Stupid is coming: Vox has totally figured out 'Game of Thrones' and declares it's 'secretly all about climate change'

Greg P. | 10:31 AM on June 04, 2015

We just hit publish on a post praising Vox and Matt Yglesias on Rick Perry, and then we read this:

Watch: Game of Thrones is secretly all about climate change http://t.co/oC12czXmqg pic.twitter.com/gvcsrHAwBt

— Vox (@voxdotcom) June 4, 2015

Oh, come on! Seriously?

Vox explains:

The show’s much more entertaining stand-in for climate change is the White Walkers, the North-of-the-Wall monsters that command a gigantic zombie army.

The White Walkers are a threat to all humanity: their zombie minions are equally happy to rip apart people of all nations and noble houses. Yet instead of uniting to combat the shared threat to human existence itself, the noble houses in the show spend basically all their time on their own petty disagreements and struggle for power. White Walkers are generally ignored; some nobles deny their existence is outright denied.

Swap climate change for White Walkers, and “countries” for noble houses, and it starts to sound a lot like the real world.

Specifically, it sounds like the problem of international coordination on climate change. No one country can prevent catastrophic warming on its own: every country that’s a major greenhouse gas emitter is part of the problem.

But if the above is true, then the only way to defeat climate change is with more greenhouse gas emissions from dragons that will bring peace and prosperity to Westeros? (Giggling)

Finally, in a stunning revelation, when an audience member put the ridiculous question, “JRR Tolkien strenuously denied that his books were in any way an allegory for World War II, have you ever been accused of writing about climate change by proxy? You know, it being a bit of a thing in your works, the long Winter?” George replied, “No, I haven’t, not until now,” and continued, “Like Tolkien I do not write allegory, at least not intentionally. Obviously you live in the world and you’re affected by the world around you, so some things sink in on some level, but, if I really wanted to write about climate change in the 21st century I’d write a novel about climate change in the 21st century. Sometimes things happen that are hard to believe. You have to remember I’ve been writing these since 1991, in a couple of the recent books Daenerys Targaryen wielding the massive military superiority offered to her by three dragons has taken over a part of the world where the culture and ethos, and the very people are completely alien to her, and she’s having difficulty ruling this land once she conquered it. It did dawn on me when George W Bush started doing the same thing that some people might say, ‘Hmmm, George is commenting on the Iraq War’, but I swear to you I planned Dany’s thing long before George Bush planned the Iraq War, but I think both military adventures may come to the same end, but it’s not allegory.”

And there you have, straight from the White Walker’s mouth.

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