Ticking time bombs and last-minute escapes

Walk into any of America’s cineplexes–they used to be called movie theaters–and you will find narratives playing on multiple screens that offer one or another variation of the ticking time bomb and the last-minute escape. Of course, those plot devices are used to create urgency and tension in the minds of moviegoers in order to involve them in the story.

But so pervasive have these themes become in American film and literature that much of the public has up until recently unreflectively embraced the idea that all emergencies will be met with unparalleled heroism that leads to the right solution–no matter how hastily and tardily conceived. Perhaps the purest example of this (and maybe the most ridiculous) is the long-defunct television show “MacGyver.” For those who weren’t watching television closely in the late 1980s, MacGyver (played by Richard Dean Anderson) was a secret agent who didn’t carry a gun. Instead, he was amazingly resourceful in crafting weapons out of materials on hand–always, of course, in the nick of time.


Despite Americans’ traditional optimism there is now a rising fear that America may have run out of MacGyvers. The popular drama “24″ suggests to its viewers that this time–just maybe–we won’t escape the worst. Unfortunately, “24″ focuses the public’s anxiety on terrorism rather than the much more potent threats of resource depletion, climate change, and habitat destruction. The anxiety is there, but it is being redirected toward something that only requires us to continue to believe steadfastly that we are always in the right and that we therefore need only continue our battle with the bad guys. This is not to suggest that terrorism is no threat. But there is almost a straight line from our dependence on finite petroleum resources to our imperial adventures in the Middle East and then to the blowback we are reaping from Arab resentment over our role there.

Nor does the public understand that it has been America’s great good fortune (and curse) to have been endowed with enormous fossil fuel resources–resources upon which the fantasy of last-minute escapes largely depends. With enough energy resources one can overcome many seemingly intractable problems.

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