7/28/2023 0 Comments Don t look up film![]() There may only be five years left before humanity expends the remaining “carbon budget” to stay under 1.5C of global heating at today’s emissions rates – a level of heating I am not confident will be compatible with civilization as we know it. World leaders underestimate how rapid, serious and permanent ecological breakdown will be if humanity fails to mobilizeĪfter 15 years of working to raise climate urgency, I’ve concluded that the public in general, and world leaders in particular, underestimate how rapid, serious and permanent climate and ecological breakdown will be if humanity fails to mobilize. We live in a society in which, despite extraordinarily clear, present, and worsening climate danger, more than half of Republican members of Congress still say climate change is a hoax and many more wish to block action, and in which the official Democratic party platform still enshrines massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry in which the current president ran on a promise that “nothing will fundamentally change”, and the speaker of the House dismissed even a modest climate plan as “the green dream or whatever” in which the largest delegation to Cop26 was the fossil fuel industry, and the White House sold drilling rights to a huge tract of the Gulf of Mexico after the summit in which world leaders say that climate is an “existential threat to humanity” while simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production in which major newspapers still run fossil fuel ads, and climate news is routinely overshadowed by sports in which entrepreneurs push incredibly risky tech solutions and billionaires sell the absurdist fantasy that humanity can just move to Mars. Will there be a Super Bowl?”īut this isn’t a film about how humanity would respond to a planet-killing comet it’s a film about how humanity is responding to planet-killing climate breakdown. A sports magazine’s cover asks, “The end is near. ![]() After political winds shift, the president initiates a mission to divert the comet, but changes her mind at the last moment when urged to do so by a billionaire donor (Mark Rylance) with his own plan to guide it to a safe landing, using unproven technology, in order to claim its precious metals. Desperate, the scientists then go on a national morning show, but the TV hosts make light of their warning (which is also overshadowed by a celebrity breakup story).īy now, the imminent collision with comet Dibiasky is confirmed by scientists around the world. Weighing election strategy above the fate of the planet, she decides to “sit tight and assess”. The two astronomers are given a 20-minute audience with the president (Meryl Streep), who is glad to hear that impact isn’t technically 100% certain. This is what it feels like to be a climate scientist today. In one scene, Mindy hyperventilates in a bathroom in another, Dibiasky, on national TV, screams “Are we not being clear? We’re all 100% for sure gonna fucking die!” I can relate. The panic and desperation they feel mirror the panic and desperation that many climate scientists feel. ![]() The scientists are essentially alone with this knowledge, ignored and gaslighted by society.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |