This chapter considers contemporary environmentalism through the lens of ecotopia, a modification of the utopian form that includes the ecological as a core consideration. The idea that the nonhuman world should have meaningful political status is a radical transformation of the usual terms of utopia, rendering certain utopian tropes (like the technology-fueled extinction of vermin or pests) impossible while activating other new possibilities both for the transformation of the social and for individual self-actualization. In particular, ecotopias are distinct from most utopias in their abiding suspicion of technology; in an era of escalating climate disaster, this suspicion of technology becomes increasingly urgent even as it becomes complicated by the perceived need for some miraculous techno-fix to ameliorate the worst impacts of climate change even in ecotopia. A short coda discusses real-world ecotopian projects, attempts to make such visions real as a model to others for what might yet be.

While literary texts rely on words to help readers imagine climate change, film relies on a different narrative toolset of images, motion, and sound, pre-packaging our perception, if not our affective response. In climate change cinema, such pre-packaging has tended toward the dark and disastrous as filmmakers are torn between the desire to forewarn and the need to entertain and make money. It has thus become a critical commonplace that cinematic depictions of climate change offer a spectacle-driven, apocalyptic vision that is at odds with the diffuse experience of climate and the slow violence of climate change. Some critics fear such dark visions might prove detrimental to addressing the issue because people end up disengaging from it. The first part of the chapter explores emotions cued by dystopian depictions of climate doom. The second part turns to two films that have tried an entirely different affective approach – Cyril Dion and Melanie Laurent’s Demain and Damon Gameau’s 2040 – by presenting possible solutions to the climate crisis along with desirable futures, in a mode that is often humorous, witty, and uplifting. The chapter argues that both strategies have their place in climate change cinema, and both can be effective with some audiences.

The contemporary pertinence of green utopianism in its myriad manifestations lies in its trenchant critiques of the ecological deficiencies of the present and its imaginative projections of more ethical modes of human–animal–nature relationality. The extant climate and ecological crisis demands a radical rethink of how we relate to the non-human world. Thus, drawing largely on green utopian and posthuman theory, this chapter features critical assessments of human–non-human relations as depicted in four canonical ecotopian literary texts: Aldous Huxley’s Island (2009), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge (1990) and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home (1985). The extent to which the works deconstruct traditional human/nature dualisms and hierarchies is explored and discussed in depth. The chapter concludes with ruminations on potentially ethical modes of relationship that move beyond hierarchical and antagonistic structurings of ‘otherness’ and incorporate reverence and respect for irreducible alterity.