Every holiday season, there is only one cli-fi classic that is truly mandatory watching for those seeking to survive our globally warmed apocalypse, and that is Hugh Harman’s underrated, unforgettable, Peace On Earth.
Unlike the warm, wonderful classics well known to so many — The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, and so on — Harman’s animated anti-war masterpiece is both a harrowing and instructive climate fiction about what happens when humanity’s irrepressible, irreconcilable death-drive pushes itself — and its planet (and that planet’s myriad species) — to the brink of extinction.
Five years ago, I wrote an in-depth explainer on Peace On Earth’s fascist dystopia and rewilding utopia for Christmas, which appeared here on Morphizm as well as on Cartoon Brew, when the short classic celebrated its 75th birthday.
Since then, our exponential climate crisis, a world war unlike any other humanity has ever witnessed or engineered, has only grown worse. And so I have resolved to return every five years to highlight the wisdom and wonder of Peace On Earth, until its brutal, bewildering message fully sinks into our thick skulls.
Check out my extensive explainer below, along with some other cli-fi classics we must watch and learn from before the climate crisis claims us all.
Cli-Fi: Peace On Earth’s Intertextual Extinction
Ten Years After: Cli-Fi
Cli-Fi: The Age Of Stupid Gets Smart
Cli-Fi Is Real
Ultimate Expression Of Hope: An Interview With The Breadwinner Director, Nora Twomey
Cli-Fi: The Legend of Korra
Chasing Ice And Coral, Running Out of Time
Chasing Ice Director Jeff Orlowski: We Are Slaves to Fossil Fuels
