Fourth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: What if Godzilla Was a Climate Emergency?

[Zuzanna Wojciak is a Program Consultant at WITNESS and a Research Consultant at the Centre for Mental Health, Human Rights, and Social Justice.]

[Author’s disclaimer: as of 2024, there are 38 Godzilla movies. In this article, the author will focus on Godzilla’s portrayals in the original 1954 movie and the 2016 Toho’s Shin Godzilla. The author will also refer to themes present in the US movie series produced by Legendary Pictures, starting with 2014 Godzilla]. 

Everyone knows Godzilla – an ancient dinosaur-like creature peacefully residing under the sea until it is awakened from its slumber to go on a rampage in the closest big city and spread fear and destruction. First featured in the 1954 Japanese movie, Godzilla was a metaphor for the horror of nuclear weapons and their aftermath. Nowadays, Godzilla can also be understood as a fictional equivalent of an environmental disaster.

The environmental rhetoric is a crucial part of the modern Godzilla narrative. In the 2019 US movie Godzilla: King of Monsters, a group of protagonists works to release the Titans (a group of prehistoric monsters that Godzilla, in this version, is a part of) in order to wipe out humanity and allow the Earth to start again. They believe that humans destroyed the Earth and only the monsters can reverse the environmental degradation triggered by the Anthropocene. Additionally, the 2016 movie Shin Godzilla was partially inspired by the destruction caused by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the Japanese government’s inability to act with urgency in the face of unprecedented disaster. 

This article focuses on the environmental dimension of Godzilla and asks the question: if Godzilla reawakened again, how would international law react to it from the environmental perspective? The author hopes that seeing Godzilla as a walking embodiment of an environmental disaster will prompt a reflection on the adequacy of the International Environmental Law (IEL) in dealing with climate emergencies. The issue feels particularly important considering that, as of writing this, Central Europe and the United States are recovering from storms and floods, Israel’s attacks on Gaza are causing an environmental catastrophe in real-time and the Sahara desert is experiencing its first flood in half a century. 

Godzilla as Nature

Godzilla’s character and story present a lot of parallels with man-made climate change and subsequent environmental degradation. Firstly, Godzilla‘s appearance is always triggered by people’s interference in the environment. In the 1954 movie, Godzilla is awakened by the underwater hydrogen bomb tests. The 2014 US reboot rewrites this story by asserting that Godzilla was awakened by a deep sea submarine expedition and that the subsequent nuclear bombs were an attempt to kill it. In the movie, Godzilla was awakened again by a call of a different prehistoric beast uncovered when a mining company drilled into its lair. In one of the sequels, Godzilla returns when a company attempts to reach Hollow Earth (the birthplace of Godzilla and the aforementioned Titans) and exploit its resources as a power source. In Shin Godzilla, Godzilla is an ancient species of marine life that mutated due to exposure to radioactive waste illegally dumped into the sea, thus creating an entirely new life form. Just like Godzilla, ‘natural disasters’ stem from human activity – man-induced global warming increases the likelihood of disasters occurring and processes such as deforestation and rapid urbanisation directly exacerbate the resulting destruction. 

Secondly, the way Godzilla progresses through cities and the consequences of its presence resemble the course of an environmental disaster, e.g. a hurricane, and its aftermath. Just like a hurricane, Godzilla is destructive and unstoppable. It appears. It destroys everything in its path. And it leaves. There is no intent behind its actions. While the most recent US movies attempt to anthropomorphise their creatures (King Kong more so than Godzilla), in Shin Godzilla, as noted by one of the scientists, “behaviourally, all that [Godzilla] has done so far is move.” The destruction and damage result simply from Godzilla entering the human world. Godzilla’s presence is inherently catastrophic to humankind. Just like in the case of natural disasters, it is futile to try to understand it beyond the cause-and-effect relationship akin to the one between anthropogenic activities and climate change-related disasters. Like a hurricane, Godzilla is a force of nature. 

Lastly, Godzilla, to various extent, symbolises suffering. In Shin Godzilla, the creature is in pain. When it comes on land for the first time, it is crawling, mindlessly crushing into buildings and screaming as if in agony with blood dripping from its gills as it progresses through Japan. What the audience sees on screen is a confused creature suffering because of harmful human activity. While this theme is absent from other movies, pain is an intrinsic element of Godzilla’s design. The texture of Godzilla’s scales resembles the burns and wounds of survivors of nuclear bombings exposed to radiation. Godzilla’s embodiment of harm can also be associated with environmental damage. Floods, deforestation, water and land pollution expose both humans and animals to hunger, forced displacement and death, leading to human suffering and loss of biodiversity.  

Nuking Nature

Before discussing the IEL approach, it is worth noting how the States’ response to Godzilla in the movies has been exclusively military. Godzilla is perceived as an existential threat to the whole world which, by default, seems to lead to unleashing of all the military weapons in reach to deal with it. In movies, the governments resort to tanks, missiles, rockets, and nuclear warheads – all without the desired result. The only way to deal with Godzilla is by inventing a new weapon, e.g. the Oxygen Destroyer (described as a tool equally or more destructive as the atomic bomb) or a chemical which freezes its blood, or by leaving it alone, which works only in the US franchise when Godzilla is spared since it can fight other Titans. Consequently, Godzilla can be defeated by a new weapon of mass extinction or its destructive character can be disregarded once people realise the creature can be beneficial to humanity and defend them from scarier monsters. 

There is little to no discussion on the environmental aspect of Godzilla’s presence. The protagonists resort to the most extreme weapons with little reflection on how much civilian and environmental destruction these will lead to. Collapsed buildings, destroyed infrastructure, and high levels of pollution (including radioactive residue) are to be attributed to both Godzilla’s and human military actions. The protagonists completely disregard Godzilla’s environmental origins and character and, as a result, their response is akin to using a nuclear bomb to stop the hurricane – an actual idea that former US President Donald Trump once suggested. Due to the ineffectiveness and unreasonableness of the military solutions, one should consider an environmental response. Since Godzilla cannot be destroyed, how can it be stopped from coming to shore?

International Environmental Response 

IEL envisions climate change and environmental destruction as a continuous yet prolonged process and accordingly frames the required action in long-term steps. Godzilla, on the other hand, is an imminent threat which requires an immediate response.  “The international climate change regime follows a well-established routine” and remains a regime of efforts and pledges rather than concrete action. However, while principles such as intergenerational equity, prevention, or precaution can inform environmental action, they would not offer any prompt solutions to the sudden appearance of a gigantic lizard. Environmental laws and policies predict gradual action, but Godzilla will not wait to respect humanity-set deadlines of 2030 or 2050 to attack. 

Natarajan and Khoday observe how IEL is intrinsically unable to create meaningful environmental change and instead enables patterns of ecological destruction. Rooted in traditional international legal concepts of sovereignty, resources, and development, IEL does not serve ecological purposes. It rather creates a limited understanding of nature and its relationship with humans, which ultimately serves as an obstacle to informed environmental action. IEL authorises States to exploit the environment for the benefit of their people without considering the issue of obligations towards nature outside of the resource-focused paradigm. Godzilla is an ecological problem but cannot be dealt with using the same sentiment as IEL has deployed towards other environmental issues so far – through prioritising exploitation for human benefit and rooting protection of nature in sovereignty over national resources. In light of the potential monster invasion, a new approach is required to make Godzilla, and not human interests, central to solving the issue. 

Rights for Godzilla

What if Godzilla had legal rights? The concept of nature’s rights (RoN) has been present in domestic legal contexts for years but has not yet been firmly established in international law. RoN is a legal theory that grants “rights to non-human natural entities, recognising them as subjects of rights or right-holders.”  It advances a non-anthropocentric understanding of nature; rather than a resource or object whose importance stems from human needs, nature has an intrinsic value existing separately from human experience. Such an approach draws from indigenous people’s knowledge and traditions. By emphasising the role of nature in environmental governance, it challenges the IEL’s dichotomy of subjects (humans) and objects (the environment). RoN counters the accepted rhetoric of environmental extraction and management and prompts humans to identify and subsequently engage with nature’s interests. 

What interests would Godzilla have? Since it only appears once disturbed by human activity, it can be assumed that the creature simply wants to be left alone. Godzilla’s arrival can be triggered by the same anthropogenic activities as the ones contributing to the climate emergency. The Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter prohibits the dumping of radioactive waste into the sea, which led to the creation of the creature in Shin Godzilla. While there is no international document governing mining, the relevant regional and domestic regulations should be inclusive of environmental concerns, and thus the mining incident triggering the arrival of the monsters in US movies or the exploitation of the Hollow Earth would potentially need to comply with these. Accordingly, the obligations addressing events that could provoke Godzilla already exist. However, since decision-makers do not account for Godzilla’s interests and prioritise economic gains, the harmful activities are likely to go forward and the creature is likely to return. In contrast, if decision-makers were faced with a choice between extracting natural resources or polluting oceans and risking the rage of an ancient sea monster, they could be more inclined to abandon environmentally harmful activities. 

Existing jurisprudence provides some guidance on how RoN could operate in practice. For instance, in the Atrato River case, the Constitutional Court of Colombia assigned the Atrato River a commission of guardians whose obligation was to represent the River’s interests in future policy-making. Any attempt to create a legal counsel to nature should be a collaborative effort and include a diverse group of stakeholders, particularly representatives of Indigenous peoples and local communities most affected by climate change whose lived experience can best inform humanity’s response. 

As a suggestion, the author would propose the creation of GGG (Godzilla’s Guardians Group) to identify specific types of activities and geographic areas central to maintaining harmony with Godzilla and to articulate creature’s rights in international decision-making processes. Such a group should include representatives of Japan, historically most impacted by Godzilla, and specifically natives of Odo Island, the place where Godzilla was first spotted in 1954 and where it is believed that the monster is a part of local folklore.

Humanity Should Feel Scared

Many Godzilla movies are classified as horror. Humanity is living in such horror right now, and while the consequences of climate emergency are not experienced universally by all, the horror will reach the global dimension sooner than some would like to admit. From the perspective of environmental protection, humanity could benefit from feeling threatened. Fear motivates action. Imagining a climate emergency as a destructive ancient monster should prompt humanity to consider radical responses. However, rather than weapons, such measures should consist of fundamental reconceptualising of IEL governance and embracing RoN as an approach to produce a more concrete climate action. Whether they want it to or not, “all mankind must coexist with Godzilla.”