‘It’s positive, not apocalyptic’: can climate change art help save the planet?
The future was a fantastic place, once. Twenty years ago, the BBC’s pioneering science show Tomorrow’s World came to an end after 1,400 episodes. First beamed into living rooms across the nation back in 1965, the series envisioned the inventions of the near future, offering a blueprint of blue sky thinking.
As well as introducing products that soon became commonplace – such as artificial grass, the pocket calculator, the mobile phone and the robotic vacuum cleaner – it stretched the imagination to breaking point with the robot snooker player, paper underwear and the worm omelette, a protein-packed dish predicted to take over dinner tables.
While the early episodes of Tomorrow’s World opted for 60s optimism and, towards the series’ end in the 90s, dreamed of better things, the future of the planet today in England last year and annual flood damage costs could rise by 20% due to the crisis. Eggy worms don’t seem too scrambled an idea now.
