Cassandras of the world carry the age-long curse; nobody believes them. Leonardo Di Caprio and Jennifer Lawrence are the modern-day Cassandras in 'Don't Look Up.' As research scientists exploring the cosmos, they discover a new asteroid. The elation of having a celestial named after them turns sour when they calculate that the asteroid is headed straight for earth.
An asteroid twice the size that caused the Dinosaur extinction is heading for the earth. The duo press all the panic buttons they can.
However, burdened by their curse, nobody takes them seriously. The movie is a parody of our current discourse on climate change and global warming. The title itself is a parody of contemporary attitudes to science. While confronting the naysayers, the frustrated scientist asks people to just look up and observe the astroid, 'it's just there.' Immediately, to counter them, fanatics start a movement, 'Don't Look Up.' They claim that if they cannot see the asteroid with their naked eye, how can they believe it is there!
I agree it is tactful play and sarcastic comment on divisions in society in this post-truth world;
however, I have problems.
Just yesterday, the Doomsday clock was set at 100 seconds to midnight. For a generation that experienced the horrors of a nuclear bomb, the Doomsday clock represented a real fear. If you search, you can find countless vintage videos and documentaries of people preparing for nuclear doom. However, for my generation, it feels a lot gimmicky; why?
Why! Because personally, I am tired of this doomsday prediction. Forget nuclear; growing up in the nineties, we were worried about the population bomb. India's population will rise so much that it will outstrip the resources and see massive hunger and devastation. Countless seminars and debates raged on how India should adopt China's one-child policy.
What happened? Recently, I saw a debate wherein everyone was worried about the shrinking working-age population. Population decline is the major worry in most western nations. Even China is actively reversing its one-child policy.
And massive hunger still exists, but not because of a lack of resources. Indian godowns are overflowing with grains. These grains are rotting because of an inefficient distribution system leaving many malnourished.
However, this has not stopped people from prescribing half-baked solutions. We should go organic, go minimalistic, think of the hungry people worldwide, and eat less.
Eat less! Suppose a considerable amount of people accept and follow up on this maxim, the consequence will be the crashing of the already low grain prices. It may or may not solve global hunger, but it will surely push many farming families into poverty.
So is it a wonder that people are cynical!
The major irritants are the self-pontificating people. Experts don’t trust people’s intelligence and try to dumb things down; they come up with simplistic one-liners, which are in turn picked up pseudo activists. One such vocal-activist said to me, ‘exporting rice is like exporting India’s water.’ And there I was, wondering if the rice has so much water, why does it need cups of extra water while cooking?
The problem is nuanced; it includes complex interactions of irrigation channels, depleting groundwater, excessive pesticide usage, stubble burning, market pricing, etc. If you say ‘exporting rice’ is India’s problem, the solution is equally simple ‘stop exporting!’ And be sure trigger happy officials might go ahead and implement such a ban.
Don’t believe it, just google search, ‘export ban on onions.’ A farmer is most nervous when the onion prices start racing up. One day the farmer might be earning multiples on his investment. The next day, boom! — export bans, import tenders, anti-hoarding actions, and the price of onion crashes. Soon enough, we have farmers dumping their produce on roads as they cannot recover their transport costs. No one wants to go into the details of crop rotation and market manipulation to address the ‘real’ issues.
Another reason to dislike this movie is that it has one such self-pontificating vocal-activist – Meryl Streep. The warrior of all distant causes, but if the cause were a person and lived next to her, she would say, ‘I never noticed it.’
It is like when a relative of yours is caught snorting drugs. Privately, we all claim that we knew something was off about him. Still, publicly we say, ‘I never saw him even smoke a cigarette.’
Climate change is a real problem. However, if Corona has taught us anything, ‘panic’ and ‘anxiety’ are counterproductive. We all have seen scenes of a mob hitting a person for letting out a cough in public. First, set up proper education and messaging systems, trust the public’s intellect, and stop pontificating. Otherwise, it will become the story of ‘the boy who cried, Wolf.’
Or Maybe, it has already become!
The irony of the movie ‘Don’t look up’ might be totally wasted as we embark on embracing electric vehicles which are powered by burning coal in distant power plants. All in the name of reducing emissions.
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