Tuesday, March 26

Seeing Don’t Look Up made me see my whole campaign life before me | George monbiot


NorthIt is surprising that journalists have programmed it. They have presented hundreds of excuses for not seeing the satire of the climate crisis Don’t Look Up: it is “blunt“, his “strident“, his “smug”. But they won’t name the real problem – it’s about them. The film is, in my opinion, a powerful demolition of the grotesque failures of public life. And the sector whose failures are most brutally exposed is the media.

While the movie is fast-paced and fun, to me, as to many environmental activists and climate scientists, it seemed too real. I felt like I was watching my adult life pass me by. While the scientists in the film, trying to draw attention to the approaching comet that kills planets, they banged their heads against the Great Wall of Denial erected by the media and tried to reach politicians with attention spans of 10 seconds, all the anger and frustration and despair that I’ve felt over the years overflowed.

Especially when the scientist who had discovered the comet was pushed to the bottom of the agenda by celebrity gossip on a morning TV show and erupted in fury, I was reminded of my own. mortifying loss of control on Good Morning Britain in November. It was shortly after the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow that we saw that the least serious government of all (the UK was hosting the talks) did not get to the most serious of all issues. I tried, for the umpteenth time, to explain what we were up against, and suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore. I burst into tears on live TV.

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I still feel deeply ashamed of that. The response on social media, like the scientist’s response in the film, was vituperative and cruel. I was pretending. I was hysterical. I was mentally ill. But, knowing where we are and what we are up against, seeing the indifference of those in power, seeing how our existential crisis has been marginalized in favor of triviality and frivolity, I now realize that something would be wrong with me if there were not. done ‘. I lost it.

George Monbiot on Good Morning Great Britain
“ I tried, for the umpteenth time, to explain what we were up against, and suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore. ” Photograph: George Monbiot crying screenshot / Good Morning Britain

In fighting any great harm, in any age, we are faced with the same forces: distraction, denial, and deception. Those looking to sound the alarm about the increasing collapse of our life support systems soon run into the barrier that stands between us and the people we are trying to reach, a barrier called the media. With a few notable exceptions, the industry that should facilitate communication frustrates you.

It’s not just their individual stupidities that have become unforgivable, like the platforms repeatedly given to climate deniers. It is the structural stupidity that the media is committed to. It is anti-intellectualism, hostility to new ideas, and aversion to complexity. It is the absence of moral seriousness. It’s the empty gossip about celebrities and consumables that takes precedence over the survival of life on Earth. It is the obsession to generate noise, regardless of the signal. It is thoughtful alignment with the status quo, whatever it is. It is the endless promotion of the opinions of the most selfish and antisocial people, and the exclusion of those who try to defend us from the catastrophe, arguing that they are “worthy”, “extreme” or “crazy” (I hear from friends of the BBC that these terms are still used there to describe environmental activists).

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Even when these distraction marketers address the problem, they tend to exclude experts and interview actors, singers, and other celebrities. The media’s obsession with actors vindicates Guy Debord’s predictions in his book The Society of the Spectacle, published in 1967. Substance is replaced by appearance, as even the most serious issues must now be articulated by people whose work It involves adopting someone else’s personality and talking to someone. other words. Later, the same media, having turned them into spokespersons, attack these actors as hypocrites for leading a wasteful lifestyle.

Similarly, it is not just the individual failures of governments in Glasgow and elsewhere that have become unforgivable, but the entire framework of the negotiations. How crucial ground systems might be closing in on your inflection point, governments still propose to tackle the problem in small increments of action, over decades. It is as if, in 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the global financial system began to falter, governments announced that they would bail out banks at the rate of a few million pounds a day between then and 2050. The system would have collapsed 40 years before his program was completed. Our central question of civilization, I believe, is this: why are nations rushing to rescue the banks but not the planet?

So as we race toward the collapse of the Earth system, trying to sound the alarm feels like being trapped behind a thick plate of glass. People can see our mouths open and close, but they have a hard time listening to what we say. As we frantically bang on the glass, we look more and more insane. And feel it. The situation is really desperate. I have worked on these issues since I was 22 years old and am full of confidence and hope. I’m about to turn 59 and confidence is turning to cold fear, hope to horror. As manufactured indifference ensures that we are not heard, it becomes increasingly difficult to know how to hold it together. I cry almost every day now.

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