In the early ’90s Captain Planet was waging war against overconsumption, deforestation and toxic dumping.
So imagine a 2020 reboot, the same diverse team of Planeteers. but with their sights set on fighting the villainous Smoggorth and their cannon of caustic carbon - polluting the air, choking our crops, and making beach cricket a forever memory.
Yes, I realise - we already have too many green-haired eco-warriors with mullets fighting against Scope 3 Greenhouse Gases.
So it’s fair to ask: how is another one going to help?
Well… let our powers combine.
Week after week, this cartoon placed kids at the centre of environmental salvation - both on and off screen.
Five kids. Five elements. One planet.
Easy, right?
But behind that simplicity sat a hypercomplex idea: that ecological harm existed, and we could fight back for our environment - and not just by bathing seagulls or chaining ourselves to trees.
That idea was planted early.
So what happens when that simplified idea keeps growing? When it evolves into a subconscious model - where actions are mapped to consequences, help or harm to our environment are distinguishable, and probably most importantly, where your choice exists?
Captain Planet and the Planeteers aired in over 100 countries from 1990–1996.
Each week episodes reached tens of millions of 6–11-year-olds.
That’s a serious slice of a generation.
That generation now makes up a serious slice of today’s workforce - senior managers, engineers, policymakers, scientists & frontline staff.
A generation raised with the idea that fighting environmental damage wasn’t super complex, it was just about doing the right thing.
Not systemic.
Not abstract.
Just… simple.
And maybe, just maybe, that idea stuck. It continued to manifest and subconsciously guide our actions.
Consider this
Say 10 million kids tuned in weekly:
- ~500,000 became lawyers
- ~300,000 became scientists
- ~800,000 became engineers
- ~2 million rose to senior management
- ~20 million became frontline workers making daily, operational decisions
That’s a lot of people who might carry a subconscious orientation toward better environmental choices - all from a Saturday morning cartoon.
How could it look?
- Engineers who grew up wanting to reinforce ship hulls to avoid spillage.
- Scientists who chased clean tech because it was best for our planet.
- Senior leaders who started putting a third column on their P&L - one that tracked costs debited from our environment.
- Frontline staff who made daily, operational choices to produce slightly less waste, use fewer chemicals, by simply adopting the option that “just felt right.”
Could that not be considered the right type of activism?
The subconscious learning lens
It’s well covered that media can influence and impact childhood learning - take Sesame Street as an example. While that show was targeted at curriculum benchmarks and early learning, the impact was far from nothing.
I'm focusing on the concept of subconsciously learning - particularly complex ethical or environmental framing.
As Bargh & Morsella (2008) put it, unconscious processes are “unintentional by nature… yet capable of forming sophisticated, flexible, and adaptive unconscious behavior guidance systems.” - Read the paper
As children, teens, adults, we're subconsciously guided by fragments.
Cartoons, books, main characters and slogans, they stick, and continue to sharpen and focus how we approach problems, how we see trade-offs, how we implement solutions.
So with that lens:
Could Captain Planet be one of the most powerful pieces of environmental education in the 20th century?
Not because it directly changed the world.
But because it influenced the kids who eventually could.
What if we did it again?
Not a nostalgia piece. Not an iconic reboot.
But a genuine educational cartoon designed to shape the environmental lens of the next generation, before they’re the ones signing off on Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions policies.
What if the new Captain Planet didn’t fight oil barons, but instead battled:
- The quiet rise of greenhouse gases
- The awkward maths of carbon offsetting
- The normality of accepted obsolescence
- The logistical violence of late-stage capitalism
Imagine a show that didn’t frame the impact of carbon emissions and greenhouse gases as a hyper-complex problem, but as a villain that can be fought against. Our future generation at the centre of the fight being told by a superhero:
“The real power to save Earth comes from within. Inside you. It always has.”
Not with protests. Not with slogans.
But identification and teamwork.
A new era of Planeteers, just… getting it done.
With its catchphrases? Sure. Cheesy one-liners? Of course.
Its impact? I'd be willing the bet it's mostly positive.
Because if even a sliver of that generation became engineers, scientists, managers, primed with an orientation toward better decisions?
That’s not nothing.
By my count, that sees at least some changes by 2050.
It’s not about creating more greenies
Let’s be clear: businesses need to make money and being 100% green isn’t a no-cost exercise.
It’s not a binary business decision or change that is as simple as flicking a light switch.
But it needs to be recognised that until we as a society can operate in a carbon-neutral state, the revenue made is being debited from that third column of the profit and loss - the environmental cost column - and not just COGS or OPEX.
So no - I’m not asking for a new generation of eco-warriors with their, “I AM MORALLY RIGHT” argument that at times doesn't seem to live in the realm of reality.
What I am advocating for is a generation of quietly preloaded operators ^Almost like environmental sleeper agents - people with enough internal wiring to make better ecological decisions, not out of ideology, but because it just… makes sense.
Maybe these operators enter the workplace with ideas for a new light globe and not a preconceived notion that flicking the switch is the only solution.
Operators such as:
- Chemical engineers with emissions aversion baked into their designs
- Lawyers who read “compliance” through a planetary lens
- Senior managers who make systematic changes because their gut says, “We need to and we can do better.”
If Captain Planet generated even the faintest ripple of thought for ecological preservation, even if it is just a ripple, 30+ years of subconscious processing would generate a wave.
If a rebooted children’s TV show could generate that type of wave - then maybe, a mulleted cartoon hero isn’t the worst place to start.