Don’t Just Watch: Team Behind ‘Don’t Look Up’ Urges Climate Action

In “Don’t Look Up,” a planet-killing comet hurtling toward Earth stands in as a metaphor for the climate crisis, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence playing distraught scientists scrambling to get politicians to act, and the public to believe them. After the film premiered in December, climate scientists took to social media and penned opinion essays, saying they felt seen at last. Several admirers likened the film to “A Modest Proposal,” the 18th-century satirical essay by Jonathan Swift. Naysayers, meanwhile, said the comet allegory was lost on those who took it literally, and questioned why Mr. McKay hadn’t been more straightforward about global warming. “The goal of the movie was to raise awareness about the terrifying urgency of the climate crisis, and in that, it succeeded spectacularly,” said Genevieve Guenther, the founder and director of End Climate Silence, an organization that promotes media coverage of climate change.