I first heard the term cartoonish supervillainy more than thirty years ago on the Simpsons, where it was used to describe the laughably evil behaviour of Mr Burns. Though I couldn’t find the clip where the term was used, this clip gives a good illustration of the kind of things Mr Burns got up to:
Mr Burns wants to block out the sun, so that everyone’s heating and lighting bills will skyrocket and despite already being exceedingly rich, he will be even richer. Surely nobody is that bad in real life? Surely this Simpsons episode is a comic exaggeration of real world villains, and nobody is actually as bad as Mr Burns?
Surely I’m right? Surely, nobody in real life is this bad? (Quietly sobs in the corner of the room.)
When I was, probably between the ages of seven and ten I’m guessing, though I could be wrong, I had a series of Encyclopedias called the Childcraft Books. Here’s the Wikipedia page, and I think the ones displayed might even by the ones I had:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childcraft
I’m not sure what time period the books were from, because in the nineties, you didn’t necessarily know that information. We now take having completely up to date information as a given now that we have the internet (technically the internet was around then but it was much more primitive.) So, you got a lot of your information from books, often books that you didn’t know how old they were. So these Childcraft Books, I’m guessing, were published in the early nineties or the eighties.
I read these books religiously, and I became a walking encyclopedia myself, completely out of the blue I’d start telling people, regardless of whether they wanted to listen, about animals, the solar system, or world history. (Seriously, how was I not diagnosed autistic until I was 25?)
And those books talked about climate change. Books that were close to forty years old or older, talked about climate change. I have known about climate change for more than thirty years. Lay people have known about climate change since at least the nineties. I don’t know how many other ways I can think of to say this. We knew the climate crisis that we are now experiencing was going to happen for at minimum, thirty years, but in reality, a lot longer than that, and virtually nothing was done.
If anyone younger than me is reading this, you might be asking, sure, it was in the Childcraft Books, but was it really common knowledge that humanity was destroying the world using a little thing called Climate Change? My answer to this is, it was a plot point in tv shows. One of my favourite sci-fi shows, both as a child and still today, is an Australian tv show called The Girl From Tomorrow. The show involved time travel between three different time periods, 1990, the year 2500, and the year 3000. While the year 3000 was depicted as an idyllic paradise where humanity had learned the lessons of the past, the year 2500 was depicted as a time when 500 years of the human race destroying its own planet had created a hellish dystopia where even drinking water is more valued than gold. You might think, was this not a bit extreme for little Jimmy to be watching? Well, you have no idea how bleak nineties children’s shows could get!
But you might argue, The Girl From Tomorrow was a successful show sure, but it’s entirely possible people didn’t take on board the environmental message. Perhaps people were more interested in the plotlines about how a girl from the year 3000 navigated being stuck in the nineties. Perhaps people were more interested in how much the character Silverthorn was one of the best villains EVER! And The Girl From Tomorrow was successful sure, but was it really a massively successful show that everyone would have seen?
Okay then. Let’s talk about the big one. An incredibly successful tv show, where you can’t argue that the climate stuff was a background detail. I’m talking of course about, Captain Planet. The environmental stuff definitely wasn’t a subtle detail taking a back seat to other stuff. Hell, this is the theme tune:
If you want further evidence that this show was a big deal, here’s some of the voice actors who were on it, LeVar Burton, Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen, Sting, and Whoopi Goldberg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planeteers
So, we had a big colourful cartoon to tell us about climate change, and we’ve had that since the nineties. And now our planet is on fire. So, is it finally time to start running around aimlessly shouting, “We didn’t listen!” like in that South Park episode?
Did Anyone Think It Would Be So Similar To Captain Planet?
While Captain Planet was important in educating young children about the dangers of climate change, to say that it was lacking in nuance would be an understatement. A theory I’ve heard about why this is, is that the show did not want to be in the position of directly criticizing the parents of the children who were watching. It didn’t want to be in the position of saying the mother or father who worked for Exxon Mobil was a bad person. Hence, the villains are, very, cartoonishly villainous.
I mean, have a look at this:
“Let our polluting powers combine! Super radiation! Deforestation! Smog! Toxic! Hate!” By having the villains being basically the Hitler of pollution (incidentally, Hitler was in at least one episode of Captain Planet), the show could neatly avoid an awkward situation between child and parent. Imagine if they had depicted a mother, who’s only desire is to make sure her children are safe and well fed, but she works for Shell, not because she likes polluting the planet, but because she wants to put food on the table. Would a mother in real life, in a similar situation, be happy if little Timothy had asked, “Mommy, why are you destroying the planet?”
So, this is how Captain Planet managed to raise awareness about human made climate change, while conveniently sidestepping the problem of demonizing the parents of children who watched the show. That’s why the villains in Captain Planet are so outlandish, so unrealistic, so callous, and evil, in a way that in no way conforms to reality.
But wait a second, are these villains unrealistic? And no, I am not saying that the CEO of Texaco has the ability to summon Captain Pollution. What I am saying, is that, in their motives, are they really that different from real life villains? Captain Planet villains want to destroy the planet we live on as an end in itself. The billionaires and governments who control our lives, don’t want to destroy the planet as an end in itself, but it’s certainly true that they don’t care whether or not the planet is destroyed. So the comparison to Captain Planet villains might be a bit overstated, but the comparison to a cartoonish supervillain like Mr Burns, is not.
Data Centers Are A Great Example Of Cartoonish Supervillainy
Imagine a house is on fire (an overused metaphor for climate change but anyway). A beautiful house, where people’s lives are lived, where memories were made, being horribly destroyed. You look on in horror, is anyone going to save this house? Where are the family who lives here going to live now? Is all hope lost?
Then, someone approaches the house. You rejoice, surely this person will save this building, and just in the nick of time too! With their intervention, there is surely a chance to save this house, and the family will still have a place to live.
To your horror, the supposed good Samaritan pours a large can of petrol onto the house. Then another person approaches the house, and does likewise. Then a petrol truck deliberately collides with the house. Then a helicopter flies over the house and pours a large amount of petrol onto the roof.
If people had intervened, the house could have been saved. But instead, when there was no time left to save the house, they deliberately started throwing as much petrol as they could on the house. A data center IS that petrol.
I had a hope when it came to climate change. Obviously, my first hope was that we could stop it, or at least reduce it. If we took action, maybe the Summers would still be hotter, maybe the Winters would still be stormier, but maybe we could curtail climate change enough that Earth could still be a beautiful planet for humans, animals and plants to live on.
That was my first hope. Here was my second hope. That if climate change has to happen, if over the next twenty to forty years we are going to witness climate chaos that will destroy our environment, leave many homeless, and kill countless people, that, at least that would happen because of the logistical difficulty of re-ordering our lives to live without fossil fuels. It has been known for some time that electric cars are not going to save the planet.
https://coursepivot.com/blog/10-reasons-why-electric-cars-are-bad-for-the-environment
I’m not saying electric cars might not play a part, but only after four or five “maybes” can they significantly have a positive impact on the climate crisis. I remember how scary it was during April during the, now deferred with a band-aid, oil crisis. We need vehicles on the road. We need ambulances to rescue sick or injured people. We need trucks to deliver food or medical supplies. The fact of the matter is, at this exact moment, we are not able to stop putting polluting vehicles on the road. And my hope was, if we don’t stop climate change, it would be because of problems that are very difficult to solve, such as how do we deliver food when both petrol vehicles and electric vehicles are extremely polluting?
That was my hope. That if we don’t stop climate change, it’s because we simply couldn’t.
But what is happening is a lot more terrifying, a lot more dystopian, and a hell of a lot more Mr Burns level villainy than that. Do you know how the Irish government tried to mitigate the problems caused by the recent heatwaves, and yes, these were heatwaves made worse by the climate crisis? If we lived in a world where compassion, or any sort of logic ruled, they’d have done something, anything, to force data centers to use less water. But instead, they imposed a hose pipe ban:
And as part of this hose pipe ban, there was even a snitch hotline, so you could report someone’s granny for watering her plants. Why stop there, why not use the line for reporting your own granny! If there’s one thing that boils my blood, it’s grannies taking some of the precious water that the data centers need!
And, with the extremely scary weather we had recently, with more than half of England in drought conditions, the UK has announced plans to triple the amount of data centers it has, all in the service of A.I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpU0qXkQrAs
Think about that. Back in the nineties, when I first learned about climate change, I was worried that humanity’s use of, you know, necessary things, like, ambulances, vehicles carrying important provisions, and power plants, might harm the environment. Actually, no, I wasn’t that worried, because I thought the governments of the world might, you know, stop climate change over the next thirty years! What a naive child I was!
But it’s worse than that. The governments of the world have not only failed to develop more environmentally friendly ways of transport, and of generating power, but they are accelerating the climate change crisis, and for what? For A.I! For you to be able to ask Chat GPT a question, when, you can ask a human, without destroying the environment! For Grok, Elon Musk’s non-consensual porn Chat-Bot!
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/27/grok-elon-musk-dutch-court-ban-ai-nudes.html
We all kind of forgot about that one, it was overshadowed by the horror of the Epstein Files. But yeah, Grok can be used to create non-consensual porn of people, and has been used to create non-consensual porn of children. I have never wished I was joking more in my life. As the world continues to burn under the agony of human made climate change, it is an artificial intelligence program designed to commit digital sexual assault that continues to light the match.
I remember reading in George Orwell’s classic 1984, how the world had been plunged into such a horrible dystopia that books were written by machines. And if anyone’s sick of my referencing 1984 in this blog, well, I’m even more sick of reality itself referencing it. In reality we already have books written by machines, as in written by A.I. And we have music written by A.I. You Tube, once a semi-reliable place to get information, with the emphasis on semi-, is becoming increasingly unreliable, with the informative content on you tube being drowned out more and more by A.I slop. So George Orwell’s hellish dystopia where books are written by machines has come true. But not even he could have predicted that this would contribute to destroying the very planet we live on.
So, if you’ve read my blog for a while, I think you know how I’m going to finish out this blogpost:
“‘Do you remember,’ he went on, ‘writing in your diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that data centers are destroying the planet”?’
‘Yes,’ said Winston.
O’Brien held up a photograph of a data center
‘Is this data center destroying the planet?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if the party says that it is not destroying the planet, is it?’
‘Yes.’
The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the photo of the data center extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.
‘Is this data center destroying the planet, Winston?’
‘Yes.’
The needle went up to sixty.
‘Is it destroying the planet, Winston?’
‘Yes! Yes! What else can I say? Yes!’
The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the photo of the data center filled his vision. The data center stood up before his eyes like a pillar, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably a data center.
‘Is it destroying the planet, Winston?’
‘Yes! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Yes! Yes!’
‘Is this data center destroying the planet, Winston?’
‘No! No! No!’
‘No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think that the data center is accelerating human made climate change. Is the data center destroying the planet, please?’
‘Yes! no! Yes! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!’”
Ponderings Of An Autist 