This article contains spoilers from the Netflix movie: Don’t look up. You have been warned.
This Christmas, we were blessed with a phenomenal movie, directed by Adam Mackay, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchette and Meryl Streep. Don’t look up plays out a scenario as to what would happen if an asteroid were detected less than 7 months from impact and how politicians, industries, and the public would react to this information. I think this movie has massive dramatization except for 1 aspect, the fact that Politicizing scientific facts occur around us much more than we think and how it was portrayed in the movie was unbelievably matched. This movie is a great metaphor for the trajectory the world is currently in with regards to global warming (which by the way was renamed to climate change during the Bush administration to make it sounds less scary).
Don't Look Up and The Politicization of Science
Written by Andrew Kaprielian
This Christmas, we were blessed with a phenomenal movie, directed by Adam Mackay, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchette and Meryl Streep. Don’t look up plays out a scenario as to what would happen if an asteroid were detected less than 7 months from impact and how politicians, industries, and the public would react to this information. I think this movie has massive dramatization except for 1 aspect, the fact that Politicizing scientific facts occur around us much more than we think and how it was portrayed in the movie was unbelievably matched. This movie is a great metaphor for the trajectory the world is currently in with regards to global warming (which by the way was renamed to climate change during the Bush administration to make it sounds less scary).
This article contains spoilers from the Netflix movie: Don’t look up. You have been warned.
The politicization of science for political gain occurs when governments, businesses, or advocacy groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported, or interpreted. This problem is what is currently exacerbating the Climate Crisis. If we look at the movie, in every scene where Doctor Randall gets interviewed, he is never really allowed to give his opinion about the Comet. Instead, all the network wants is for the information to be delivered calmly. When this happens, the public perceives this information to not be a problem and that is the problem.
The second part of this issue is the fact that politicians only act to remain in power. This fact while frightening is very real, and we have seen this episode play out many times throughout history. President Orlean only does something about the asteroid when she sees that she was about to lose her election as well as her power after all the scandals with her supreme court nominee. Later, with information and technology from BASH, the white house decides on bending facts about the effects of smaller meteors. This information was barely talked about in the movie but theoretically, if BASH were successful, 40 meteors would have impacted earth still causing enormous damage to the populations living on various coastlines. That information was never talked about because no one wants to hear about the possibilities of tsunamis, all they want to hear about are the jobs it could provide. Politicians and the media only want to sell their news, not the news. This sadly leads to many scientists resigning or getting fired from their roles in the government and pushing a public effort.
In the end, it is the industry that really pushed all the buttons within this whole mess, and this directly links both Musk and Bezos’ plans for looking to the stars rather than into the earth.