The Day After Tomorrow

In the 2004 Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow global warming triggers a new ice age, Los Angeles is destroyed by tornados, New York City is engulfed by a massive tidal wave, and the Northern Hemisphere freezes.

Dennis Quaid (Frequency, Innerspace) stars as Professor Jack Hall, a paleoclimatologist who tries to warn the world about sudden, catastrophic climate change. Jack sets out across an ice-bound America to find his son, Sam, played by Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain), who is sheltering in a frozen New York.

The Day After Tomorrow was controversial when it was first launched. Some scientists were critical of the movie’s premise, noting that the ‘science’ was impossible, while other embraced the movie, believing it would raise public awareness of global warming. MSNBC has a short video report, Warming fact and fiction, from an NBC Today programme which looked at reactions to The Day After Tomorrow when it was first launched.

The director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Stargate) paid $200,000 to make the production of the movie carbon neutral, offsetting 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The Day After Tomorrow became the first Hollywood movie to offset all CO₂ emitted during production. The movie Syriana, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, comedy Evan Almighty and an episode of the thriller TV series 24 have all offset CO₂ to become carbon neutral.