Talking Points on "Don't Look Up"

Don’t Look Up uses talented actors and the world's biggest distribution channel (Netflix) to promote a deadly analogy between fossil fuels and an Earth-destroying comet.

In fact, the movie's goal of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is "the comet."

• Don't Look Up is an allegory about fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are represented by an Earth-destroying comet. Politicians, media, and corporations refuse to "look up," acknowledge the comet, and take simple steps to stop it. The lesson: "look up" and stop using fossil fuels, already.
• Equating fossil fuels and "the comet" is backward for 3 reasons:
  1. Fossil fuels' CO2 emissions are not a "planet-killing" threat.
  2. Fossil fuels actually make the planet, including climate, livable.
  3. Stopping fossil fuels ("the comet") would make the Earth unlivable for billions.
• 1: Fossil fuels' CO2 emissions are not a "planet-killing" threat.
  Fossil fuels' CO2 emissions have a warming impact, but that impact is mostly in cold places and diminishes as CO2 levels increase. Life on Earth thrived when CO2 levels were at least 5X higher than today's.¹
• 2: Fossil fuels actually make the planet, including climate, livable, part 1
  Contrary to rhetoric that we've "destroyed the planet," the world has never been a better place for human beings to live--after hundreds of thousands of years of being barely livable for humans.²
• 2: Fossil fuels actually make the planet, including climate, livable, part 2
  A root cause of today's amazingly livable world is fossil fuel. Low-cost, reliable energy from fossil fuels (80% of world energy) enables us to use machines to be productive and prosperous.³
• 2: Fossil fuels actually make the planet, including climate, livable, part 3
  Fossil fuels make us far safer from climate by powering the amazing machines that protect us against the always-dangerous climate. Climate disaster deaths have decreased 98% over the last century.⁴
• 3: Stopping fossil fuels ("the comet") would make the Earth unlivable for billions, part 1
  Solar and wind can't come close to replacing fossil fuels. Because solar and wind are unreliable, they don't replace reliable power plants--they add to the cost of reliable power plants.⁵
• 3: Stopping fossil fuels ("the comet") would make the Earth unlivable for billions, part 2
  Billions of people desperately need low-cost, reliable energy from fossil fuels. 3B people use less electricity than an average American refrigerator. 1/3 of the world uses wood and dung for energy.⁶
• 3: Stopping fossil fuels ("the comet") would make the Earth unlivable for billions, part 3
  If we rapidly eliminate fossil fuels as Don't Look Up's creators advocate, most of the machines that produce our food, clean water, heating, etc would stop working and our world would collapse.
• To assess fossil fuels (or anything else) you have to carefully weigh benefits and side-effects. The benefit of fossil fuels is to make the world livable for 8 billion people. Fossil fuels aren’t the comet in Don’t Look Up, the movie's goal of rapidly eliminating them is the comet.
• While the creators of Don’t Look Up don't know it, the movie's heroes are like today's growing army of pro-fossil fuel humanists, who point out an existential threat (the anti-fossil fuel movement) that everyone is evading despite mounting evidence (failures in CA, TX, and Europe).
• If the creators and actors of Don’t Look Up want to save the world, they should join me in championing fossil fuels, along with the freedom necessary for truly cost-effective non-carbon alternatives to emerge. Example: we need to decriminalize reliable, non-carbon nuclear energy.

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