As Seen On - Don’t Look Up

 

We have taken the world for granted for as long as we have lived. The hindrance although, is that we are not looking to stop. ‘Don’t Look Up’ is a recent Netflix hit that illustrates a comet headed towards the earth, big enough to cause the extinction of all species.

 

However, its highlight is the human complacency and indifference met in response to this threat. The star-studded movie is an attempt to stir people to change considering our horrid present, slave to the Covid virus and our future, most likely headed towards impending environmental doom. Advocating SDG 13: Climate Action the film seeks to portray the continued ignorance even after recognition. 

 

We don’t have a planet B, is not just quote flooding Instagram feeds. It’s our reality. And all politics has been able to achieve is to rob us of our ability to turn things around. The movie shows a struggling scientific community unable to convince the world and more precisely leaders to take the right decision.

 

The tragedy is that this is not fiction. We witnessed it at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The virus was called a hoax and the scientific community was literally mocked by non - adherence. We spend our educational lives obsessing over science and its prominence, but when it comes to actual life setting, we find reasons to accost it. The consistency in the American president on and off screen is daunting." I am taking it very seriously; I’m taking it to heart” said the one on screen. “We have it totally under control. It’s going to be just fine”, were the exact words of American president Donald Trump. 

 

Clouded and bombarded with excessive and useless information, unfortunately today we are all over social media ranting about a bad celebrity break up but pay absolutely no heed to things that can have real impact. These constitute the natural principles like global warming that govern our living and are all set to wipe human civilization from the face the earth, if not urgently addressed. Instrumental human action has been in hibernation for decades and is refusing to wake up to the natural alarms blaring in our faces.

 

The comet is an allegory for the anthropogenic climate crisis that is hundred percent happening. Just because their impact today is at a smaller scale, it is invisible to human consideration. The timeline given for the comets strike, 6 months and 14 days is a fine embodiment of the real time clock that is applicable to us. It's true that that we have considerably longer, around 2-3 decades to turn things around, until runaway climate change activates, and the domino effect is in place. It is also true that we have an unfathomable task at hand.

 

The movie uses a keen blade of satire to say that if the last hope of humanity is a small group of people who do the theoretically impossible to find another planet and still end up dead, then what are we doing …