DON’T LOOK UP – A DARK BUT SURPRISINGLY ACCURATE DEPICTION OF OUR SOCIETY
February 16, 2022 Written by: Sebastian Rotter
Director Adam McKay’s satirical science fiction movie Don’t Look Up has quickly gained a lot of media attention since its release in December 2021. The film tells the story of two astronomers who discover a comet heading for Planet Earth, bigger than the one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, and sure to end human society as we know it. However, both politics and the media react with the same sentiment to this discovery: indifference. Later on, this indifference even changes to complete denial in some people. It is easy to see many parallels to our own society, be it with the ongoing pandemic, or, much longer standing, the climate crisis. In the following, I am looking at it in terms of the latter.
In the movie, the calculated time until the impact of the comet is around six months. This is long enough that people do not feel a strong sense of urgency, but in reality, every day counts to prepare a defense plan to defer the trajectory of the comet. Let us compare this to the climate crisis. Of course, we do not have a specific calculated date for the impact of the changing climate. There is no “day zero”. Changes in our climate are relatively slow, which make them even more dangerous because this makes them seem less significant and less urgent. Scientists estimate that between 0.01 and 0.1 % of all species will become extinct every year [1]. This does not sound like much, but considering that we do not even know how many species we have not discovered yet, this could be 100,000 or more species every year. Rising sea levels of 0.1 inches every year will eventually result in several feet of higher sea water, which will be catastrophic to many coastal communities.
While we do not have a “day zero” for the impact of that “climate comet”, scientists have long talked about tipping points of our environment. These are the points at which a small change will become significant enough to cause a cascading effect to trigger more and more severe effects with potentially catastrophic consequences. Examples would be the melting of arctic ice, which can raise global sea levels by several feet, and the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforests, for which we can already see that they now emit more CO2 than they absorb [2]. We do not know when exactly those tipping points will be reached, or whether we have already passed them, but this does not change the fact that they are there, they are real, and if we pass them, we will eventually feel the consequences.
Another scary parallel that the film draws to our own society is the disregard for scientific discoveries and the scientific community as a whole. No matter how much evidence is presented, no matter how much the urgency is highlighted, and no matter how strong the language to communicate the dangers, there seems to be no getting through to the public. At best it will appear as a short segment on a TV show, right after the newest celebrity drama, quick to be forgotten again.
On the political side, such topics might merely be used by political figures to push their own agenda and improve their public image. Real action follows rarely or only in the most minuscule form. In the movie, the President of the United States, after being asked directly by one of the main characters, openly admits that she is only taking action in order to push her own approval ratings. We can observe this in the real-world US as well. Trump did not believe in climate change, and as a consequence, he withdrew the US from the Paris agreement. This was one of many anti climate change and anti-environmental actions that he took. In contrast, Biden claims to care about climate change yet has also hardly followed through with this promise of prioritizing the climate crisis.
Adam McKay highlights one other major aspect that drives many political and societal decisions in our modern times: financial gain. In the film, the economic standpoint ends up winning over its scientific counterpart, when instead of deferring the trajectory of the comet away from the earth using a peer-reviewed plan by scientists, the decision is made to blast the comet into smaller pieces so that they will hit Earth and then be mined for trillions of dollars worth of rare minerals. We can see the same decisions being taken in our own world today– profit over preservation, greed over reason. We are exploiting our Planet for resources such as oil, ignoring any damage this might cause to our environment (think of all the oil leaks and accidents polluting our oceans). The meat and fish industries are also notorious for putting profit on top of all else: rainforests being demolished to make more room for cattle farms, ocean ecosystems being ravaged by fleets of fishing boats, especially with damaging techniques such as trawling.
One of the most aggravating depictions in the movie for me was the willful denial of facts. Facts that can already be observed with our own eyes, if only people would look at them. But instead, they choose to look away and ignore the very facts before them. In the film, “Don’t Look Up” becomes the slogan for a political party, at a time when the approaching comet could clearly be seen in the sky with one’s own eyes. We can see this in our own world as well. The extinction of species, more frequent extreme weather phenomena, melting of the arctic ice, and more. These are the effects we can already observe today, even in our own country. We cannot afford to close our eyes and look away. We need to look and observe, we need to understand what is happening, and then we need to act on it.
What can we do then?
We need to make changes on a large scale! We need to make major societal changes. But these societal changes start with every single one of us. If we adapt our own behavior and we make use of our voice, we can make those changes real. Planet Rehab is one of many organizations that are looking to make a difference. Among our projects is the Just One Tree Initiative, which aims to preserve the existence of a keystone species crucial to the Rainforest, the Almendro Tree, the Coral Restoration Project to foster man-made coral reefs to assist in their incredible contribution to clean oceans, and the Amphibian Protection Relocation Program which aims to help the survival of the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog, among other frog species. You can help by contributing to help to make these projects a success and enable us to fight back against the destruction of our Planet. We can make a difference if we combine our efforts and bundle our strengths. Head on over to planetrehab.org to find more information on the projects that Planet Rehab is involved in and to find more opportunities to get involved. And please, LOOK UP!
[1] WWF – Biodiversity: https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/biodiversity/biodiversity/ (accessed on 10 Jan 2022)
[2] The Guardian: Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs (2021): https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/the-amazon-rainforest-now-emits-more-carbon-than-it-absorbs/#:~:text=For%20generations%2C%20the%20vast%20area,year%20than%20it%20can%20absorb (last access on 26 Jan 2022)