“Don’t Look Up” Doesn’t Arouse Anger at Climate Inaction – The HuffPost

CLIMATE – The movie “Don’t Look up. Cosmic denial ” by American director Adam McKay, known for his equally cynical and political film “The Big short ”, is the most watched movie on Netflix for two weeks. According to information from the American site Deadline, it is even on schedule to become the most watched film, over a month, in the history of the platform.

For several days, the disaster movie arouses in many countries more political reactions, articles and cries of alarm than during the last climatic disasters, from heat records in Alaska and Greenland or the greatest scientific documentaries already available on climate change.

How to explain such a planetary phenomenon? The 5-star cast (Leonardo Dicaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett …) attracted the first spectators, but that’s the moral of the story, the thousands of political reactions and citizens around the world who have propelled him from the category of Hollywood blockbuster to that of engaged and socio-political film.

Because beyond the parody and the caricature, Don’t look up gives part of the population (awake or worried about climate change) impressions of déjà vu, where everyone can find confirmation of their climate concerns.

From fiction to reality

And they are legion throughout the film: politicians who ignore or postpone the warning of scientists, too busy with other emergencies or controversies; great industrial fortunes, the embodiment of unfailing optimism and human genius, who see a technological solution (and an economic opportunity) to any threat; or even major newspapers and television shows more worried about their audience and their desire to entertain than by the substance of the subject and their role of whistleblowers …

The parallels or shortcuts with current crises, from climate change to the management of coronavirus pandemic, have therefore not failed to flourish on social networks, from ordinary citizens, to environmental activists, to the greatest scientists who have found in the battle of the two astrophysicists, at the origin of the discovery, the “Diabiasky comet” speeding towards Earth, memories familiar and similar to reality.

Asked by The HuffPost, climatologist Jean Jouzel, member of the Academy of Sciences and former vice-president of the IPCC (2002-2015), thus “recognized” himself in his long fight against climate skeptics. “When we scientists said in the 1980s that if we continued to emit more greenhouse gases, we would be heading towards irremediable warming (…) we were not being listened to”, he confides.

Same impression for the current co-chair of the IPCC intergovernmental expert group on climate change, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, according to whom his children drew the parallel with climate change after watching the film with the family. According to her, “the film shows the gap between the way scientists operate and that of the world of media and political power”.

“For example, I have had 3 minutes (3 questions) to present the key points of an IPCC report to a head of state or government, a minister, an elected official. It’s short, ”she recalls, also confiding that she“ suffered from this dissonance during interventions in the media, with the question of how to tackle serious issues in a media world that seeks distraction, the simplistic aspects, the argument, the whole between two advertisements ”.

(On the protester’s sign: “Every disaster movie begins with the government ignoring a scientist”)

Since the film’s release, calls for everyone’s awareness and for concrete action have multiplied. For some, viewing the film is as much a source of additional anger against the themes at the center of the political debate, as it is a source of motivation and commitment to make things happen.

It is also an American climatologist, Michael E. Mann, who inspired Adam McKay, the role of Doctor Randall Mindy, played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio. As he explained to our colleagues from World, for years, he has castigated politicians and industrialists who “resist the messages and realities that they do not want to hear”, emphasizing both “the urgency” but also “the capacity to act”. Because according to him, “the conviction that it is too late to act leads us potentially on the same path of inaction and disengagement as outright denial”.

The reflection of the fear of the present and the future

In addition to calls for a start and a sense of priorities, the film reinforces in some the feeling of helplessness and what specialists call “eco-anxiety”. This anxiety (or this existential crisis in the face of reality and the anticipation of the effects of the ecological crisis) is affecting an increasingly large part of young people, according to the latest surveys published in France and around the world.

In September 2021, a global study carried out among 10,000 young people from ten countries in the North and South, revealed that 45% of 16-25 year olds questioned said they were “eco-anxious” in their daily life. According to this survey published in the scientific journalThe Lancet Planetary Health, 75% of the young people questioned consider the future “frightening” and no less than 56% consider that “humanity is doomed”.

“We knew that eco-anxiety was progressing, especially among young people, who represent the most affected population, but we did not know that this psychological suffering was so extensive and this discomfort was so deep”, then reacted psychologist Caroline Hickman , professor at the University of Bath (United Kingdom) and first author of the study.

In a YouGov poll for The HuffPost in October 2019, 51% of French people already affirmed that global warming was for them “a source of anxiety”. A figure which rose to 72% for 18-24 year olds. Among the people concerned, this anxiety was manifested by anger (39% of those questioned), but also by fear (34%) or even depression (14%). Since then, COP26 has given birth to an international agreement ambitions, once again, very limited and which does not meet the demands and expectations of NGOs and scientists.

Ecoanxiety calls for a social response

“Ecoanxiety is a natural and legitimate reaction to the ecological crisis. It is not a disease ”, explains to World, child psychiatrist Laelia Benoit, who is leading a large-scale study on the impact of climate change on the well-being and mental health of children and adolescents at Yale University in the United States.

“It’s not a new form of depression, and it doesn’t call for medical treatment: eco-anxiety calls for a social response. More and more young people will suffer from eco-anxiety. But make no mistake about the problem: it is their loneliness in the face of a society that ignores climate change that makes them suffer, ”she adds, explaining that“ ecological inaction is a form of abuse against young people. ”.

If you want to go further, here is a series of articles from our section LIFE to better understand, apprehend or cope with eco-anxiety:

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