Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to JPL’s Peter Kalmus, Netflix’s “Don’t look up“, About an oncoming planetary killer asteroid, is a touching metaphor for the struggle that climate scientists.
I am a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every day
Peter Kalmus
Thursday, December 30, 2021 01.08 AEDTA movie about a comet rushing towards Earth and no one doing anything about it? Sounds exactly like the climate crisis
The movie Don’t Look Up is satirical. But as a climate scientist doing everything he can to wake people up and avoid the destruction of the planet, it’s also the most accurate film yet about society’s terrifying inaction to the planet. with the climate decline that I’ve been watching.
The film, directed by Adam McKay and written by David Sirota, tells the story of astronomy graduate student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her doctoral mentor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), who discovered a comet – a “planet killer” – that will impact Earth in just over six months. The certainty of impact is 99.7%, as certain as anything in science.
Essentially, scientists are alone with this knowledge, ignored and despised by society. The panic and despair they feel mirror the panic and despair that many climate scientists feel. In one scene, Mindy increases ventilation in the bathroom; In another story, Diabasky, on national television, shouted “Don’t we know? We are all 100% sure to damn it! ” I may be related. This is what it feels like to be a climate scientist today.
The two astronomers were given a 20-minute audience with the president (Meryl Streep), who was pleased to learn that the impact was not technically 100% certain. Weighing election strategy above the fate of the planet, she decided to “sit closely and judge”. Desperate, the scientists then started a national morning show, but the TV presenters delivered their warnings (which was also overshadowed by one person’s breakup story). popular).
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After 15 years of working to raise climate urgency, I have concluded that the general public, and world leaders in particular, underestimates how quickly, severely and permanently disrupting climate and ecology can be if humanity fails to mobilize. Maybe only the remaining five years before humanity used its remaining “carbon budget” to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius at today’s emissions rates – a level of heating that I don’t believe will be compatible with the current climate. civilized as we know it. And maybe only five years before Amazon Rainforest and a big iceberg in Antarctica beyond the limit points cannot be changed.
The Earth system is currently breaking down at breakneck speed. And climate scientists have faced an even more insurmountable public communications task than the astronomers in Don’t Look Up, since climate devastation has been going on for many years. decade – lightning fast relative to the planet involved, but icy very slow relative to the relevant news cycle – and not as immediate and visible as a comet in the sky.
With all of this, the removal of Don’t Look Up is all too obvious can say more about the critic than the movie. It’s funny and scary because it conveys a chilling truth that climate scientists and others who deeply understand the climate emergency are living every day. I hope that this movie, which humorously depicts how difficult it is to break through current norms, will actually help overcome those norms in real life.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/climate-scientist-dont-look-up-madness
“Don’t Look” should have been named “Don’t look now”.
See “Don’t look up“It’s like watching a low-budget amateur version of Bruce Willis”Apocalypse“, With all the good news removed.
I mean, the movie Armageddon was so much fun. Bruce Willis’ character Harry Stamper chases AJ around an oil rig with a shotgun, after catching him in bed with his daughter. The entire expert drilling team failed the NASA mental exam. A crazy guy likes to play with explosives when they let him.
In contrast, the characters “Don’t Look Up” are not very interesting.
PHD candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) throws random pills whenever she can get her hands on them, and taunts the President. DiCaprio appreciates the character of Dr. Randall Mindy, whose grueling struggle to make coherent sentences when talking to anyone who can help solve a problem, then suddenly turns nice midway through the movie. , after the pretty blonde news anchor begins to feel him on set, followed by an amusing foreplay – “Tell me we’ll die”.
Hillary Clinton’s White House portraits were repeated inexplicably many times during her first meeting with the President, including one of her hugging Bill.
Oops, still 1:22:55 left.
The chief pilot of the space shuttle comet mission just asked the President to do his DUI. Is this an attempt at character development?
The space shuttle mission is aborted after launch – suddenly they want to recover minerals from the comet, instead of deflecting it. 1:19:00 – Leonardo DiCaprio’s character just made an ad for caricature capitalists who aborted their extermination mission. Then, 1:31:00 DiCaprio had a TV talk about why they didn’t destroy the comet. Consistent no.
For some reason, the main characters always wear black hoods to move to a dark web, but before being kicked out, they chat for a long time with their friends wearing their hoods. Oh wait, the next scene the hood is taken off and he’s driving a car. Perhaps the men in black had changed their minds.
1:38:00 – “Don’t look up” is now a chant of protest from the crowd, much like “Let’s go Brandon”.
41 minutes to go. Watch the clock. Now someone just started singing.
1:45:00 – The foreign extermination mission just exploded on the launch pad.
1:51:25 – Buy end of the world groceries from the chiller section.
1:54:00 – DiCaprio’s character just bought his wife flowers (after beating the TV character). Stop hugging and like right away. Truly a doormat.
1:59:00 – Finally something a bit funny – the mineral recovery mission failed, then everyone started running away from the “I have to use the break room” situation room.
2:04:00 – Comet strikes, wiping out the entire cast of tired characters. Ah bum, there are survivors. It just wipes out less annoying characters.
2:07:00 – Strange sight of cell phones and other strange intact debris floating in space.
2:08:00 – I was wrong – 22,000 years later, the President and businessman disembark on an alien planet, all naked, where the President is almost immediately eaten by an alien , followed by (hopefully) all the other colonists.
Oh my gosh, there’s another survivor – taking a selfie in the middle of a pile of rubble.
I guess “Don’t look up” is a good metaphor for the climate crisis after all. The plot is shallow, poorly developed, with no consistency, boring characters that don’t empathize with little real depth and a completely unbelievable ending.
I don’t have a problem with climate disaster movies like that – I love “The day after tomorrow“, It’s a great adventure movie, as long as you ignore the bad science. “Snowpiercer” – amazing. But at the end of “Don’t Look Up”, I started looking for comets. And carnivorous aliens.
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