I went to watch The Day After Tomorrow the day before yesterday. This is the big 'global warming end of the world' disaster film, the one that's supposed to jolt George Bush into taking climate change seriously. Fat chance, but probably still worth watching. Waiting outside in the foyer I thought the world was about to be overrun with popcorn instead ("Prime Minister, there's a Butterkist avalanche about to innundate Stratford") but that turned out to be the underage queue for Harry Potter nextdoor. Outside it had just started raining. I took this as a sign.
For the purposes of this film the whole global warming timescale is condensed into a fortnight, from first snowfall on New Delhi to the complete glaciation of the Northern hemisphere. You'd not realised that global warming meant an instant Ice Age, had you, but let's not allow good science to stand in the way of sensational special effects. And let's not focus on the billions of deaths across the globe either, oh no, let's focus on one dysfunctional family and a few associated hangers on and watch them survive. Hurrah for the American dream, for it will prevail, despite being responsible for most of the greenhouses gases in the first place.
I was reminded that all Hollywood disaster movies follow one very important geographical rule, which is that global catastrophes always hit either the western or the eastern seaboard of the United States (plus two other world capitals for thirty seconds each, just for the international dimension). The world has a land surface area of 60 million square miles but the swarm of killer tornadoes just happens to wreak havoc in the 470 square miles called Los Angeles. Where does the freak tidal wave hit? Why, New York City of course. And the eye of the North American killer ice storm may be only a couple of miles across but it just happens to pass directly over Manhatten Island during the last fifteen minutes of the film. Moral of the tale: if you insist on living in the USA, live in the middle.
