Climate Version of Bechdel Test Released and Applied to This Year’s Oscars Nominees, with ‘Barbie’ and ‘Nyad’ Among Passing Films

Good Energy, a story consultancy that aims to simplify climate representation on screen, has teamed up with Colby College’s Buck Lab for Climate and Environment to release the Climate Reality Check — a tool to measure the representation of climate change on screen. It is inspired by the popular Bechdel-Wallace Test, which measures the representation of women in TV and film.

The Climate Reality Check is a straightforward two-part evaluation that asks whether, one, climate change exists in a project, and two, if a character knows it. In comparison, the Bechdel Test checks that first, at least two women are featured in a project; second, that these women talk to each other; and third, that they discuss something other than a man.

The purpose of the climate test is to provide an easy tool for those in the entertainment industry to evaluate their stories, for researchers to measure whether climate representation is present in any group of stories, and for audiences to see if Hollywood is representing their reality on screen. It was developed in consultation with more than 200 writers, showrunners, executives and communications experts to ensure it’s easy, measurable and creatively inspiring.

Timed to its release, researchers from Colby College applied the Climate Reality Check to the 2024 Oscar nominees. Thirteen of this year’s 31 nominated films met the Climate Reality Check’s eligibility requirements of being set on Earth and taking place in the present or near future; three of the 13 eligible films passed, with Barbie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Nyad.

“The Bechdel-Wallace Test debuted in a 1985 comic strip. Four decades later, it still resonates as one of the most effective tools for measuring female representation in film and television. Good Energy set out to capture that same light-hearted yet incisive quality in measuring climate visibility,” Anna Jane Joyner, founder and CEO of Good Energy, said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to see that several of my favorite Oscar-nominated films from the last year passed the Climate Reality Check. It’s a clear demonstration that acknowledging the climate crisis on-screen can be done in entertaining and artful ways that are authentic to the story. More proof that audiences crave seeing their own world and experience, which now universally includes the climate crisis, reflected on screen.”

Added Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, associate professor of English at Colby College, “Humans are storytelling animals and climate change is the biggest story of our time. It affects every part of our lives and threatens everything we depend on and hold dear, yet it has been absent from the stories we consume. The Climate Reality Check is a simple, illuminating, and powerful tool that can be used to evaluate any group of narratives — from films and TV shows to video games and novels — for their reflection of our climate reality. In this way, the Climate Reality Check provides a new and necessary perspective on storytelling in and for a world on fire.”