*Warning, mild spoilers ahead*
The Netflix original film Don’t Look Up is a comedy about a “planet-killer” sized comet hurtling towards Earth, and people’s action (or rather, inaction) to solve the problem. The evidence of the comet is irrefutable, yet throughout the movie, a variety of characters refuse to acknowledge the threat or invest any resources to divert it from striking the planet. Celebrities, politicians, and even the president largely ignore the threat and even discredit the scientists trying to sound the alarm of the situation. While the messaging behind the movie can be debated, there are striking similarities between the fictional extraterrestrial disaster and the very real threat of man-made climate change.
Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was the first person to predict the impacts of excessive CO2 in the atmosphere in 1896, a hypothesis that has been repeatedly proven since then. Recent research has shown that we are reaching a “point of no return” in the climate crisis when the impacts of rising temperatures will become irreversible. Despite this, the vast majority of countries and individuals have yet to take any significant steps to reduce CO2 emissions.
After a harrowing UN Climate Report that signaled a “code-red” for humanity was released in late 2021, peoples’ interest in the climate crisis was renewed. UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “rapid” action must be taken to drastically reduce CO2 emissions if we want to have any chance of stopping the rise in global temperatures. The report was released a few months before the COP 26 summit, where world leaders met in Glasgow with the hope of drafting comprehensive plans to reduce their emissions. The summit has been considered a disappointment by climate scientists and activists alike, as many countries committed to standards that are insufficient for meeting global emission goals. Many now worry that these goals may not be met at all, as leaders’ motivation to spend money on their plans wanes.
Situations like this are when we see the greatest parallels between our reality and Adam McKay’s satirical story. The biggest challenge to achieving our climate goals is not a lack of solutions, but the apathy of so many people towards the crisis. There are those who fully believe that climate change is a hoax (such as half of the Republican members of Congress), but many more people believe in the crisis but are reluctant to take steps to personally combat it. After all, it’s much more comfortable to believe that natural disasters we’re seeing now are freak events, instead of indications of our future circumstances. The lack of actions taken by individuals, corporations, and nations is frustrating to climate experts such as Peter Kalmus. “The Earth is breaking down at breathtaking speed,” he wrote in The Guardian in late 2021 in an opinion piece.
Don’t Look Up starkly highlights how many of us are guilty of at least partially ignoring the climate crisis. The loss of habitats, rising sea levels, and uncontrollable natural disasters are now the uncomfortable reality we have to deal with, so it’s much easier for us to ignore our situation altogether. Your full attention doesn’t need to be directed to the climate crisis every second of every day, but we as a global community do need to take it more seriously. 2021 was yet another year when we saw record-breaking heat waves, extreme flooding, wildfires, and extremely concerning weather patterns in the North and South Poles. The United States even increased its carbon emission levels by 6% in 2021. Our current course of action, or inaction, makes the ending of Don’t Look Up seem like a prediction of our world if we don’t spur ourselves into significant action, and soon.