'Don't Look Up' Director Adam McKay: People 'Somewhat Concerned' About Climate 'Killing Us'

The director of the hugely successful Netflix film Don't Look Up, Adam McKay, has said people who are "somewhat concerned" about climate change are "killing us."

Though the film's focus is on the plight of three scientists, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Rob Morgan, attempting to warn the public of the risk of global annihilation as a result of an approaching giant comet, it serves as a strong allegory for climate change.

The three characters are met with scorn and ridicule by the public, disregarded by science-denying politicians, and by a media unable to take the threat seriously.

McKay spoke in London on Monday as part of a panel that also included Ed Miliband, the opposition Labour Party's point person on climate change, and two other British lawmakers, Caroline Lucas, from the Green party, and Conservative Anthony Browne.

The director, who won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for The Big Short, believes that the problem may be the people who accept climate change but don't realize that the problem is much more immediate.

McKay said: "You know what the issue is? It's the 'I'm somewhat concerned with climate' people that think it's 50 to 80 years in the future. That's who's killing us.

"And they're not getting the real information that it's actually 5-10 years."

McKay said: "We're literally talking about the death of the livable climate. We're already seeing catastrophic responses [to climate change].

"The biggest story in history is rolling over us. In about five to 10 years we'll be judged by this moment when it comes to climate. This is it. This is the biggest story."

The film strikes a chord with many people working across a range of sciences including climate, who frequently find delivering their message made almost impossible by science denial.

One of the phrases frequently used by scientists to describe the film, currently the second most popular film ever on Netflix and nominated for four Baftas and four Academy Awards, is "too close to home."

A search for the film's title and the phrase "too close to home" yields hundreds of tweets from scientists, and science enthusiasts.

Dr. Dani Rabaiotti, a British environmental scientist and popular science writer based at London's Institute of Zoology, tweeted around the time of the film's release on Christmas Eve: "If you work in climate science or epidemiology and want a happy and relaxed Christmas I recommend giving Don't Look Up a miss.

"Way too close to home."

Responding to Rabaiotti's tweet, science writer and animal behavior researcher Rachel Garner said the film felt like a "punch in the face" for her.

Did You Hear About the Thwaites Ice Shelf?

Speaking to the audience at the London event, McKay mentioned his surprise at the subdued public reaction to a study late last year warning that the Thwaites ice shelf could collapse, citing it as a gauge of the lack of urgency surrounding climate change.

The director asked why the threatened collapse of the Thwaites ice shelf, which he described as "one of the biggest hallmarks of the collapse of the livable climate", wasn't bigger news.

"Did you see it on your news?" McKay asked the audience. "No. Or maybe you heard a mention? That is a major, major, major problem."

Recent research studying the growth of fractures in the ice shelf suggested that the Thwaites glacier, one of the largest Antarctic glaciers, comparable to the size of Florida, could "shatter like a car windscreen" in the next five to 10 years.

Meltwater from the massive glacier is already responsible for 4 percent of global sea-level rise. When it collapses, the glacier and the enormous volumes of ice upstream that funnel into the glacier will no longer be restrained from accelerating into the ocean.

If the entire glacier were to melt, Columbia Climate School says that global sea levels would rise by about two feet. To compound this problem, if Thwaites Glacier, and other critical neighboring glaciers like the Pine Island Glacier, cannot hold back the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, water equating to around 10.8 feet in terms of sea level rise would be dumped into the oceans, affecting coastlines across the world.

McKay added: "We're all trying to do the best that we can. But I think we got to start puncturing some holes in our routines. I think that's my point."

British lawmaker Lucas said: "The truth is that, and we've been saying for so many years, that the action has to be taken very fast, and that 2030 was the key moment, that we had 10 years left. And we are out of sync with what needs to be done. We're way past the time of incremental steps.

Asked by Miliband how climate becoming part of the supposed "culture war" between right and left in the United States affected the dispersal of the climate crisis message, McKay responded that he believes climate denial is actually fading.

McKay continued: "America's a bit of a train wreck, although that Super Bowl was good, right? But the same dynamics apply across the world because those dynamics are driven by fossil fuel, misinformation, advertising, lobbying. And the good news is it's not working very well. That's dissipating.

"But it's about the people that think, 'Oh, that's my grandkids' -- that's got to go. Because it is, as we've seen in the weather recently; 5 or 10 years away."