It has been a few months since Don’t Look Up, a Netflix ‘comedy/disaster’ film, was released to the public. Yet, the hype and the debate about whether this record-breaking film is worthy enough to be nominated for an Oscar, whether Leonardo DiCaprio is well-suited for the role despite his ‘eco hypocrite’ label, etc., are still very well alive. However, this trivial issue risks overshadowing the content and moral value of the film which depicts the inability and ignorance of humankind, mainly driven by corrupt politicians and businessmen, to act collectively against the most obvious existential threats, and that is an inevitable huge comet collision in six-months’ time. What is terrifyingly funny about this film is how it was ‘based on truly possible events’: the planet-killing comet as a metaphor for climate change (Townsend, et. al., 2022).
Scholars of security studies are familiar with the basic typologies and four possible options of ‘security’, which are security, obsession, false security, and insecurity. False security occurs when an objective threat is present yet a subjective one is absent (Madej, 2021). As the name indicates, the feeling of being secure is then false, and this is what best describes the relationship with us and the climate crisis. The narratives that the changes in the climate is natural or that we will have been long gone when the destruction is actually happening, the falsehood uttered by Donald Trump about the name change from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ because “it was getting too cold all over the place” (Trump, 2018), as well as the seemingly ‘happy’ ending in post-apocalyptic Hollywood films, have been around for so long that they are contributing to the creation of a false sense of security in climate crisis. We have been too lulled to take significant countermeasures to prevent destruction caused by the changes in the climate. This is a ticking time bomb.
In August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its most comprehensive assessment on climate change. Humans are to blame, as written in the first line of its report summary, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land.” (IPCC, 2021). The report, which is backed by more than 14,000 scientific studies, has been described as a “code red for humanity” by U.N. Secretary-General, António Guterres. Climate change is irreversible or ‘locked in’, e.g. the melting of Greenland’s sheet of land-ice that will inevitably and eventually lead to the rising of the sea level (Chestney and Januta, 2021). Besides that, under IPCC’s most ‘optimistic’ scenario, summertime sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean, the fastest-warming area on earth, will vanish entirely at least once by 2050 (Januta, 2021). Seas will rise, no matter what.
Despite being a collective existential threat that is supposed to know no boundaries, climate change-related disasters will be unequally felt by the poor. Various sets of data have predicted that countries in the South will be greatly, unfairly, impacted by the climate crisis, both because of geography and low income, making adaptation to climate change much more difficult. To name a few, vector-borne diseases, flooding, water scarcity, mass displacement, will be some of the devastating outcomes of climate change experienced by the people in the South. While developing countries have contributed the least to the problem, they are expected to bear the brunt of the impact of climate change, which threatens to jeopardize many of the developmental gains that have already been achieved (Dervis, 2021).
However, it is important to underline the individual and collective efforts that have been made to help tackle the climate crisis, for instance, Net Zero Pledge, Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion, and many others. Yet, a recent one, the pledge made by the leaders of the world’s richest economies in last year’s G20 summit in Italy, followed by the COP26 summit in Glasgow, are heavily criticized for being a disappointment, and even a ‘betrayal’, for the lack of commitment made on climate burden-sharing towards developing countries which are most hard hit by it (Kühn, 2021). Many people are already channeling concerns about the climate crisis into action in their own lives, but it is obvious that governments and decision-makers must step up. They should be leading the way and inspire further action from businesses, investors, cities, and regions (Kejun and Masson-Delmotte, 2018).
In the eyes of corrupt people in power, millions of science-backed evidence will never be enough reasons to tackle the mass destruction caused by the climate crisis when big profits are in sight. They, and perhaps, we, the Generation Anthropocene – in which human influence on the planet is so profound, it will leave its legacy for millennia (Macfarlane, 2016) – are ironically still too lulled by a false sense of security from the irresponsible narratives that we will eventually be okay at the end, when in fact, nothing was ever okay with how we seem to make peace and decide to just live with the ever-growing threats of destruction. A lot has to change to tackle climate change. We must push those in power to act on it. It is a long journey, obviously, especially given the lack of power that citizens have. Until then, the very least we can do is acknowledge.
