Lit What is the moral responsibility of Star Wars in the age of climate change?

Does Star Wars have a moral responsibility to create ecological fables in the age of climate change?

Star Wars tends to tell tales of war and conflict and human inner moral development, and the Saga recast the conflict of a metaphysical level with the concept of the balance of the Force.

The Force is a uniting spiritual and ecological concept. It vibes with what Thich Nhat Hahn termed "interbeing." Does Star Wars have a responsibility to tell stories relevant to that concept that guides connection to the ecological crises that are looming in the 21st century? Does Star Wars have a moral responsibility to put it's stamp on popular culture to influence thinking on these matters?

How does that effect or inform the merchandising side of Star Wars?

It's something that I struggled with in terms of my spirituality, my spiritual and religious life and how Star Wars has influenced my spiritual journey. The merchandising, and accompanying resource consumption, waste and labor issues, also seem often at odds with the fundamental concepts behind Star Wars.

I think it does have such a responsibility. The New Jedi Order of Legends came right up to the line without ever fully embracing the implications of it's storyline, antagonists or resolution.

What do others think?

 

As long as there is demand, there will be supply. For that to change, you would have to fundamentally alter society/human nature which seems, unfortunately, impossible. That being said, the people in charge of merchandising and the labor/business side of things (I suppose that would be Disney, but I'm not sure who specifically) could certainly stand to be more environmentally conscious. This would be not only responsible, but good PR which (despite what some would tell you) Disney loves. The reason they aren't is, I imagine, cost. But that's a poor excuse.

In terms of story-telling, I would be very much in favor of Star Wars stories that confront or explore themes of climate change. I don't believe that would be out of character for Star Wars to do, as it has always had an element of social commentary. So...I guess to your question, my answer would be yes.

 

I am honestly surprised Star Wars hasn’t really covered climate change.

 

I think the setting presents some difficulties to anything more direct than analogy to climate change on earth. If the Star Wars denizens have a problem with global warming on one of their planets they can turn on a weather machine

 

I think it needs to be a smaller scale story. Basically happening on one planet. Rebels actually would have been great for this. Since most of the show was on Lothal. And I guess you get that to an extent. In season 4.

 

Star Wars has covered climate change - the weather forecast for Alderaan went from 20 degrees, 20 degrees, to +5,000 in less than a day.

More seriously I think it is more in the background and alluded to. Does anyone think that Exegol reached its current state naturally? Or Tatooine? Coruscant's plaza in Mando has the last visible natural surface on the planet. But this is very much blink and you miss it.

I think they could do more with it, especially with the way the Jedi and Sith tend to see the world.

 

George Lucas is a master of the Hero's Journey form of archetypal storytelling. Themes of morality and ethics are part and parcel of this type of storytelling, which of course includes the relationship between humans/sentient beings and the environment. There's the whole concept of getting hyperspace travel from space whales. There are also different worlds and cultures. Kashyyk vs Coruscant. Living in harmony with nature vs living in a durasteel jungle. Naboo with their balanced use of technology and respect for the environment. The Ssi-ruuk or the Yuuzhan Vong. World Devastators destroying the Mon Calamari & Quaren homeworld, which works in a way about change in weather being catastrophic. Caamas. The Noghri.

I have no clue how it's been handled by Disney, but this has definitely been addressed in everything that was made under George's watch. If you are looking for a 1:1 exact representation about what "climate change" is in 2023 in the GFFA, then it's not there. But if you are looking for the deeper meaning about living in balance, respecting others and the environment, overcoming climate disasters, crop failures, etc it is all throughout the entire EU, PT & OT.

 

I agree that ecological themes have been present since the very beginning, I also think they are subtle enough that they aren't particularly obvious to a lot of people.

I mean, racial justice and feminism have been almost extremely overt themes in ye ol' EU via official Imperial male chauvinism and human supremacy and yet we have people lamenting the "wokeness" of new Star Wars.

I think it's possible to have a story of the Force being out of balance, but rather than being manifest solely in ascendant Sith political rule and suppression of the Jedi Order you have random Force events in the galaxy. This could be triggered by Sith or dark sider users, or perhaps by the ways in which sentient beings are impacting the living Force through their spiritual/emotional lives and lifestyles. One would think deforestation, greenhouse emissions, polluted water ways etc would have a distinct impact on the living Force. Perhaps it would be localized to sectors or planetary systems in the case of Star Wars, but I could see such a thing happening on a galaxywide scale as well.

I'd prefer a situation where a Chosen One isn't necessary, much as I religiously have a soft spot for messianism, I think a more collectivist or communitarian solution would be more interesting. This actually could be a fruitful route for the Dawn of the Jedi era to explore. If we are talking Biblical epic type things, the Bible is all about massive ecological events when people aren't right with God. Maybe there-in lies the origins of the Jedi Order.

DOTJ comics had this, though localized to Tython itself with extreme Force weather events when the living Force was out of balance because of the Je'daii inhabitants.

 

People complaining about "wokeness" (however one defines that) is exactly the reason we should be pushing for such topics.

 

I think you might be underestimating Star Wars fans. There has been a lot of discussion over the years on the subtle and overt themes in the PT & OT. For example the Feminine vs Masculine in the PT. There are subtle changes in Padme over the trilogy which become very obvious in ROTS, as she almost seems to shrink in a way before dying as the corrupt Masculine Sith take over. Likewise, this is in the OT as well with the Empire just human men and the Rebels men, women and aliens all lead by a woman.

The issue comes when comparing George's work with the modern Disney Star Wars. Now there are women and men as Imperials, because modern sensibilities dictate so. It doesn't matter that one of the visual manifestations of why the Empire is evil is they're only men. Disney had to change it. The kicker is they've done the same thing with the post- ROTJ Rebellion. Like in Ahsoka where Hera meets with the senators. The senators are mostly human. In the past there would've been a few more aliens involved. Maybe just Mon Mothma and another human, with the other 3 as aliens. Star Wars stories are multilayered, and quite honestly I don't think Star Wars would've had the success it had if a lot of people didn't understand all of this. There have been quite a few books, movies and podcasts over the years. Plus Star Wars is a global phenomenon, and the part of the world that really influenced the world the most is Asia. I remember having entire conversations with other kids in Star Wars when I was in Japan. We didn't speak each other's language, but we all spoke Star Wars.

I kind of think the Yuuzhan Vong stuff fits, though I haven't read those books in a long time. Both in terms of how the Vong themselves use biological life for weapons, ships, etc. Also in terms of the ecological effects of the Vongforming done on some New Republic worlds. There's also the whole holy war component with the Vong, since they see technology as an abomination to cleanse.

As far as defining what "wokeness" is, I'd say the simple definition is inserting elements that are in service to certain political agendas at the expense of good storytelling. Often it involves tearing men down to build women up. Nothing personal if you like it, but objectively speaking TLJ is an example. Making Luke into a totally different person, tearing him down to build Rey up. Meanwhile, Rey doesn't need any training and is just automatically good at anything. Also the entire idea that the creatives making the new Dune movies felt they had to make Dr Kynes a woman, because Dune needed more strong women. Which is counter to how women are portrayed in the Dune series. Or the scene in Uncharted Lost Legacy, where Nadine is climbing up Sam as he's holding onto the edge of a cliff, and she's complaining about how horrible and evil men are as she's scrambling on him.

The whole objection that some have to Ahsoka, calling it all woke don't know what they're talking about. It is essentially a continuation of Rebels. The reason why we only see Sabine, Ahsoka & Hera is pretty clear if you've seen the last episode of Rebels. Likewise, everything with Sabine is set up in Rebels. And again, women have always been portrayed as strong and still feminine in Star Wars. It's clear that Baylon is the master and Shin is the apprentice. She respects him. If Ahsoka was woke, she would be portrayed as better than him and would tear him down with her words and actions.

 

I remember Star Trek: TNG had that one episode where they discovered warp drives were tearing apart the fabric of space-time in a local sector, and the only way to avert catastrophe was to stop using warp drives and basically cease all interstellar travel in that sector.

I dunno, unless you want to see something like that, I'm not sure what analogy there could be for climate change in the Star Wars universe.

 

Not to risk derailment by leaning into a tired and old argument, but Luke's character development in TLJ wasn't to put Rey on a pedestal. It was so Rian Johnson could deconstruct the concept of "Jedi." Now, was that done well? Should he have did that in the first place? Those are opinions to argue and hold on to, but to suggest that there was a misguided feminist message in that movie...I'm sorry but I just don't see it. If anything the message is "failure is part of life, and so long as you choose to grow from it, failure can be healthy."

Also, "war profiteering is bad", but that kinda goes without saying.

 

Imperial mining of resources to exhaustion, with no care for ecological impact is common in SW. That is pretty much climate change, but with the view there's always more planets, kind of akin to the belief technology alone will save us from our own self-inflicted wounds.

 

I'd love to see a story exploring how ecumenopolises like Coruscant are ecologically immoral

 

I don’t remember if the Phasma novel gave an in-story reason for the sorry state of that planet, but my perhaps incorrect memory is that it was a post-ecological collapse world.

 

Themes and moral lessons are more a Star Trek thing. And because of how Star Wars planets aren't a variety of different environments, "sentient-made climate change" wouldn't be exactly something to comprehend. Look at worlds like Tatooine, Kamino, Geonosis, Rodia, Naboo, Coruscant, Hosnian Prime...

Besides, there are quite in our world who believe in "Natural Climate Change" where "Man-Made Climate Change" is not even a factor in why the planet's ecology is the way it is. After all, how old is our planet? And how many epochs has it gone through? Maybe the lesson should be, not all scientists are right and can be wrong. The predictions dating back seventy years have never come true. The only thing that did was a Star Trek lesson: the Humpback Whales movie.

 

Tell that to George "I made the climax of my trilogy a commentary on America's involvement in Vietnam" Lucas.

 

Ah, Vietnam. The mistakes made in that war, is it any wonder the world tries to forget it and Korea ever happened? Some generals and nations like to pretend they weren't brainless. And Ewoks are cool.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against that element of ROTJ. I was merely making light of the idea that Star Wars doesn't have any deep(er) themes or lessons than "space battles are cool" when that's never really been the case. At least as far as films and shows are concerned.

 

I'm sure it would be a travesty to turn Chandrila or Kashyyyk into another Coruscant. But Coruscant is already a city planet, and its native biosphere was wiped out long ago. So for someone living on Coruscant in 0 BBY, there's not much point in trying to bring it back. Well, the Yuuzhan Vong obviously thought otherwise, but you know...

 

I'd say trying to turn Coruscant into a planetary metropolis after Vongforming is arguably immoral.

Like I said in the NJO thread, the post-NJO dropped the ball on continuing the resolution or utilizing the Jedi characters that were able to bridge the gap between GFFA and the Vong as well as the Force and the Vong. In The Final Prophecy, Tahiri is literally thinking about how much the Vong and the GFFA have to learn from each other. That thread was unfortunately dropped to return to a pre-NJO galactic status quo.

 

Even if the change was unnatural and in a way too alien for the worlds of the GFFA?

Besides, the Yuuzhan Vong were consumed by a dogma that was bound to destroy them anyway. Their hatred of anything that isn't them -- judging from the number of people they killed and planets they destroyed -- is what would lead to their ultimate extinction. They had lost something in their home galaxy (for what we don't really know -- I take the idea of what led them out of their home galaxy with an in-universe grain of salt based on thousands of years stuck in the Void).

 

I think the idea of taking a planet that now at least has a self-sufficient biosphere, even if it's with a preponderance of alien flora and fauna, and committing ecocide in order to return it to a transparisteel monstrosity that needs technological intervention to be livable is probably not a good look.

I dont remember the details clearly from DNT or LOTF, but Jacen could have influenced the world brain to work towards an integration of the technological with the biological. Perhaps with some influence from Zonama Sekot.

The major problem with the NJO is that they found a convenient way to wall off the Yuuzhan Vong from the galaxy, and also do damn near everything to wipe their presence away from the galactic stage rather than deal with the aftermath in any way outside the impact on the Sky-Solo clan.

One can't help but wonder if some of the Vongformed worlds' inhabitants actually preferred the results. There had to be worlds the YV made more garden like that simply vast biotechnological factories for yorrick coral and amphistaffs.

 

I think it is interesting that a lot of what the Empire does that gets people to rebel in the first place is environmental destruction. Things like repression of political and artistic expression get touched up, but it seems to me that often the main issue is that the empire is rending lots of places unlivable for the sake of resource extraction or industry. Lothal getting ravaged by the mining guild stands out, as does sucking up the moon's nutrients with the super food plants in the Ahoska novel, and Kenobi's comments about what imperial mining had done to Mapuzo (even if that was clearly a healthy xeric shrubland rather than polluted temperate climate)
(And that isn't counting the times they just literally destroy biospheres with lasers)

Even as far back as the old Marvel Comics, there was Rubyflame Lake, "once a popular tourist destination during the days of the Old Republic, before the Empire opened up subterranean lavabeds to heat up the lake for industrial purposes. After a decade, the lava was exhausted, and the Empire abandoned the lake, now a toxic, boiling soup."

Oh, and SWG has the entire imperial department of environmental conservation actually be pro-environmental destruction for profit: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Environmental_Preservation_&_Refocusing_Authority

Also, while the empire is the main destroyer of environments in the series, plenty of others get in on the act, like the CIS, corporations (Offworld Mining and Telos come to mind), and I think even crime syndicates get in on the act - at least, besides terraforming Nal Hutta into a swamp, the hutts also polluted that swamp with factories in SWTOR,

Even Young Jedi Adventures has the heroes thwart the environmentally unfriendly activities of the Raxlo Corporation.

I think it safe to say Star Wars has environmentalism as one of its main running themes. Even one of the main aesthetic contrasts in the ot was how rebel tech and bases blended into their environments while imperial tech dominates theirs.

...just ignore Cal Kestis and his mad ways.

 

idk, I don't think the average Coruscanti would be too happy to return to their skyscrapers and find them covered with moss and the minimalist interiors infested with slugs and rodents