The extreme political right are showing their hatred for the movie (that I reviewed recently) Avatar presumably because of its pro-environmental and anti-military themes. It is hard for me to appreciate the viewpoint of those who see something positive in environmental destruction and in killing people but that seems to be where these kooks end up.
There are in fact a number of early movies that take up environmental issues and even specific climate change themes.
I recently viewed once again the film Soylent Green a science fiction classic that takes up environmental themes and provides early (around 1973) glimpses of the possible implications of climate change with explicit mention here of the greenhouse effect. But I really want to see Frank Capra’s Unchained Goddess which, in 1958, very directly examined the specific anthropogenic warming hypothesis – a clip is here. I’ll try to chase this up in my local video store and report back.
I also saw Avatar (my wife was very keen to see it) – she reacted more to the theme about the treatment of indigenous people (especially Native Americans) – than the environmental themes – though its certainly there.
The early 70s had quite a few dystopia films (Planet of the Apes, Logans Run, Westworld, Clockwork Orange – I’m sure I’m missing some) – there are some Japanese animated dystopias (thought I don’t remember if they are specifically climate change – tend to be more technological)