Captain Planet and the Planeteers was a US-based animated television series first aired in 1990. The story follows five young ‘Planeteers’ who have been tasked by Gaia, the spirit of the earth, to work together to protect the environment from pollution, deforestation and other environmental issues of the day. The five represent different regions of the world – Africa, the Soviet Union (later Eastern Europe), Asia, South America and North America. When they unite, combining their powers through rings bestowed by Gaia, they conjure up Captain Planet, a blue-skinned, green-haired avatar. Only called on in moments of crisis, Captain Planet always saves the day and then returns to the earth with the same message: ‘The power is yours!’ Meanwhile, opposing Captain Planet and the Planeteers are a cast of eco-villains with fantastic names: Hoggish Greedly, Verminous Skumm, Duke Nukem and, best of all, Dr Babs Blight, a mad scientist who conducts irresponsible experiments with science and technology (reminding us that industrial disasters such as Chernobyl, Bhopal and Three Mile Island were very much in recent memory). The shows always end with a short educational segment, usually about the need to be more conscientious about the environment but extending to topics like HIV/AIDS, drug abuse and even the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

In Captain Planet we see a simplified repetition of cultural and aesthetic tropes foundational to modern environmentalism as it was mainstreamed in the 1980s and 1990s. This mainstreaming was facilitated through the communication of key messages through the popular media, but also through the creation of new global institutions for collaboration around environmental goals, such as the IPCC established in 1988. The discourse of sustainable development became a defining way to obtain consensus on environmental issues in combination with cultural and political goals. Sustainable development was adopted as the overarching paradigm of the UN following the Brundtland Commission Report (1987), leading to the proliferation of global governance sub-institutions, such as community-based resource management initiatives. Once again, the definition of a single shared planet undergirded environmental strategies for unified action.

However, Captain Planet breaks away from earlier forms of environmental representation in important ways. One important difference is a sense of unbridled optimism, channelled through the youthful energy and alwaysvictorious band of Planeteers.