Netflix viewers apparently place little value on a contemplative end of the year. The most popular film on the streaming portal these days is “Don’t Look Up” by director Adam McKay. A satire in which you can watch Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as astrophysicists and doctoral students for two and a half hours, sometimes funny, sometimes excruciating, trying in vain to get humanity to act because a gigantic comet is crashing towards earth.
Of course, everyone immediately understands this as a metaphor for dealing with the climate crisis (the biodiversity crisis cannot be meant because, as is well known, we no longer need a comet to exterminate species at breakneck speed, we can easily do that on our own). “Every catastrophe film begins with a scientist being ignored,” is what it sometimes says on posters at Fridays for Future demonstrations, and that’s how it works here: The Trumpesque US President is only interested in polls, superficial journalists want everything to be positive Turn, the extremely rich tech boss is hungry for valuable raw materials from space.
Some critics found it a bit clumsy, but climatologists also praise it. For many who have long had the feeling of shouting their increasingly clear warnings to the wind, the film struck a nerve, they felt understood. “Ultimately, McKay doesn’t do much more than yell at us in the movie, but we deserve it,” it said in the New York Times.
It’s too little, too late – but something is finally moving
But no matter what you think of the film or the yelling as a climate catastrophe communication strategy; the fact that such a work is financed, filmed, viewed and discussed at all is a sign of how much has recently changed in terms of perception of climate change.
In many ways, the film’s allegation is already out of date. It’s always too late, far too little, but something is finally moving. If you deny the states their climate commitments, the world is heading for around two degrees warming by the end of the century. First of all, of course, that is by no means certain, and secondly, it would still be horrific – but a clear step forward compared to four or more degrees of warming, which was to be feared just a few years ago.
You can now look at the climate crisis with courage and hope, not just with despair. In principle, the task has become solvable. You just have to do it. However, we are still waiting for the film “Don’t Look Down” about the death of insects.