A History of Environmental Entertainment: Part 2

Now that we have looked over the history of environmental in popular fiction, a suitable conclusion to this series is to look forward and ask ourselves, what next? How do the writers of today reach out to their prospective audiences, and how do they do so without coming off as heavy-handed and superficial?
To know where to go in the future, it helps to know where you have been. Both of the major environmental movements of the past--the ones in the 1970s and the 1990s--were triggered by clear, obvious threats to nature and civilization. And therein lies the difference between environmentalism in the past and today. The burning of the Cuyahoga River in 1969 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 really scared people; incremental increases in global temperature and gradually melting ice caps  don't have the same effect.
So what's an aspiring writer of environmental stories to do? If we look at the stories that have been reviewed so far, the ones that have held up best are those that do not actively demonize the people responsible for destroying the environment. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, WALL-E, and The Lorax are all good examples of this.
People don't respond well in general to being told that they are "part of the problem", and react better to being told how they can help. This is something the best environmental stories all understand, which is why they have aged so well. Many environmental stories make the mistake of simply lecturing their audience on the error of their (perceived) ways, rather then offering constructive criticism to their consumers. This is especially problematic since the people who consume these stories in the first place tend to already care about the environment, and don't need to be reminded to.
At the same time, equating a real-world problem to a fictional villain has the effect of causing the problem to seem less "real". The best environmental stories are ones that show the issues in various shades of grey. I don't mean that they should try to justify the destruction of nature, but they should make it clear that environmentalism, like everything else in the world, is not black and white.
The next generation of environmental fiction will be fundamentally different from the way it was in the past. It will need to connect with the more complex mentality people have regarding the environment today. But it will still need to convey the same basic message as it always has, ever since its beginning.