Just Look Up

This year, I turned the TV off before the ball dropped. I knew what was coming: the legion of spectators in wildly impractical eyewear watching the slow descent of a giant metal sphere. Don’t get me wrong—I really do want to believe in the magic of New Year’s. New Year’s is a fresh start, a new beginning, a chance to take your life into your own hands! But this year, I couldn’t seem to conjure that surge of optimism when the clock struck twelve. Maybe it was the quickly dropping temperature, the looming threat of another lockdown, or the constant barrage of climate disaster news, but the only thing on my mind in that moment was Netflix’s latest feature film, the surprisingly captivating Don’t Look Up. I know public opinion on the film is all over the place— some found it to be on-the-nose and out of touch, while others regarded it as a wake-up call for the ages. 

There is one criticism I have about the film: unlike a massive comet, our apocalypse isn’t singular, it isn’t instantaneous, and it isn’t otherworldly. Our apocalypse is climate change: a gradual (but quickly worsening) force that has given humankind ample time to change our destructive behaviour to reverse its progression. Our undoing is not as overt as a comet, and there wasn’t a sudden and obvious moment signifying its arrival. Our apocalypse arrived silently and without ostentation. My criticism of the movie ends there, however, and many climate scientists actually found their onscreen portrayals to be surprisingly resonant—exhausted and underappreciated, working tirelessly to alert the public just to be told to all but lie through their teeth and tell us everything is going to be okay. 

I still remain strangely taken by the film, even weeks after watching it. I think it was the ending that really struck me: no matter what we do now, no matter how advanced our technology gets, it will all end the same way. Countless decisions based on ignorance and greed have made our collective bed, and now we’re all bound to lie in it. While some found the main characters’ final scene—their strained attempt at a normal last meal—to be touchingly bittersweet, all I took away was the profound sadness of a future ripped away by an entirely preventable tragedy. 

I watched as these characters calmly accepted their fate, knowing full well that nothing they did now would make any difference at all. They had done all they could and it wasn’t enough. But they didn’t scream or cry or live out their wildest fantasies Purge-style—they spent their final moments eating green bean casserole while the world exploded around them. I imagined myself and my loved ones doing the same thing, except I know that’s not the way we’ll go. Our apocalypse will be much more subtle.

Briefly optimistic, we watched last year as even the loosest resolutions of COP26 were reconsidered by governments concerned solely with their bottom line. We saw the continuation of deadly wildfires, thousand-year floods, staggering heat waves, and unprecedented weather events. The unpredictability of these climate events is worse now than they ever have been before, and there is only more devastation on the horizon. That knowledge alone is enough to paralyze us as we resign ourselves to the fate of a parched and burning planet.

Apathy is a natural defence mechanism—a means of momentary relief from the pressures of daily life—but it can’t be sustained. Being cynical is a juvenile response to a world on fire, an easy excuse to withdraw from the responsibility of compassion. It’s far too easy to be apathetic in a world so corrupted by the rich and powerful. But a culture of indifference plays an active role in its own demise, creating a feedback loop where people see the devastating future of climate change and feel powerless to stop it, so they sit back and do nothing while it progresses even further. Like the earth-shattering comet Diabasky, this threat is so overwhelmingly real and yet entirely ignorable—provided you choose to operate on a set of facts not bound to basic reason.

However, a culture of indifference hasn’t been widely adopted yet. Countless people still fight tirelessly to do anything they can to stop—or at least slow—the progression of climate change in spite of overwhelming obstacles. Young activists still get up every day and sacrifice their time, income, and emotional energy to their movements. Organizations still raise and distribute money and resources to those affected by climate change’s devastation. There is no promise of a lull in the disasters, no guarantee of a clean and happy future for our children and grandchildren. Making this future viable is hard work, but as children born into an already burning world it’s all we know.

 Things aren’t dire enough yet for a worldwide resignation, and that brings both hope and further challenges. The only resolution I have for this coming year, and for every foreseeable year to come, is that we all realize our ability as individuals to fight back against climate apathy—sharing the load with our friends, our family, and our communities—and keep reminding ourselves to look up.