The Most Environmentally Unfriendly Movie Plots

Let's revisit the many ways in which we've dreamed of destroying our planet.
By Jordan Burchette
Premiere.com

For decades, moviegoers have been transfixed by natural calamity on a global scale. But apocalypse is nothing without a villain, and there is no greater nemesis of all creation than man. Be it global warming, nuclear proliferation or meddling with the mantle, in the eternal battle between humans and nature we’re the Globetrotters and the earth is the lowly Washington Generals. So let's revisit the many ways in which we've dreamed of destroying our planet!


The Simpsons Movie (2007)


The Toll: Thousand-eyed squirrels combine with the untimely demise of Green Day to foreshadow the environmental quarantine of geographically-ambiguous Springfield.

Blame It On... Homer. His reckless disposal of a silo full of pig waste into already polluted Lake Springfield touches off a series of disasters that nearly destroys the town.


An Inconvenient Truth (2006)


The Toll: Al Gore travels America in an SUV aiding people with sleep disorders by using facts about the expeditious rate at which the earth is becoming Cleveland.

Blame It On... You, us, everyone. By simply reading this you've already melted a polar bear.


Firestorm (1998)


The Toll: Approximately a Tuesday in August worth of hinterland destruction in Southern California.

Blame It On... A group of convicts who start a forest blaze, then pose as firefighters to make their escape. Fortunately, Howie Long's dramatics extinguish everything in a 500-mile radius.


Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986)


The Toll: Students in a New Jersey high school begin spontaneously mutating, reproducing orally and melting into slime at a rate far greater than most students in New Jersey high schools.

Blame It On... Radioactive runoff from an adjacent nuclear power plant. Sure. That's the reason.


C.H.U.D. (1984)


The Toll: In New York, disappearances are up and the homeless populace is mysteriously down.

Blame It On... Regulatory oversight. Toxic waste, prohibited from transport through the city, is instead stored underneath it, where exposed vagrants mutate into cannibalistic fiends. In real life, they've all since moved to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.


The Core (2003)


The Toll: A super storm crumbles the Coliseum, unfiltered sunlight evaporates the Golden Gate Bridge and every stated law of physics is roundly ignored in order to get earth spinning again.

Blame It On... Electromagnetic chaos caused by the suspension of earth's rotation... caused by a secret project that uses earthquakes as weapons... caused by Dick Cheney, probably.


The Day After Tomorrow (2004)


The Toll: In what could have served as a prequel to Waterworld, Los Angeles gets flattened by tornadoes, Manhattan is transformed into Atlantis, and Dennis Quaid walks 94 snow-covered miles in an hour and a half.

Blame It On... Global climate change coupled with Al Gore's aggressive self-marketing campaign.


The Postman (1997)


The Toll: The intermittence of rainfall and sunlight have a devastating effect on earth and civilization in this remarkably predictive vision of Kevin Coster's future.

Blame It On... Nuclear war, which spreads plumes of ash that blanket the sky, turning most of the planet into wasteland. OK, we're finally convinced. No more nuclear wars!


Mad Max (1980)


The Toll: Global gas shortages beget anarchy as marauding bands of outlaw biker gangs threaten to subvert the social order.

Blame It On... A lack of alternative energy sources. If they can just one day find a way to convert crazy into energy, Mel Gibson should get one last starring role!


Medicine Man (1992)


The Toll: Hundreds of miles of rainforest are scorched and a cure for cancer is lost. Which, if it means enduring Lorraine Bracco's incessant shrieking, may not be worth re-discovering anyway.

Blame It On... Third-World over-development. A logging company, in its zeal to turn the Amazon into end tables, unwittingly razes the village and research facility containing the cure.


Idiocracy (2005)


The Toll: Five hundred years in the future, water is strictly reserved for toilets and the planet is infertile and barren, save for trash mountains that extend thousands of feet into the sky.

Blame It On... Evolutionary decline. With only the least of the species doing its reproducing, man becomes too dumb to care for earth. A chilling vision only 496 years off in its calculations.


Waterworld (1995)


The Toll: True to title, the entire planet becomes submerged under water, leaving only a rumored stretch of land no one has ever actually seen. Just like the movie Waterworld!

Blame It On... The thawing of polar ice caps resultant from global warming. Would it kill you to turn off the light when you leave a room?

Read the whole article at Premiere.com.