'Don’t Look Up' director calls for urgency in climate change coverage

In Don’t Look Up, the 2021 satirical film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, a huge asteroid barrelling towards Earth while most people ignore its impending destruction is a thinly disguised metaphor for climate change. 

In a recent conversation with Greg Cochrane and the members of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, Adam McKay, the American filmmaker behind the movie, issued an even starker warning for the news media. 

McKay harshly rebuked mainstream outlets as being too focused on advertising and corporate interests to present climate change as an urgent, existential threat. “I don't see any other way. If we keep giving the BBC, The New York Times, the stock market, billionaires, and trillionaires credence, we will die,” he said. 

The destructive Palisades Fire, which consumed large areas around Los Angeles earlier this year, was a turning point for McKay, who lives in the city and saw the fires’ devastation first-hand. Speaking to Greg, he described his incredulity at how the public conversation and news coverage of the fires skirted around the topic of climate change, and how it doesn’t seem to have created significant policy changes. 

“I really woke up with that, because you would think something that devastating would clear people's eyes, but it did not,” he said. 

As well as his work in the entertainment industry, McKay founded the nonprofit Yellow Dot Studios in 2023 “to challenge Big Oil disinformation, and mobilise action on the fossil fuel pollution crisis.” Here’s a summary of our conversation with him. 

Watch the event

Five takeaways from the discussion

1. Mainstream news organisations are not doing enough. 

McKay repeatedly criticised large, legacy media outlets for their lack of urgency in climate reporting and missed opportunities to warn about the dangers of global warming.

“Even though I'm just repeating science, it becomes me, Adam McKay, versus the New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC, Western governments, and you're going to lose that battle every single time,” he said. Nonetheless, he pointed out that many of the institutions he criticised have very dedicated climate reporters. [The New York Times regularly publishes stories on climate policy and environmental impacts and has a dedicated newsletter sent out thrice a week. The BBC has covered many climate stories, including on record-breaking global warming.]

2. The media often fails to connect breaking news to underlying climate change. 

Giving the example of the coverage of the LA fires, McKay pointed to the US media discussion around how the fire started – whether it was a downed power line or arson – without taking into account the impacts of climate change. 

“There were a bunch of us pointing out that we've had arson forever. There have been downed power lines forever. But the takeaway is that 90% of the people who went through that had zero climate awareness, and to this day, they still don't,” he said. 

3. The news media should be more alarmist. 

McKay pushed back against the idea that negative news is counterproductive and encourages news avoidance. He advocated for stronger language and eliciting fear from audiences as a way to provoke action on climate. 

“Mainstream media needs to use alarm, urgency words. They need to push climate into a headline,” he said. “The idea that you're going to bum people out by being for real with them is ridiculous… Be wary of people who talk like that; they’re peddling opium. The global population is being gaslit on a daily basis.”

McKay was similarly sceptical of solutions journalism and a focus on positive stories. “This misapplied idea that you have to give people hope… It’s just a poison pill. People need to be alarmed and aware of the stakes… alarm and action beats vague hope every time,” he said.

4. Poor ratings for climate stories are an editorial failure. 

McKay also challenged the idea that climate stories are inherently unpopular with audiences, or too scientific and boring. He mentioned several recent extreme weather events as eye-catching stories that can engage audiences while talking about climate change, and suggested that the drama of our changing environment is interesting enough. 

“It’s always funny to me when people are like, ‘How do you make that entertaining?’ To me, it’s like, how do you make the movie Twister entertaining? … Are we really worried about Jaws being entertaining?” he asked.

He also made the case for connecting interesting stories to climate, even if they’re about a different topic, like sports. It's fair to “be strategic and smart,” he said. But we shouldn’t blow past that moment where, for example, a sports journalist may write that a big match was delayed because of a freak weather event caused by climate change.

5. Climate communicators should persist in their work. 

McKay warned against getting discouraged or frustrated, pointing to his own response to the LA fires and the lack of climate action in their aftermath. 

“We have to warn, acknowledge, and then learn. Warn, acknowledge, and learn. For me, it was a ‘grow the hell up’ moment, because initially I was pissed, I was disdainful of the media, and putting posts out there,” he said.

McKay praised climate journalists, even as he heaped criticism on many media outlets. “God bless the climate journalist,” he said. “You guys have gotten your teeth kicked in by the corporate media ownership. So if we're going to go down, let's go loud and fighting. But ultimately, I don't think we will go down.”