its desert setting and its invention of several technologies for survival with a minimum of water. It is the first novel is what would become a sprawling franchise. The original novel recounts the political machinations by which young Paul Atreides is displaced from his inheritance as a feudal colonizer of Arrakis, lives among nomadic Indigenous peoples while mastering psionic powers, and eventually reclaims his dynasty while also fulfilling a messianic prophecy. Alongside Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” (1961), in which a libertarian, free love–promoting human comes to Earth from Mars, “Dune” was read widely outside sf circles when it was published. Heinlein’s strange protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, preached a hippie-like philosophy best expressed by the novel’s invented term “grok,” that is, comprehension so intense as to approximate union with the object of attention, a phrase soon widely used beyond sf. Both novels were embraced by a youthful college audience who saw in them a reflection of their own anti-establishment values.

But the shift from pollution to climate change as the main engine of dystopian futures doesn’t firmly take hold until the 21st century. The explicit turn to sf as a tool for environmental activism characterizes this second generation of writers, who often write fiction about climate change and are involved in activism.

Wanuri Kahiu’s important short film “Pumzi” (2009), depicting the regeneration of a future Africa after a period of intense environmental loss, shows the power of new voices taking up these themes. Another prominent example is Paolo Bacigalupi, who addresses the uneven global effects of climate change. His YA trilogy — “Ship Breaker” (2010), “The Drowned Cities” (2012), and “Tool of War” (2017) — is set in a world changed by sea-level rise and projects both growing economic precarity and the rise of authoritarian governments in such circumstances. Bacigalupi’s most forceful novel to date is “The Water Knife” (2015), based on a short story originally published in the environmental magazine High Country News, about near-future water wars as California, Arizona, and Nevada all battle to control the dwindling resources of the Colorado Basin. It is mainly an indictment of legal manipulations that keep water rights in the hands of an elite, portraying with sympathy the fraught ethical choices left to the disenfranchised, and it concludes with a glimmer of hope in green technologies distributed by a Chinese government that is mostly in the background of the narrative.

Octavia Butler’s “Parable” series (1993–1998) is a truly prescient work about climate change. One of the few writers of color to achieve prominence in the field during the 20th century, her reputation has only grown in the years since her death in 2006. In this series, she imagines a future California beset by massive displacements fueled by climate change. Although published more than 20 years ago, these books read as plausible futures, perhaps now more than ever. Unlike Bacigalupi’s despair, Butler’s novel is rooted in hope, although she depicts an equally grim future. Like her “Xenogenesis” series, this work demands of its audience that we confront the difficult task of building communities in the face of loss, displacement, and tensions about diversity.

The Parable series imagines a future religion, Earthseed, as the core of this new kind of community. As Shelley Streeby outlines in “Imagining the Future of Climate Change” (2018), Butler’s work has inspired activists, some of whom have formed the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network to cultivate the values Butler espoused, treating her sf as a manual for alternative lifeways — what Streeby calls a place “to practice the future.” Streeby connects this network to other instances of imaginative activism in 21st-century environmental politics, particularly by people of color and Indigenous communities, showing powerful ways that sf is becoming a rhetoric for activist practice. Butler’s vision insists that environmentalism must proceed in tandem with other social justice movements that counter racism and colonialism, a perspective that also informs N. K. Jemisin’s celebrated “Broken Earth trilogy,” the most important recent work to address climate change and social injustice as mutually constitutive problems.

Kim Stanley Robinson has written about the environmental damage caused by capitalism throughout his career, generally offering the hope that technology can ameliorate our dire situation. Climate change is most centrally the focus in his near-future “Science in the Capital” trilogy (2004–2007), about the struggle to mobilize politics and science together to confront the inevitability of climate change. The first novel, “Forty Signs of Rain” (2004), focuses on structural barriers that bar research and legislation that could address climate change, and it ends with the spectacle of a flooded Washington, DC. The second novel, “Fifty Degrees Below” (2005), is set during a mini Ice Age caused by the halting of the Gulf Stream, and it explores possible technical options to ameliorate this changed climate: a lichen engineered to capture more carbon, re-salinating the ocean to restart the Gulf Stream, and various tools and clothing that enable a high-tech Paleolithic lifestyle with a smaller carbon footprint than the lifeways of urbanized modernity. The final novel, “Sixty Days and Counting” (2007), offers the utopian possibility of an elected U.S. president who will prioritize climate change and who institutes a set of policies that push the U.S. economy into sustainable energy, while acknowledge the global disparities that are the legacy of capitalism. A number of the technological amelioration projects succeed, and we are left on the cusp of a new chapter in history.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s cast of characters enables readers to see how politicians, lobbyists, funding agencies, displaced migrants, and families in America are all part of the network that informs how climate change is perceived.

Appearing about the time that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, we can see in retrospect that the trilogy addresses issues of extreme weather, just as we can see now that Katrina was only the first of what has since become the new normal for the climate: heat waves, cold waves, and extreme storms. The vast scope of his work speaks to Robinson’s careful attention to the complexity of climate change and the institutional barriers that prevent even acknowledging this reality in some circles. His wide cast of characters enables readers to see how politicians, lobbyists, funding agencies, displaced migrants, and families in America are all part of the network that informs how climate change is perceived. The utopianism of Robinson’s conclusion seems a bit forced, perhaps, but he is careful to show the number of people and institutions that must come together to enact meaningful social change as he refuses to simply capitulate to the cynical despair that fuels Bacigalupi’s work. Although perhaps not self-evidently a climate change novel, Robinson’s “Shaman” (2013), set during the last ice age and recounting how early humans adapted to a changing climate, further reinforces his ideas about the value of elements of Paleolithic ways of living with, rather than in opposition to, one’s environment.

Science fiction is a genre that has long used its projected other worlds to offer commentary on our material (and contemporary) one, especially to remind us that this world is open to change. There is myriad evidence that authors from outside the genre use sf techniques in precisely this rhetorical way. Consider Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s polemical “The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future” (2014), written as if by a Chinese historian in 2393 who is reflecting back to theorize why Western civilizations failed to act, despite clear signs of their looming collapse. Similarly, popular books such as Alan Weisman’s “The World without Us” (2007) and the documentary television series “Life after People” (2009) encourage us to reflect on how humans have changed our environments as they offer speculative visions of ecosystems continuing without us, erasing the technological signs of human habitation. Or consider Werner Herzog’s strange environmental film, “The Wild Blue Yonder” (2005), which is part documentary, part sf narrative, fused with NASA footage of outer space, deep sea photography, and a scripted narrative about an alien species who destroyed their ecosystem and seek to relocate to Earth.

Environmental rhetoric, like speculative design, an approach that encourages thinking about and designing possible futures in a meaningful way, is one of the main places we see sf become a discursive way to grasp the present. Lindsay Thomas, in a compelling article on preparedness discourse, argues that sf provides a counterdiscourse to the kinds of speculative projections found in disaster planning, including government projections about climate change. Whereas documents such as the Department of Defense 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap , cited by Thomas, cultivate feelings of neutral detachment and automated response to already anticipated scenarios, sf about climate change enables readers to experience multiple temporalities beyond the individual human life.

Preparedness discourse responds to change, understood as disaster, through strategies of containment. But science fiction offers something much more. It offers us a way of thinking and perceiving, a toolbox of methods for conceptualizing, intervening in, and living through rapid and widespread change — and the possibility to direct it toward an open future that we (re)make.

Sherryl Vint is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and of English at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of several books, most recently “ Science Fiction ,” from which this article is adapted.

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It’s Time For Star Trek To Tackle Climate Change

Discovery’ s second season just wrapped up with a bang (or, more accurately, a animated series in the works for the first time since the ‘70s, and a group of upstart kids at Starfleet Academy are reportedly getting their own show, too.

So is Starfleet’s most revered elder statesman, Jean-Luc Picard . As a lifelong Trekkie, this is all delightful news. But as an environmental reporter who spends the bulk of her waking hours thinking about how the most important planet in the Federation is melting and burning , my excitement for the deluge of new Trek content is tempered by a nagging feeling that something’s missing.

Like all of the best science fiction, Star Trek has always been a show that wrestles with, and attempts to solve, the problems of the present. Why, then, isn’t the franchise doing more stories on what’s arguably the greatest threat the denizens of Sector 001 have ever faced?

The dearth of climate change mentions in Star Trek is stark.

The franchise paints a pretty rosy picture of our future, one in which, by the start of the 22nd century, humans have eliminated war, poverty, disease, and bigotry on Earth (though bigotry toward extraterrestrials still rears its head from time to time). I recently re-watched every episode of every series with the hope of gleaning some insight into how Earth also averted its rapidly-unfolding 21st-century climate disaster.

I could only find two hints: a brief conversation between Captain Archer and subcommander T’Pol in season three of Enterprise that touches on 21st century Earth’s addiction of fossil fuels; and a spat between science officer Paul Stamets and engineer Jet Reno in a season two episode of Discovery , where Stamets describes how Earth’s environment was going to shit until everyone started putting solar panels on trucks. (Also, apparently — mild spoiler for those who haven’t seen Discovery ’s season two finale — on the Golden Gate Bridge.)

Even 1986’s Star Trek IV — a film that is literally about saving the whales!—only touches on the climate crisis at a glance, when Spock describes humanity’s “dubious flirtation” with nuclear energy before the start of the “fusion era.” There are a few other plotlines that can be read as allegories for climate change, most notably “ Force of Nature ,” a late-series Next Generation episode where the crew of the Enterprise discovers that warp travel is tearing holes in the fabric of space, and regulations must be enacted to keep the environmental damage at bay.

But compared with the amount of time the series devotes to, say, the rights of artificial beings , the perils of genetic engineering, or just fighting Nazis, climate change seems notably underserved by the franchise.

There are, of course, historical reasons for this. When Star Trek first aired in the 1960s, our biggest existential threat wasn’t the warming effects greenhouse gases—which were only just beginning to be understood by a small circle of scientists —but nuclear war with an antagonistic superpower, a subject the franchise tackled frequently .

By the time Star Trek rebooted in the late 1980s, our understanding of global warming had grown considerably—notably, The Next Generation ’s first season began airing less than a year before NASA climate scientist James Hansen famously alerted Congress that climate change was under way—but public concern over the problem was still low.

It would remain that way for decades, thanks in no small part to misinformation campaigns spearheaded by fossil fuel companies . As recently as 2013, less than 15 per cent of the American public considered themselves “alarmed” about climate change.

But now, it’s 2019, and the climate monster has hatched for all the world to see. Powerful hurricanes are flattening our coastlines ; entire towns are being devoured by megafires .

And it’s only going to get worse, with study after study detailing how sea level rise will make entire countries uninhabitable and increasingly brutal heat waves will cause death and suffering around the world.

Public alarm is finally catching up to the science, with a recent poll indicating that 60 per cent of all Americans are at least concerned about climate change. Per another recent poll, two-thirds of Democratic voters feel it should be our nation’s top priority.

The young people Star Trek is now looking to hook on the sci-fi their parents grew up with? They’re taking to the streets to strike for a habitable planet.

As Star Trek spins up once again, it should embrace this climate zeitgeist. Discovery has already demonstrated a clear interest in environmental themes — heck, the ship’s lead scientist is named after a guy who thinks mushrooms can save the planet — but it can do a lot more. It could tackle the climate crisis allegorically, perhaps by revisiting the harmful environmental effects of warp technology or some other essential piece of Federation tech.

The crew could visit a pre-warp civilisation on the cusp of wrecking its own atmosphere, and be forced to make one of those Prime Directive-bending choices about whether or not to intervene (knowing Discovery’s crew, they totally will). Or, Discovery could continue to use its favourite physically-implausible plot device—time travel—and deliver audiences back to the crucial moment in the mid-21st century when decisions were made that would change the fate of the Earth. Having finally cast off its prequel shackles, the crew can literally go anywhere!

Writing for the Washington Post recently, science fiction author and io9 co-founder Charlie Jane Anders observed that stories about climate change can “help sway people’s hearts and minds in a different way than a recitation of undeniable facts.” Sure, there’s been some outrageously bad climate fiction in recent years ( cough , Geostorm ), but we’ve also some damn good environmental storytelling, from thrillers about water rights in a drought-ravaged Southwest to mind-bending ecological horror stories to a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by killer rain .

What Star Trek can add to this burgeoning eco-fiction landscape, I think, is a sense of optimism and human agency. Discovery may be a few shades darker than its predecessors, but the connective tissue unifying so many decades of exploration on so many warp-class ships has always been our capacity to solve problems and overcome seemingly impossible odds. I have no doubt the fine people of Starfleet , if confronted with a crisis like climate change, would rise to the occasion.

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Letters to the Editor: From ‘Idiocracy’ to ‘Star Trek,’ climate themes already abound in movies

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To the editor: A rating system for portraying climate change in movies is a good start, but it may be missing the whole picture.

The Korean Oscar winner “Parasite” from 2019 encapsulated the equity gap that climate change imposes on the working poor during an impressive cinematic representation of a single rain event without ever making reference to climate change.

Movies franchises and TV series set in space — such as “Star Trek” and “The Expanse” — demonstrate the practical conservation of resources for human survival.

Every movie set in cities with electric trains shows us our future because of the need for greater sustainability and community.

One of the best depictions of the misuse of water is the cult film “Idiocracy,” where in the future, crops are watered with a Gatorade-like sports drink because that’s what’s left.

But if you want a movie that shows us the evil within ourselves, just watch the 1967 classic “The Graduate.” It tells you all you need to know about root of all evil: “Plastics.”

It’s all been written; we only need to see.

Pam Brennan, Newport Beach

To the editor: This article exemplifies how propaganda starts.

The powers that be decide that information needs to include a certain viewpoint or certain information, and then content providers (they used to just be writers and artists) adhere to these so-called standards. This frightens and horrifies me.

I am a lifelong, ardent, active environmentalist who wants to walk down the street with a sign reading, “The end is near.” But I couldn’t be more against having a test of climate messaging in entertainment.

For goodness sake, all we need is a price on carbon emissions. Honest capitalism, where the damage created by industry and manufacturing is acknowledged and corrected, will do much more to solve the problem of climate change than glancing at committee-approved messaging in movies and television.

Elizabeth Fenner, Los Angeles

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Star Trek’s formula for sustainable urban innovation

Professor and past Dean, Faculty of Business & Economics, University of Winnipeg

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Sylvie Albert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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On the long-running television series Star Trek , the characters were knowledge workers and did not seem to worry about food, lodging or acceptance. Theirs was an inclusive society, one that collaboratively practised sustainable innovation.

Although the crews on various ships were lost in space, Star Trek communities supported one another. Each built environment met its own needs and when they encountered societies on other worlds, those too practised inclusive and sustainable development.

The lesson here is that we need to apply an inclusive approach if we are to meet critical goals. This includes addressing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5-2°C global warming targets, working towards the UN sustainable development goals and developing sustainable cities .

Challenging traditional markets

Traditional market functions are being challenged in several ways.

Thanks to affordable digital platforms, sellers can easily service global customers and buyers are not constrained by physical marketplaces. Individuals can take greater control over their health, their wealth and their work (telecommuting and the gig economy).

Let’s also remember that corporations live shorter lives — down from an average of more than 50 years to as little as 10 years , so making large investments to attract large companies could be risky if the payback is long. It could be a political win but a questionable economic benefit.

Markets are either maturing in developed economies, evidenced by trends including the declining auto sector in China, or they are shifting due to technological change, such as the increase in online shopping . There has been a gradual shift in economic power, movements of jobs to new regions and new innovations such as artificial intelligence and robotics.

These changes affect everybody. They are not cyclical problems associated with one sector or in one region. They require new thinking and action.

Cities can help lead a joint agenda for public and private investment in inclusive growth and innovation to alleviate these impacts or access new opportunities.

Creating inclusive growth

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes inclusive growth as “ economic growth that is distributed fairly across society and creates opportunities for all .” Inclusive growth is foundational to the discussions on income inequality , including the need for a sustainable basic income.

Examples of countries adopting or thinking about basic income include Kenya , Finland and Canada .

Unfortunately, some trials are not successful - but as management guru Edward Deming explained, 94 per cent of problems are due to poor systems, not people, and can be fixed.

People have the right to a good job , and in the Star Trek community, everyone makes a contribution somewhere.

In the digital economy, a segment of the population (for example those with lower levels of education, according to an OECD report) will have greater difficulty accessing new jobs and occupations. Clearly there is a need to improve linkages between people and jobs, and to increase our efforts to prepare people for jobs.

Livability and sustainability

Innovation plays an important role in making cities more liveable and sustainable.

Since the responsibility for achieving inclusive growth is shared between individuals, employers and policymakers, cities need to engage these stakeholders into the discussion. Local resources and new innovation can together create local wealth and improve life and the sustainability of cities. Technology can shift patterns of behaviour and provide equity in services. It is disruptive thinking that develops new solutions.

Advancements in artificial intelligence, automation and digital platforms are rewriting our entire economy. These technologies have the potential to positively affect wealth disparity and quality of life.

However, without proper care, they also have the potential to produce the opposite effect, including the monopolization of our economy and placing jobs at risk .

Employers have a role to play. Those who treat their employees well will not only gain a competitive advantage, but they’ll build stronger social currency.

Citizens have a role to play. There are many examples of citizen engagement in solving important issues such as waste reduction, loneliness, mobility, neighbourhood development, health, and more.

However, leaving the responsibility to a single entity, such as the private sector — or even governments — will likely not yield the results we need in time. Inclusive growth mindsets and innovation incubation should happen in all public and private sectors and with all its citizens.

Inclusive Innovation Ideas

Inclusive growth and innovation starts with a digital infrastructure that keeps everyone connected. It includes technologies and ideas that rethink the ways we manage energy, car ownership, education, skills training, waste management, food production. It may include new concepts such as blockchain-based governance systems, health care and banking services.

The circular economy concept is an example — it creates local employment while providing economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable options to the local economy.

For instance, an urban farm in Brussels is based on aquaponics integrated buildings . The project says it wants to see “a change in food production, where technology, sustainable practices and local people come together to create a food system that works for consumers, producers and the environment.” Their model reduces the need for transportation, reuses urban space in sustainable ways, applies green methods of managing operations and provides local jobs.

Another strategic example is the provision of affordable basic energy options. M-Kopa is a solar energy provider in Nairobi. It offers locally built, low-cost solar kits that demonstrate how innovation in the energy sector can be successfully adopted quickly by consumers thanks to creative financing. Kenyans purchase the solar kits at a very low cost, payable in small instalments. This meets the needs of rural populations while promoting local employment, and has the potential to provide more opportunities as it builds skills and opens avenues to leverage the technology for more innovation.

Read more: How local business innovation equips off-grid households with electricity

The role of cities

Cities have a larger role to play today and they are poised to move in this direction - they have resources (people, businesses, infrastructure) that can be used more efficiently and effectively. There are also many examples of strategies that work - some cities have successfully developed innovation labs as collaborative efforts, new partnerships with diverse stakeholders and new working environments that focus on meeting local problems.

Some cities in Europe set aside a percentage of their budgets to support local entrepreneurs improve services and cost structures. These initiatives are likely to generate greater local benefits and can be repeated and improved upon from one city to the next.

The Star Trek formula is work together and share ideas and resources, look out for the best interest of society and the planet, use technology to benefit and advance, and develop each person as a valuable member of society. Local solutions to local problems, solved through inclusive innovation.

This article is based on Jacques Putzeys’ chapter in the forthcoming book, Innovative Solutions for Creating Sustainable Cities (Cambridge Scholars), edited by Sylvie Albert. Putzeys is the chairman of the Inclusive Growth Forum and co-founder of Talent4Boards. Putzeys was also the CEO and president of the Market Authority of EASDAQ (NASDAQ Europe).

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Force of Nature

• Episode aired Nov 13, 1993

While searching for a missing Federation medical transport, the Enterprise is accosted by two scientists from a nearby planet who claim that cumulative exposure to warp energy is weakening t... Read all While searching for a missing Federation medical transport, the Enterprise is accosted by two scientists from a nearby planet who claim that cumulative exposure to warp energy is weakening the fabric of space. While searching for a missing Federation medical transport, the Enterprise is accosted by two scientists from a nearby planet who claim that cumulative exposure to warp energy is weakening the fabric of space.

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• Trivia In this episode, a Federation-wide speed limit is put in place because of the harmful effects that traveling at high warp has on subspace. While it is never mentioned in any of the TV series or movies, it was mentioned in a book that the new class 9 warp drive being tested in the new Intrepid-class star-ships, such as the U.S.S. Voyager, had been designed to not have those harmful effects on subspace. So, after the new class 9 warp drive tests were successful all Starfleet vessels had their warp cores replaced with new ones with similar modifications to the class 9 warp drive, which is why the Federation-wide speed limit is never brought up again.
• Goofs Previously Data's cat, Spot, has always been a male. However starting with this episode, and continuing through the end of the series, Spot is suddenly a female. It was mentioned in the Star Trek: Encyclopedia that the writers said in a later interview when questioned about this that perhaps Spot had some sort of transporter accident.

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge : [after Spot has made Data give her the ball of wool to play with] I don't know about Spot, but it seems to me *your* training is coming along just fine.

• Connections Edited from Star Trek: The Next Generation: Suddenly Human (1990)
• Soundtracks Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title Composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage

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• Sep 15, 2017
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Why we need Star Trek — and its progressive values — more than ever

With 'discovery' premiering this weekend, we take a deep dive into why the franchise's values matter.

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A society based on inclusivity, rationality and respect might seem like a lost cause in our current reality — but over the last 50 years, Star Trek has stubbornly clung to these values to create a world as complex as our own, only better. The iconic sci-fi franchise has pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment and what the masses find acceptable. And along the way, it's offered insights on the evolution of progressive values and the growing pains of any society.

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The Star Trek universe reflects the complexity of our world without pulling punches. Whether it's climate change, diversity, feminism, gender identity, PTSD or capital punishment, our space-faring fictional counterparts have covered it all. With 50 years of world-building under their collective belt, the shows have evolved to keep up or even outpace the sensibilities of their audiences — whether their creators intended to or not — because social issues never exist in a vacuum. Unlike space...get it? (OK, sorry.)

With the new series — premiering Sept. 24. — starring two women of colour and the franchise's first on-screen relationship for an openly gay character, and considering our chaotic news cycle, now is the time to talk about the humanist fever dream that is Star Trek .

Embracing science

Our new normal is a rapidly changing, environment shaped by human interference — as hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Jose recently reminded us . And yet a large number of politicians deny climate change is even happening. In hindsight, Star Trek seems prescient in its treatment of environmental change, time and again showing entire civilizations sentencing themselves to death. What is the reason entire races choose to repeat this cycle of self-destruction? The answer is often simple: money.

Where our world diverges most from Star Trek's Earth utopia is our attachment to money and distrust of science. While leaders on this Earth question science, in the Star Trek it literally saves the world. - Alexandra Kazia

By the time Kirk takes over the captain's chair, humanity has already faced near destruction in World War III (the "eugenics wars"). Learning from its past mistakes, our fictional descendants do away with money, relying on replicator technology to provide life's necessities. This death of capitalism at the hands of scientific advancement creates a lovely, if implausible, socialist dreamscape that solves most of Earth's problems.

Where our world diverges most from Star Trek 's Earth utopia is our attachment to money and distrust of science. While leaders on this Earth question science, in the Star Trek universe it literally saves the world. It is only when humans discover warp drive that the Vulcans feel it right to make first contact and guide humanity into the new interstellar era, encouraging a more unified earth that can start to live up to its full potential.

Sexuality and gender

Compared to some other shows, Star Trek has always lagged behind when it comes to sexuality — it's only now that a main character will be shown to be openly gay and in a relationship. (The most recent J.J. Abrams film depicted Lt. Sulu's husband and child, but the scene was a blink-and-you-miss-it moment on screen.) But while network TV might have tamed Gene Roddenberry's push for more socially progressive LGBTQ stories — he said he wanted a gay character in The Next Generation  — some did trickle through.

The iconic sci-fi franchise has pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment and what the masses find acceptable. And along the way, it's offered insights on the evolution of progressive values and the growing pains of any society. -  Alexandra Kazia

Before Discovery , TNG 's 1992 episode "The Outcast" is the franchise's only obvious attempt at tackling sexuality and gender discrimination overtly. Resident ladies' man Cmdr. Riker falls for Soren, a member of the J'naii — a species said to be strictly genderless. But Soren reveals she and others on her world are born with "inclinations to maleness" or femaleness and are persecuted for their urges. If discovered, they must undergo "psychotectic therapy" before returning to society. During her trial, Soren gives a touching speech, demanding compassion from her peers: "It is not unnatural...I do not need to be cured. We haven't injured you in any way, and yet we are scorned and attacked and all because we are different...What makes you think you can dictate how other people love each other?"

To some people it may seem a bit heavyhanded, but given how recent the fight over marriage equality in the U.S. was and the country's current fearmongering about the transgender community, what is essentially her "love is love" message remains depressingly timely.

While the Star Trek universe featured a memorable female character from the start, its depiction of women kicked into warp speed (sorry) in Voyager . The series' lineup of strong, nuanced female characters — including its first woman captain — offers a study in humanity, strength, trauma and female friendships. Voyager reportedly has 86 per cent of its episodes pass the Bechdel test , and it also features only one white man (and one white "holographic" man) in its main credits. I'll let you judge whether those factors play into the lack of respect for the series.

Feminism in space remains an intersectional issue. While Earth women may enjoy the benefit of gender neutral unitards and equal replicator rations, women of other species still deal with various types of misogyny. Kazon women remain invisible members of a fundamentalist society, and the Klingons have strong women who initiate mating rituals but are often absent in the front of government and battleships.

And then we have the Ferengi.

Through our rather curmudgeonly bar owner Quark in Deep Space Nine and his family, we witness an entire planet's feminist revolution. Ferengi women are forbidden from wearing clothes and remain at home, barred from earning profit. Since possessions are the crux of the society's elaborate religion — summarized in 281 rules of acquisition which any self-respecting Ferengi can recite with the ease of a televangelist — women are very clearly second-class citizens.

Quark's mother eventually begins wearing cloths and subverts the system from within, and by the end of the show's seven-year run, there's more equality for "females" on Ferenginar. Sound familiar? At least some of it should, since Ferengi are largely stand-ins for real life humans. In the DS9 episode "The Jem'Hadar," Quark says: "I think I figured out why humans don't like the Ferengi...The way I see it, humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We're a constant reminder of a part of your past you'd like to forget."

Like the Ferengi feminist revolution, nearly all Star Trek episodes dealing with race smack you in the face with obvious allegories.

The classic Original Series episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" showcases the inanity of arbitrary racial division with a conflict between two groups of people: those whose faces are black on the right and white on the left, and those whose faces are the reverse. The episode was shockingly poignant for a 1960s network TV show — but times change, and by the 1990s, so had the audience (to a point).

In the wake of Charlottesville , it's safe to say subtlety and denial haven't been anyone's friends. With the 1993 appearance of its first black captain — Benjamin Sisko in DS9 —  the show tackled racial prejudice head on rather than erase it from its utopian world. In "Beyond the Stars," Sisko has a vision of himself as Benny Russell, a pulp sci-fi writer in 1950s America who creates the story of a black captain at a futuristic space station. Russell struggles with inequality and civil rights, eventually losing his grasp on reality, and he and the audience witness cops kill his best friend. As his editor tells him the world is not yet ready for a black protagonist, Russell screams, "I'm tired of being calm! Calm never got me a damn thing!" He continues, breaking down: "You can pop a story, but you cannot destroy an idea."

This snapshot of 50s America forces white audiences to confront a culture that packages the systemic oppression of people of colour as post-racial equality. Star Trek 's message about race is clear: humanity's strength comes from unity, particularly in the face of hostile alien civilizations. And the aliens, in turn, provide means of exploring how humanity often handles other differences.

Whether it's Brexit or literal Nazi rallies in America, the past few years have been increasingly dominated by the rhetoric of xenophobia. Living up to its motto 'to boldly go where no one has gone before,' Star Trek has explored similar themes through its many encounters with alien races. - Alexandra Kazia

Whether it's Brexit or literal Nazi rallies in America, the past few years have been increasingly dominated by the rhetoric of xenophobia. Living up to its motto "to boldly go where no one has gone before,"  Star Trek has explored similar themes through its many encounters with alien races.

In the two episodes preceding the finale of Enterprise  (a prequel series that ended in 2005), we meet an "Earth first" group called Terra Prime. Though it aired over a decade ago, this chilling speech could easily be given by the Trumps of today:

"A new era is at hand. An era that will expose the concept of interspecies unity as an absolute and vicious lie. An era that will witness the advent of a Human-centered consciousness that will place our world before all others...Terra Prime forever." Eventually exposed as bigots, Terra Prime is thankfully defeated — and the way is paved for what will eventually become the United Federation of Planets.

We are no strangers to the problems explored in Star Trek over the years — they are merely a reflection of what pains us — but we are relatively new to any solutions. Inclusivity and its egalitarian spirit have kept Star Trek alive and thriving for more than 50 years now. It's a testament to how entertainment should enlighten us and teach us empathy, making you see the best and worst in yourself and humanity — and want to fix it.

And if we can't boldly go where we should, at least we can watch an alternate world where we do.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexandra Kazia is a writer and digital producer at CBC Radio based in Toronto. She previously worked with CBC News, writing digital stories for the national and local Toronto teams.

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‘Star Trek’ Failed to Reckon with Our Greatest Threat: Climate Change

Humanity appears to have succeeded at solving the climate crisis and eliminating capitalism. But how? And at what cost?

This is In This Climate , a column by Amy Brady on climate change and childhood nostalgia.

been taken hostage.” I laughed so hard I knocked over my drink.

 each of us had graduate school to complete and careers to jumpstart. But we began talking about our future together early on. Neither of us dreamed of big houses or big cars. We loved words and music and theater and art. As long as our lives had those things in it, we told each other, then we would be happy. We also discussed the possibility of having children, but were always on the fence about it.

“I could be a parent if you wanted me to be,” he told me in the rare moments when the subject came up.

“Same,” I always said back. Since neither of us seemed too keen about the prospect, we never felt compelled to think much more about it.

some of the world’s best scientists.

Later that night, I told my husband about what I’d read. It introduced a new dimension to the question of starting a family; a conversation that continued as the months that followed brought even more devastating news reports about climate change: The oceans were acidifying at unprecedented rates, and the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere had just surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. Such news led, finally, to a straightforward decision: We would not be bringing kids into the world. How could we?

do  remember the first time I saw my favorite episode, “Balance of Terror.” I was ten years old. Dad and I sat side-by-side on the couch, a Bud Light in his hand, a glass of apple juice in mine. We spent most of our Saturday afternoons watching the series in syndication. My dad had been a fan since he himself was ten, and I was happy to accept the fandom he passed on to me. The show was corny as hell, even by my ten-year-old standards, but its vivid characters and imaginative planetary landscapes tugged at the dormant sci-fi fan within me and yanked it into being.

Romulan , a humanoid being resembling the Enterprise’s Vulcan science officer, Mr. Spock: Both had pointy ears, arched eyebrows, and short black hair cut into the shape of a bowl.

, of course, and to drive the point home, the episode concluded with Spock rescuing his most outspoken opponent from a poison-filled room and certain death.

decided to have them.

— shaped how I saw and responded to the world. Its spirit of exploration, collaboration, and hope left me with a deep-set optimism and a desire to strive for equality, even when everyone I knew—myself included—sometimes fell short of that ideal.

at solving the climate crisis and eliminating capitalism. But how? And at what cost?

in general  and the hole in the ozone layer—not climate change. It just didn’t seem to be a big deal yet.

were able to travel in time to fix an even larger crisis? But neither in this movie nor any of the others does anyone seem to harbor memories of just how bad the climate crisis got on twenty-first century Earth, a time in which our planet is on literal fire in some areas and flooded to the brim in others.

that  they become everyday concerns.

More carbon has been spewed into the atmosphere in the last thirty years than in all of human history, causing the planet to warm at a faster rate than many scientists predicted. Put another way: Earth’s climate was still stable when my dad was watching TOS for the first time. Things went haywire in a single generation.

Star Trek was optimistic because its creator, Gene Roddenberry, had the luxury of optimism—climate change was only a distant possibility in the 1960s. But in 2020, even the title “The Next Generation” sounds depressingly naïve.

a couple of glasses to the living room. As I poured, I asked what she thought her kids would study in college––I guessed the sciences (they’re so curious!), but maybe art. My sister just stared at the bubbles in her glass.

The whole planet is screwed up.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not really.”

be passed on for decades to come.

particular  organization offers a ten-step program for building resilience to despair and eco-anxiety. “Does species extinction or climate change keep you up at night?” asks the Network’s founders on their website.

That’s one way to put it.

be read as a collection of anti-Semitic Jewish stereotypes (yet another aspect of the franchise that didn’t age well), but the makeup on the actor who played Quark—outlandishly large ears, tiny pointed teeth—sent him into a fit of laughter. “No,” he said, while catching his breath and pointing at the screen. “I am not watching that.”

surprisingly  absent is any commentary—allegorical or otherwise—on climate change.

dearly , but this oversight verges on irresponsibility. Science fiction—with its focus on the future—provides space for imagining a more socially and ecologically just world. And in an age of climate change, when humanity is facing its largest existential threat ever—a threat perpetuated by capitalistic greed and distributed unevenly along lines of race and class—conversations about how we got to such a state, and how we will get through it, are vital.

I won’t be passing on my memories to biological children, but I often think of the pain and trauma that the next generation will inherit. It won’t be the stuff of science fiction. But I wish it were.

Amy Brady is the Deputy Publisher of Guernica magazine and the Senior Editor of the Chicago Review of Books , where she writes a monthly column about climate fiction. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times , the Dallas Morning News , Sierra , Pacific Standard , the New Republic , the Village Voice , the Cambridge Companion to Working-Class Literature , and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was a recipient of a CLIR/Mellon Library of Congress Fellowship.

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Biden's star trek on climate change: ANN columnist

The writer says us president biden has boldly and rightly staked his reputation on saving the planet through climate action..

BANGKOK (THE NATION/ANN) - Joe Biden reaches a milestone on Thursday (April 29), marking his first 100 days as the 46th president of the United States. After four years of chaotic Trump governance, the world was relieved at how quickly Biden shifted to calm and competent professionalism in tackling the pandemic, economy and foreign affairs.

Biden used April 22, Earth Day, to call a Global Summit on climate change. The theme this year was to "Restore our Earth" after last year was marked by the pandemic, unprecedented natural disasters and the second-hottest year on record. It also witnessed record stock market prices coupled with rising poverty, indicating a growing wealth gap.

The 40 global leaders invited to the global summit included not only heads of G-20 countries but also of small nations like Bhutan, Gabon, Antigua and Barbuda and Marshall Islands. Within the Asian region, leaders of non-G20 members like Vietnam, Singapore and Bangladesh joined heavyweights like China's President Xi, Indian Prime Minister Modi, Indonesian President Jokowi, Japan's Prime Minister Suga and South Korean President Moon. Significantly, this was German Chancellor Merkel's last global summit appearance, while Pope Francis was also invited to add a moral tone.

President Biden's opening remarks tackled not just the existential threat of climate change but also jobs and getting the economy moving through clean investments. He urged global leaders to take concrete action to prevent the Earth's temperature from rising more than 1.5 deg C.

To show American leadership, he committed the US to two significant steps. The first is a formal commitment to cut US emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030. The second is to double his country's annual public climate financing for developing countries by 2024.

How significant was this Global Climate Summit? Optically, it could be the Green New Deal of the Century. Practically, it's all about delivery - whether the US can lead the world out of the climate warming trap with action and not just words. If America is not able to put its own house in order in terms of social inequality, economy and climate change, it will cede leadership elsewhere.

So far, Biden has had most of his nominated officials approved, so that tested professionals are now busy cleaning up Trump's legacies. This is a calmer and more effective White House, in sharp contrast to the constant barrage of angry and wild tweets emerging from the Trump White House.

Under Biden, the US has led the vaccination rollout, allowing the economy to reopen, and committing US$5.1 trillion (S$6.7 trillion) - US$0.9 trillion under Trump, US$1.9 trillion in February and US$2.3 trillion for infrastructure - in stimulus and infrastructure spending plans, equivalent to nearly a quarter of GDP. Economically, in the medium term, the US is set to have the fastest recovery ahead of Europe and Japan, though not China.

Given bipartisan support for US foreign and national security policies, Biden has retained many of Trump's hard-line actions on China. If anything, the tone has sharpened in maintaining China tariffs, sanctions and the decoupling of technology and reshoring of manufacturing.

The second phase of Biden's foreign policy is his decisions to pull out of Afghanistan and make overtures to Iran. The Afghanistan war is the longest in American history and has ended exactly as the Korean and Vietnam wars - in defeat disguised as withdrawal. The history books have been proved right: Afghanistan is a graveyard for empires, from Alexander the Great's army to the British to the Russians to American military might today.

What the latest Afghanistan war proved is that intervening with "humanitarian" intentions can end in worse human right abuses by destroying families, communities and even nations. This tragedy has been repeated time and again - in Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria - with neighbouring countries teetering on the brink of failure amid refugee influxes, overwhelmed infrastructure and, today, the pandemic catastrophe.

Simply put, the strategy behind the Climate Summit was to regain the moral high ground that Trump ceded by signalling a global race to the top on climate action, rather than a race to the bottom through another arms race. However, both will likely be pursued.

Three points stand out from Biden's maiden 100 days. First, the funding commitment to help the rest of the world tackle climate change is minimal. Doubling current US climate financing of US$2.5 billion to US$5.7 billion by 2024 is a mere 0.03 per cent of 2020 GDP - hardly generous compared to the 1948 Marshall Plan of US$12 billion or 4.3 per cent of GDP. Furthermore, this aid amounts to 0.3 per cent of the US$175 billion in US weapons exported last year, or 0.19 per cent of the US$3 trillion in quantitative easing created by the Fed last year.

Second, on what moral or legal grounds can the US justify condoning Japan's move to dump millions of gallons of Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean without the approval of those affected? Does transparency in doing bad things make them right?

Third, fixing the domestic economy by relying mainly on foreign funding with a US net liability to the rest of the world of US$14 trillion, or 67 per cent of GDP, is highly risky. As former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has warned, the large stimulus package will in the short run lift the economy, but at the cost of growing inflation risks. Any interest rate hikes will kill the asset bubbles and may trigger the next financial crisis.

In essence, Biden is trying to steer what American futurologist Buckminster Fuller called in 1978 the Critical Path of Spaceship Earth between two existential threats of nuclear destruction or climate burning. In the TV series Star Trek, the USS Enterprise ventured into deep space where no man has gone before, fully armed to the teeth, but with the Prime Directive of Non-Interference in alien societies' development.

President Biden has boldly and rightly staked his reputation on saving the planet through climate action.

As planetary citizens, we salute him. We will watch the next episode with great anticipation.

• Andrew Sheng is an ANN columnist. The Nation is a member of The Straits Times media partner Asia News Network, an alliance of 23 news media entities.

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Star Trek for potatoes: can a hi-tech farm save french fries from the climate crisis?

Researchers flock to New Brunswick, Canada, to test both cutting-edge and bygone methods of spud cultivation to meet a challenging future

A gainst a backdrop of blue skies and autumn leaves that would make an Instagram filter blush, a group of agricultural postgraduate students at a New Brunswick farm are tinkering with technology they hope will one day help solve an existential crisis: how to save the world’s potatoes.

The Canadian farm in Florenceville is owned by the McCain family, heirs to a 65-year-old frozen food business that is now the largest manufacturer of frozen potato products in the world and supplies restaurant giants including McDonald’s. The company claims one in every four fries in the world is a McCain fry.

But like an increasing number of people in the food and agricultural sector, McCain Foods executives worry what the weirding of the world’s weather means for their business and the future of the planet.

Max Koeune, a multilingual Luxembourger who is McCain’s CEO and president, has a global view of just how quickly the climate crisis is affecting the world. McCain sources its potatoes from about 3,500 farmers worldwide, from smallholders to giant corporate farms, and is updated daily on how the climate is changing.

“When I joined we had a bad crop every 10 years that was ‘historical’ – you wouldn’t know when it was coming. For the last 10 years, there’s been a bad crop somewhere every year,” Koeune says.

The New Brunswick “farm of the future” is one of a series of laboratories the company plans to roll out across the world as it tests what practices are best suited to saving potatoes, while cutting the company’s carbon emissions. McCain has committed to implementing regenerative agricultural practices across all of its potato acreage worldwide by the end of 2030.

The different geographies will allow McCain to assess different environments. New Brunswick has a short growing season and frigid winters . In South Africa, where another farm is being set up, potatoes grow all year round but water scarcity is more of an issue than in (historically) rainy Canada.

Not that water isn’t a problem in Canada too. Crops there were hit by floods in 2018 and 2019. A heat dome brought “head-shaking” temperatures to Canada and large parts of the US in 2021. Droughts in Europe and the UK have also hurt potato yields, driving them down by double digits. “We can no longer use the past to work out what’s going to happen with our business,” says Koeune.

With populations growing and temperatures rising, shifting to a more sustainable future in agriculture is essential. According to a 2018 analysis of the food system’s impact on the environment published in Nature , if the systems we use now don’t change, the environmental effects of the food system could increase by 50%-90% by 2050, “reaching levels that are beyond the planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity”.

You should think of the potato like a human being, says Koeune. “They like a temperate climate. They shiver when they are too cold and they sweat when they are too hot. That’s all energy that’s needed for them to grow.” After 10,000 years of domestication, our increasingly intemperate world now threatens the future of the third most important food crop after rice and wheat.

“What’s happening impacts us as growers, us as people, us as a company. We have to think about this differently,” says Koeune.

The model farm feels a little like Star Trek for potatoes: an international, multicultural crew armed with laptops, sensors and drones boldly going where no potato farmer has gone before.

A team of postgrads from Dalhousie University is working on a crop-spraying rig that uses artificial intelligence to identify bugs and weeds that can harm the crop. Instead of spraying the whole field, pattern-recognition systems spot unwanted invaders and direct nozzles to target them. It takes just 200 milliseconds to identify a beetle and spray it.

Humphrey Maambo, a PhD student, excitedly waves a small blue flag representing a bug under a nozzle to show how it works. Spritz! The flag is dead. He calculates the spray rig could cut insecticide use by 50%-80% and says it could easily be retrofitted to existing machines.

On a potato-sorter, or the “autonomous vision tuber grading machine”, sensors scan potatoes as they enter a storage shed. Red, green and blue lumps appear on a screen, like disassembled versions of Ugo Rondinone’s brightly colored rock sculptures . The machine scans for gravity and density, important for fry quality and problems like “hollow heart” – when cavities form in a tuber.

Traditionally, farmers have manually sampled a small number of potatoes from a field to ascertain quality. This new system, though, assesses seven out of every 200 potatoes, giving much more data to identify problems and even trace them back to where they arose.

Another unit reads gamma rays to draw up a physical and chemical map of the field. McCain scientists are also using DNA sampling to quantify the biodiversity of their plots, drones to see how the crop is growing close up and satellite imagery to capture the bigger picture.

Not all of the initiatives are hi-tech, and Yves Leclerc, director of agronomy, North America, at McCain Foods, thinks we are too obsessed with the toys. “It’s all about the soil. It’s the soil that matters,” he says earnestly, scampering off into the field to pull out plants and handfuls of soil.

The farm is trialing initiatives to reduce tilling, which enables the soil to retain more organic matter. Cover crops have been planted to protect the field once the potatoes have been harvested – last year the team planted 28 different varieties. It is an old practice in which plants provide nutrients for the soil and protect against pests – millet, for example, helps to protect against nematode worms. This year, Leclerc worries they have planted too much buckwheat and orchard grass. “We are dealing with a complex system. It’s not a simple recipe, all things evolve.”

The cover crops also help the soil retain water. “Holding water in the soil is the best way to overcome increasing temperatures,” says Dr Manphool Fageria, senior scientist and manager of the farm of the future. “In 2020 growers lost 35% of their yields here because it was so dry.”

Cover crops cost more, in terms of labor as well as seeds. But they are cheaper than the long-term alternative, soil erosion, says Fageria. And in a neat synthesis of old and new, all the data farmers are now able to collect can pinpoint which cover crops best help them increase their yields.

McCain’s fields stand in verdant contrast to the bare brown empty earth of its potato-farming neighbors. The company is hoping its experiments will encourage others to follow suit. Almost all of the world’s food is grown in the uppermost layer of soil, but half of the planet’s most productive soil has disappeared in the last 150 years due in part to modern farming practices.

In another field, an older method of farming is being tested. A herd of cows, borrowed from a neighboring farm, graze and lazily moo, crop the vegetation and unload manure. Fageria hops in to show how the herd is moved around the field with remote-controlled mobile fencing. Fences are expensive and Fageria is considering switching to electronic collars that would keep the cows within defined GPS coordinates. The cows seem very comfortable with Fageria, perhaps because he is a vegan or perhaps because he grew up on a farm in Rajasthan, India, herding camels, goats and sheep. “We have decoupled animal from plant production. In that system manure becomes a problem. In this one it’s a solution,” he says.

The enthusiasm is palpable but how might this come across to farmers struggling with soaring inflation and the climate emergency?

This project will not matter if farmers don’t buy into the change, Koeune admits. “Farmers are not interested in concepts. It has to be tangible. We have to do it, show that it works and prove that it’s economically viable,” he says. “Farmers believe what they see.”

It’s only year two but yields at the New Brunswick farm appear to be rising. And the rising power and falling costs of computers mean the technology the McCain team is experimenting with could be within reach of many farmers.

Koeune says McCain alone cannot change the world. On Thursday, McCain and other big companies including Mars and PepsiCo released a report arguing that the amount of sustainable agriculture needs to triple in size by 2030.

In France, McCain has partnered with Crédit Agricole to extend loans to farmers who invest in sustainable agriculture. McCain picks up the interest charges while the farmers repay the capital. It’s a deal that might make publicly owned ag companies wince but “as a family-owned company, McCain thinks in generations”, says Koeune. “There’s no good business for us if there isn’t a healthy agricultural community.”

McCain’s measures look promising, says Andrew Challinor, professor of climate impacts and a crop modeler at the University of Leeds in the UK. “Trialing new approaches and measuring success is a sensible first step before going to scale.”

But other experts suggested McCain needed to think bigger if it really wants to change the food system. “McCain is the supplier for McDonald’s, which serves more beef than any restaurant chain on the planet,” says Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, Arizona. “Cover crops and no-till [farming practices] have become window dressing for business as usual,” she adds. “These practices may have some benefits but not if they support the overproduction of the most climate-intensive foods like beef.”

Raj Patel , author and professor, says “it’s good to see reductions in fertilizer use, and a move away from monoculture,” but to make a difference, he adds, means pushing against current economic policy, which supports the most environmentally damaging food production activities.

“There is going to be a lot of skepticism,” admits Koeune. Mindful of the greenwashing that has undone so many other “sustainable” initiatives, McCain says it will regularly publish its findings and be as transparent as possible as it tries to win people over. People shouldn’t underestimate the reluctance of the agricultural sector to change, Koeune says. “But the cost of not changing is being demonstrated on a daily basis. It’s relentless.”

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Star Trek 2009 Is Worth Revisiting 15 Years Later

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

I grew up seeing a handful of Star Trek: The Original Series episodes randomly on television. They somewhat caught my attention, but my Star Trek journey truly began with The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Until I decided to start doing full re-watches in college, my primary interactions with Captain Kirk and his crew were the movies. As much as I enjoyed and respected that original crew, I always felt they were harder to relate to than some of my favorites. Like most fans, I was unsure about a reboot, but something in the back of my mind hoped that this would get me into these characters even more. Although Star Trek 2009 has its flaws, I remember leaving the theater with renewed vigor for the franchise and the possibilities of future adventures.

This, however, was not a universally shared opinion. Many fans didn’t like this new version of their beloved classic Trek, claiming that it wasn’t deserving of the title. A lot of the names behind the camera had set off red flags, but even if that was overreacting, what they saw on screen was flashier, faster-paced, more action-based, and violent, with the younger characters full of drama and at each other’s throats. This incarnation didn’t feel right to some lifelong fans and was hard to accept. Some enjoyed the movie, but saw it as too much of a popcorn flick to be real Trek, designed more for general audiences and less for the devoted, as if the filmmakers took all of the wrong lessons from First Contact and set it in an alternate universe – a decision that seemed to be made primarily due to merchandising rights – gave them carte blanche to completely spin the dial when it came to tone.

There are some valid arguments here, but most of it comes down to preference and what individual fans expect from their Trek. Star Trek 2009 is a reboot that still acknowledges the original timeline, even bringing over Spock from the Prime universe, things are changed, but the project does make an effort to appease everyone. For most, the new ship designs, recrafted sets, and polished visuals take a back seat to the characters and how they’re handled.

I’m a huge fan of the cast, solid choices almost all around. It is amusing to see Thor at the beginning. Zachary Quinto as Spock does an excellent job, and it’s easy to hang on to his words looking for the small bits of emotion that might escape. His relationship with the incredible Zoe Saldana as Uhura enriches them both. She compliments him and stands on her own. The character is strong, assertive, compassionate when needed, and works well under pressure. Not to mention the wonderful Karl Urban’s take on Dr. McCoy, who has some of the best lines in the film and possesses a wonderfully unorthodox demeanor and unruly presence. These are the main performances, but they are assisted by John Cho’s portrayal of Hikaru Sulu, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and Anton Yelchin, who played Pavel Chekov. I also feel like we overlook this universe’s version of Christopher Pike because Bruce Greenwood has a wonderful space dad presence and feels different than Anson Mount’s incarnation but still regal and heroic.

“Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.” Leonard “Bones” McCoy

We always need a solid villain, though, and Trek has had some great ones, but that is never guaranteed. Captain Nero is one of my absolute favorites, certainly my #1 Romulan. In a way, he’s more Spock’s villain, a darker reflection that plays off the Vulcan vs Romulan connection, and although there should be no one to blame for what happened to his planet, he needs someone to hate. Sure, Nero could have tried to go warn his homeworld or spent that time in this alternate reality building a new life, something constructive, but he was looking for a furious retribution to help make that pain mean something.

I think Eric Bana brought some heat to the role and he looked fantastic with the pirate vibe and a converted mining ship that resembled a savage beast on the outside and a demented clock inside. He’s quiet until the violence erupts, a working-class villain who calls Starfleet captains by their first names condescendingly while he plays with his prey, and the crew wants to ensure he’s dealt with so much that once he refuses help, they make sure there’s no way he could slip through time again, firing everything, risking their safety just to make sure Nero’s dead.

Sometimes it’s good to appreciate raw hatred and the lengths someone can go to out of pettiness. The melodrama is thick in space. We see from that first glorious scene a tragic battle, where this is a darker timeline, and people are going to die and be forced to make sacrifices. The music is also a huge boost here, no, I don’t mean The Beastie Boys, but Michael Giacchino‘s score. The notes we hear are bombastic, creating a bold sound that is also meant to jar us at times, and it succeeds in pushing the tone and giving the heroic moments some extra weight. The original theme playing over the credits also helped.

Captain Kirk isn’t nailed

Right, I’ve put off talking about Chris Pine ’s version of Kirk long enough. I enjoy the character, his new origin, being birthed and christened by such a devastating event, forged in phaser fire and photon torpedoes, tested from breath one. He’s an angry kid with a lot to prove, just like Pike challenges him on, and his bullshit is often called out or catches up to him, the little “cupcake.” Sure, making captain so quick doesn’t make sense, even if they explained how weak the fleet was then, but that’s not my issue. I think it’s Pine. I don’t dislike him, but even after he grew on me, I’m still wondering what’s missing in his performance because it isn’t as wooden as some of his others, and he’s just a dialed-up, younger, more petulant version of the character I know, but I also think he’s the only character that doesn’t sit right with me. In a movie where even the minor characters all have moments that show their personalities and give them quirks that feel right, Kirk is my least favorite part of Star Trek 2009’s ensemble cast.

The constant lens flares, the flashy lights on top of a duller stage, the cluttered battle scenes, those weird monsters on the ice planet, there are several decisions that I understand why fans question this movie. It goes for a unique look but almost makes the film harder to follow. When things are pumping this hard, it can be tough to get into the smaller details. I absolutely love the way the movie looks in some parts, especially on the planets. My favorite moment like this is when Kirk and Sulu fall after disabling the drill and are teleported out of mid-air, landing on the transporter pad and breaking it. Little details make this 2009 movie feel like a legitimate upgrade as a reboot without trying to step on the past.

I was prepared for this movie. A friend loaned me the prequel comic, a story I genuinely enjoyed, but thought that more of the scenes, or at least the information from it, should have made it into the film. Some of the story elements feel like they come out of nowhere without it. But for many new fans, this is the one that finally got them into Star Trek, made them want to go watch and read more about it, and see what else the franchise had to offer. I know I went and watched more TOS episodes after this, I wanted to prepare for the eventual sequels which, admittedly, didn’t work out so well, but before that, this movie had me excited for what was to come. I’ll always appreciate Star Trek 2009, no matter how different it may have been.

The post Star Trek 2009 Is Worth Revisiting 15 Years Later appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More .

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William Shatner says his trip to space ‘felt like a funeral’ for Earth

The Star Trek actor, a longtime environmental advocate, described feeling grief for a planet in peril

William Shatner expected that going to space in October 2021 would induce “the ultimate catharsis” — a sense of connection between all living things. Instead, having stared into “the vicious coldness of space,” he found himself confounded as the Blue Origin spaceship landed and he stepped back onto Earth.

Touching the ground, Shatner wept, and he wasn’t sure why.

“Everybody else was shaking bottles of champagne, and it was quite a sense of accomplishment. And I didn’t feel that way at all. I was not celebrating. I was, I don’t know, shaking my fists at the gods,” Shatner told The Washington Post.

It took Shatner several hours to realize what he was experiencing: “great grief … for the planet.” The actor, now 91, had been involved in environmental causes for years. But his Oct. 13 trip aboard the Blue Origin spaceship, which made him the oldest human to visit space, gave that work new urgency, he said. Juxtaposing its “cold, dark, black emptiness” with “the warm nurturing of Earth below” filled him with deep despair and sparked a realization.

“I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound,” he wrote in an excerpt of his new book, “ Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder ,” that was published Thursday by Variety .

William Shatner, Star Trek’s Capt. Kirk, flies to space and back, adding to this year’s number of civilian astronauts

For three seasons in the mid-to-late 1960s, Shatner brought space, the final frontier, into American homes as Capt. James Kirk in “ Star Trek: The Original Series .” It was around the time he was portraying the fictional commanding officer of the USS Enterprise that Shatner read Rachel Carson’s seminal ecological text “Silent Spring,” which he described last year as an eye-opener.

“I read it and began to bleat about the warming of the planet,” he said. “But nobody took it seriously.”

Still, Shatner kept bleating about the environment. He starred in the 1986 film “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” in which his crew travels back in time to save humpback whales, which were endangered at the time, because they’re the only creatures who can communicate with an alien probe that threatens to destroy the Earth. The movie was inspired by Greenpeace , which saw donations increase after the blockbuster’s release and reacted to the film by saying it “subtly reinforces why Greenpeace exists.”

In 2009 , Shatner scolded Hewlett-Packard for failing to keep its promise to produce a “toxic-free” computer. And he’s consistently warned that overpopulation and climate change are existential threats to humanity.

After playing a fictional spaceship captain for decades, Shatner finally got his own chance to venture into the final frontier. In August 2021, two months before his civilian flight, Shatner said he wanted to go to space so that he could look back at “the blue orb” and hinted that “a very enterprising and entrepreneurial friend” had once explored how to get Shatner on a civilian flight.

Two months later, Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced that Shatner and three other passengers would fly into space on its second human spaceflight mission. In a news release, Shatner described the opportunity to see space for himself “a miracle.” (Bezos also owns The Post.)

A day before taking off, Shatner was excited for his imminent trip to space. In one video clip, he joked about jumping out of the spaceship capsule. In another, he said he planned to have his nose pressed against the window, and that when he did, he didn’t want to see “a little gremlin” looking back at him.

The NS-18 crew on the way to the training centre in our @Rivian . Space is so close we can taste it! 24 hours until launch. 🚀 @CaptainClinical @AudreyKPowers @WilliamShatner @blueorigin pic.twitter.com/dyE1BAO4sW — Chris Boshuizen (@cboshuizen) October 12, 2021

Then, it was launch day, and at 9:49 a.m. Central time, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket — named after Alan Shepard, the first American to go into space — blasted off. Shatner’s flight lasted a little more than 10 minutes, climbing to a height of about 66 miles, four miles beyond one of the thresholds generally considered the edge of space. While in flight, the crew saw Earth below and the dark abyss on the other side, experiencing weightlessness for a few minutes. Shatner said he looked out the window, preoccupied with the color and curvature of Earth beneath him, even as he endured the discomfort of weightlessness and then the “ominous blackness” of space.

Then, they descended. Slowed by parachutes, their capsule landed in the desert near Van Horn, Tex., as Blue Origin celebrated a successful mission. In the immediate aftermath of the spaceflight, Shatner thanked Bezos for giving him “the most profound experience I can imagine.”

“I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. It’s extraordinary,” Shatner said. “I hope I never recover from this. I hope I maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it.”

William Shatner, at 90, keeps seeking that next personal frontier

He didn’t, he told The Post on Sunday. But he did process it over the ensuing hours, days and months. He described the experience as “a clarion call” to stop climate change. Shatner said the devastating effects are already beginning to show, citing Hurricane Ian’s recent destruction of the Florida Gulf Coast and torrential rains in Pakistan. Such seismic forces have the power to snuff out animal and plant species, sometimes without humans ever knowing they existed.

“I am aware that every moment that goes by, things that took 5 billion years to emerge are going extinct,” Shatner told The Post. “We’ll never know them.”

Referring to the effort to build the atomic bomb in World War II, he called for a second “ Manhattan Project of scientists,” a brain trust charged with removing carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

“There’s no time for war,” he told The Post, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “That only contributes to the coming extinctions, which will include human beings.”

Shatner then mentioned the contrast between his expectation of the flight versus what happened while free-floating nearly 350,000 feet above the Earth a year ago. He described the experience in his book excerpt.

“It filled me with dread,” he wrote. “My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”

Beavers are helping fight climate change, satellite data shows

Satellites reveal denser green patches of vegetation where beavers were reintroduced.

As global warming intensifies droughts, floods and wildfires around the world, scientists in western United States are turning to beavers to help reverse some of the damage.

Scientists at Utah's Boise State University and Utah State University are using satellite data to identify streams where once-eradicated beavers can be re-introduced to boost vegetation. They're also recording how water abundance and vegetation bordering those streams changes once beavers return — metrics of environmental health.

"The real value of using satellite data for monitoring is that there are people on the ground working hard and implementing things like increasing water availability, increasing fish and species habitat," Jodi Brandt, an associate professor at Boise State University who leads a team using satellite data to quantify the impact of beavers on local ecosystems, said in a previous NASA statement . "The more support we can give them, the more broadly these practices can proliferate."

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Beavers are "furry weapons of climate resilience," according to one New York Times article. They are innately wired to build dams on rivers and streams, a measure of protection from predators like bears, cougars and wolves. These dams, composed of materials sourced from trees, branches, twigs, stones and grasses cut by beavers' teeth, slow the flow of water that would otherwise gush through the region, according to the National Park Service . The pools subsequently created by the dams then offer a safe haven for the beaver to build their oven-shaped dens while also boosting green vegetation — in turn, this reduces the risk of forest fires and mitigating the effects of droughts and floods that have become increasingly frequent and severe in recent years due to human-induced global warming.

Until the late 1800s, beavers had been common in lakes, streams and marshes throughout North America. However, unregulated trapping driven by a new demand for beaver fur reduced the animal's population from as many as 400 million beavers in the 1600s to just 10 million to 15 million today, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife .

In response to the decline, California, Idaho and Utah are among a handful of U.S. states that have recently launched major beaver restoration programs. Sure enough, data from a NASA satellite shows denser patches of green vegetation where beavers have been reintroduced when compared to areas where their population is limited. For instance, a stream near Preston, Idaho, is now flowing 40 days longer into the year thanks to over 200 beaver dams that appeared after ranchers began beaver rewilding, according to a previous NASA statement .

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"Prior to beaver trapping, beaver dams were just about everywhere in the west. So what we're attempting to do is to bring beaver dam densities back to historic levels where possible," he said. "In doing so, we're building important drought resiliency and restoring stream areas."

The online Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool, or BRAT, uses data from NASA's Landsat and European Sentinel satellites to spot restoration sites that would benefit the most from beaver-led reintroduction. The tool takes into account available trees that beavers could use for building dams, thereby increasing water flow, vegetation and supporting in-place human infrastructure. Once the researchers choose a site, they attract beavers by constructing temporary beaver-dam-like structures that make the area more hospitable for beaver families.

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Using satellite data allows researchers to not only kickstart these decades-long restoration efforts but also monitor the results over time, for which there are often insufficient funds available, Brandt said in a recent NASA statement . She noted satellite data can also provide empirical evidence of the restoration efforts which can be used to boost funding and support from federal agencies, conservation groups, land trusts and other businesses.

"That's what applied science is all about – getting the users whatever is needed for environmental decision making," Cindy Schmidt, an associate program manager for NASA Ecological Conservation effort, said in the statement. "The future of our planet relies on these commercial partners working with us to do things more sustainably."

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Sharmila Kuthunur is a Seattle-based science journalist covering astronomy, astrophysics and space exploration. Follow her on X @skuthunur.

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• Ken Fabian They aren't really fixing emissions. Some recovery of previously lost biomass by allowing beavers to exist and make dams again is a good thing but it is not an emissions and climate solution. And the fossil fuel sector appropriating these (modest) overall emissions reductions from the land use sector to justify ongoing fossil fuel emissions is a travesty. Reply
• Classical Motion We consumers and the world leaders are in the midst of generating the greatest fossil fuel emissions ever seen. We will all see, if this present climate theory holds out. And the affects/effects of it. Man made climate change will no longer be only theory. It will be a completed experiment. I would short the proposal. For the earth might bloom. And climate predictions have never turned out. Reply
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Do Star Trek's Uniforms Change for Different Environments?

• Starfleet uniforms in Star Trek have evolved over the years, but they still maintain the iconic high-contrast color scheme.
• Recent Star Trek productions have introduced rapid changes in uniform designs, with specific variants for different environments and missions.
• Despite the bold colors, Starfleet officers are always recognizable, with modern shows showcasing advanced technology for immediate uniform adjustments.

Do the Starfleet uniforms on Star Trek change depending on the different environments that Star Trek characters go to? There have been multiple variations of the Starfleet uniform in every Star Trek show , and the most famous Starfleet uniforms evolved from the easily-recognizable contrast of a dark lower half and brightly colored top popularized by Star Trek: The Original Series . Similar iconic styles and color schemes were used on Star Trek: The Next Generation , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , and Star Trek: Voyager , only swapping the red and gold associated with the command and operations divisions after the long run of the militaristic "Monster Maroon" Starfleet uniform.

Recent productions of Star Trek see the Starfleet uniforms undergoing rapid changes on a fairly regular basis, with a new Starfleet uniform seemingly issued every few years or so. Even after slight deviations, Starfleet keeps returning to the high-contrast uniforms that always seem to come back in fashion, with a particularly sharp 32nd-century Starfleet uniform in Star Trek: Discovery . There's no mistaking a Starfleet officer when you see one, but the bold colors that make Star Trek uniforms work so well on television could theoretically pose a problem in real-world situations, when away missions take Starfleet officers to unknown environments.

Star Treks Starfleet Uniform Colors: What They Mean & Why They Changed

Voyager's garrett wang wonders why star trek's uniforms don't change, neither starfleet nor star trek's aliens have camouflage uniforms.

On The Delta Flyers podcast, Star Trek: Voyager 's Harry Kim actor Garrett Wang pauses during a discussion of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2, episode 1, "The Homecoming", to point out one of the major differences that Wang noticed between real-world military uniforms and the uniforms seen throughout Star Trek. This detail isn't limited to Starfleet's standard uniforms, since other Star Trek species seem to do the same thing. Read Wang's quote and listen to The Delta Flyers , starting at the 48:21 timestamp.

Garrett Wang: "One thing I've noticed about all of Star Trek that is not consistent with modern military organizations is that depending on the environment, the uniform changes color. But yet, in Trek, it's always the same. For instance, here they're in the quarry, they should've had stone gray Cardassian uniforms, but if our military goes to the desert, they have desert camo. But you don't see that on Star Trek. Whether it's Cardassian, or Starfleet, or Klingon, no one ever changes their fatigues. It's always the same."

Star Trek Uniforms Do Have Environmental Variants

Starfleet officers wear uniform variations when they need to.

Historically, Star Trek characters did wear the same Starfleet uniform on away missions and on starships, no matter what awaited the away team on unexplored planets. But that detail began to change when the 90s era of Star Trek introduced variant Starfleet uniforms designed for specific environments, like a gray rock climbing uniform in Star Trek: Voyager season 3, episode 16 "Blood Fever", or a lightweight Starfleet uniform designed for desert environments, seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 7, episode 2 "Shadows and Symbols". Both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager included Starfleet standard-issue EV suits for hazardous conditions like space walks.

While they weren't tailored to a specific environment, per se, racing variants of the Starfleet uniform were worn by Lt. Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), Lt. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), and Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang), in Star Trek: Voyager season 7, episode 3, "Drive".

The modern era of Star Trek expanded the possibilities for Starfleet uniforms designed for specific environments. Nearly every new Star Trek show featured extravehicular, field operations, athletic, or combat-ready versions of the Starfleet uniform. As an animated series, Star Trek: Lower Decks ran with even more variants, including specialized uniforms for rain, swamps, wetsuits, and skydiving. Most impressively, Star Trek: Discovery 's 32nd-century technology allowed for immediate uniform adjustments according to planetary conditions, including hazard gear. While it was rare for Starfleet uniforms in any era to completely blend in with the environment, the characters on Star Trek were undoubtedly protected from harsh environments in style.

Source: The Delta Flyers season 10, episode 1, "The Homecoming"

Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Lower Decks are all streaming on Paramount+.