George R.R. Martin’s White Walkers Were a Warning About a World-Ending Threat America Still Denies
Long before climate change dominated headlines, George R.R. Martin wove it into A Song of Ice and Fire, turning winter into a chilling warning. In a new New York Times interview, the Game of Thrones creator links Westeros’s power plays and fight for survival to today’s environmental crisis.
Game of Thrones has always worn its politics on its sleeve, but one of its biggest themes was hiding in plain sight: climate change. George R.R. Martin has said as much, and he was writing about it long before it became a hot button in pop culture discourse.
Martin has been ringing this bell for years
Martin told The New York Times that the power games in Westeros are basically a distraction from a looming, world-ending threat. Sound familiar? In his books, everyone is too busy chasing thrones and titles to deal with an ice-cold apocalypse walking straight toward them.
"The people in Westeros are fighting their individual battles over power and status and wealth. And those are so distracting them that they’re ignoring the threat of 'winter is coming,' which has the potential to destroy all of them and to destroy their world."
He drew a straight line to our reality: we argue about foreign and domestic policy, civil rights, social responsibility, and social justice — all important — but none of it will matter if, as he puts it, everyone is dead and the cities are underwater. He believes the data backs that up and says what he calls 99.9% of the scientific community agrees climate change is real and dangerous.
In Westeros, plenty of people wrote off the White Walkers as campfire stories until it was nearly too late. In the real world, denial is still alive and kicking: as of May 2025, the Center for Climate Change Communication reports 15% of Americans think global warming is not happening, and another 16% say they do not know if it is happening.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau sees the same metaphor
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau — Jaime Lannister himself — has talked about this parallel too. As a United Nations Development Programme Global Ambassador, he spends a lot of time focused on climate and conservation, and he told Billboard the White Walkers-as-climate-change read is not exactly subtle, especially once the rival houses finally put their nonsense aside to face a common enemy.
"But the truth is that reality is always much more extreme than fiction. We couldn't make up what’s happening now."
He also said he is using the Game of Thrones megaphone to keep the conversation on climate where people can actually hear it — globally, not just in one corner of the fandom.
The show did not stop at one theme
Beyond the environmental allegory, Thrones poked at other uncomfortable, still-relevant issues. The series was hit with white savior criticism, especially around the moment Daenerys was hailed as Mhysa in Yunkai. Martin has pushed back on that specific scene, saying the optics came down to practicality: they shot in Morocco, and when they put out calls for extras, local crowds showed up. That does not erase the critique, but it is the production context as he tells it.
The show also did not shy away from sexual violence — often to a brutal degree. It attracted plenty of criticism for that, but it also forced the reality of marital rape and abuse into the center of the story instead of pretending it does not exist. Messy? Absolutely. Ignorable? Not really.
Quick refresher
- Title: Game of Thrones
- Showrunners: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
- Release dates: April 17, 2011 to May 19, 2019
- Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
- Where to watch: HBO Max
What else do you think the show was really about, underneath the dragons and daggers? Drop your take in the comments.