Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) pursues the replicant Zhora through the streets of Los Angeles in a scene from Ridley Scott's futuristic thriller 'Blade Runner', which was released in 1982. Photo / Getty Images
Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) pursues the replicant Zhora through the streets of Los Angeles in a scene from Ridley Scott's futuristic thriller 'Blade Runner', which was released in 1982. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion
EDITORIAL
We may have been distracted by other things, but an ominous cinematic milestone has been reached.
The present has caught up to the future.
Decades ago, the sci-fi classic film Blade Runner showed a disturbing vision of a dystopic Los Angeles.
The Ridley Scott movie, released in 1982, wasbased on Philip K Dick's 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It was set in the Los Angeles of November 2019.
Its gadgetry feels familiar to us now, but we are a long way from humanoid robot replicants. Today's Boston Dynamics robot dogs are gymnastic but functional. The film presented a scary prospect: Flying cars cross a blackened cityscape lit by blast flames and smoke. A giant billboard of a woman's face catches the eye.
The biggest wrong turn the film took in depicting the future present is the ubiquitous rain that fills the outdoor scenes. An implied environmental catastrophe brought on by disasters and industrial pollution is behind the film's setting. Blade Runner 2049, the sequel released in 2017, had to rework the film world's premise to incorporate California's climate reality.
Modern-day Los Angeles is lit by the harsh red of wildfires and the photographs of the destruction over the past week have been more surreal than film fiction.
Smoke has choked traffic jams and cloaked the Carquinez Bridge. Photos and video captured horses racing from the sparks of blazes and embers flying from a tree in the Kincade fire at Kellogg.
Harrison Ford on the set of 'Blade Runner', directed by Ridley Scott. Photo / Getty Images
Fires have raged in the north and south of the state, prompting mass evacuations. Power has been cut to hundreds of thousands of people because of concerns that high winds could result in power lines sparking fires. Wired reports that the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's "equipment sparked 17 major fires in 2017 alone".
Following a dry summer, California has been unable to recover. There's been a lack of easing rain and the winds have made vegetation bone dry.
California isn't the only region currently dealing with a crisis.
Pollution made the air so toxic in New Delhi that Indian officials had to declare a health emergency. The problem in the capital, including smog at the presidential palace, came as German Chancellor Angela Merkel was visiting. Germany pledged €1 billion over the next five years on environmental projects such as electric buses.
Air quality during the past week reached serious levels in parts of California. Vox reported that: "Breathing the air in Oakland [last Tuesday NZT] which reached an air-quality index of 152, was the equivalent of smoking seven cigarettes in a day. In Fresno the AQI reached 234".
The US Golden State is under pressure on either side from two key climate threats - wildfires and rising seas.
A Climate Central study published in Nature Communications last week, based on revised coastal topography assessments, estimated that far more people – 300 million - are at risk from rising sea levels around the world than previously thought.
The climate challenges already on show are beyond cinematic nightmares.
