Applying the Wisdom of Indigenous Scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer to Don’t Look Up

Since the release of Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s crushing satire about a planet-killing comet soaring towards Earth, the film has elicited applause, annoyance, and existential dread in a way that only something portraying the semi-real destruction of all we know and love could. McKay’s project gets a lot about the climate crisis correct—except when it doesn’t.

The film opens with PhD astronomy candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her advisor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), discovering an Earth-bound comet and woefully realizing it would cause a planetary extinction event. The duo, along with Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, bring this finding to President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her chief-of-staff son, Jason (Jonah Hill)—dead ringers for the Trumps—and are faced with skepticism and opposition. As the world grapples with the impending comet, there are discussions of how to destroy it, and even some familiar attempts to profit off it led by billionaire Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), whose tech-savvy, all-knowing mystique rivals that of Elon Musk.

The film gives us plenty of allegories for our real-life environmental issues. At times, Dr. Mindy parallels the unheard warnings of scientists; at other times he perpetuates the dilution and bastardization of science from a more popular, less scientific, and compromising viewpoint. The public falls into familiar groups: a few passionate advocates, some outright deniers, and most others somewhere in the middle. The comet, like climate change, leaves people in a state of dread-filled inaction.

Climate activists and scientists use the word “anthropogenic,” meaning human made, to describe climate change. The scientific consensus is that in addition to finding solutions to the current situation, we also need to drastically change our behavior to stop further environmental decay. But a reflection on this kind of behavioral change, and an acknowledgement of systemic impacts, are largely absent from Don’t Look Up. What good is a movie about climate change that represents the disaster as coincidental rather than caused? If Don’t Look Up’s purpose is to hold humanity accountable for the destruction of Earth, it woefully fails by only addressing humanity’s inability to respond to this crisis, not humanity’s role in causing it to begin with.

As a conversation starter, the film has served an important purpose. An inadequate response to the comet, highlighted by the prioritization of capitalist ideals (such as profiting off an impending comet instead of destroying it), in addition to widespread science denial, speaks to how humanity is responding to climate change. Overall, the plot focuses on the importance of following science and the precautionary principle: to err on the side of caution in the face of unknowns. With climate change as with the comet, we need to listen to scientists and react to the crisis—and also recognize our role in causing it.

Certain activities, like a reliance on the fossil fuel industry—from gasoline-powered cars to plastics to how we heat and power our homes—are major contributors. But there are other battlefields where humanity’s war on nature is waged. Something as simple as rethinking lawncare is critical for improving our relationship with nature, not just because the tools we use are polluters of both noise and air, but because nature is okay as it is. It does not need to be manicured like nails or trimmed like hair, as if it were some extension of ourselves that we should control. It is its own entity, and we should co-exist with it peacefully. Acting differently exacerbates climate change, intensifies biodiversity decline, and perpetuates the “human vs. nature” mindset.

Dr. Mindy woefully ends Don’t Look Up with the line “we really did have everything, didn’t we?” He refers to the group’s dinner, just finished, but also to humanity’s interaction with the world. Mindy, a scientist, leaves us wondering why value is so often ascribed only to things we can consume.

The only difference between our reality and Don’t Look Up is that in our case, we are not just responsible for reacting to this crisis, we are responsible for the crisis itself. This is the kind of tragedy that ecologists and systems scientists know well. In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, biologist and naturalist Robin Wall Kimmerer calls for a reciprocal relationship with nature. Her indigenous wisdoms from her Potawatomi ancestors center on the idea that plants and animals are humanity’s oldest teachers; that by giving to nature, we will be exposed to gifts of “ecological consciousness.”

In her essay “Returning the Gift,” Kimmerer goes further. To her, we are living in the “great delusion,” a period where we no longer understand the necessity of gratitude to our surroundings. In Don’t Look Up, nature is eerily absent, inadvertently paralleling how humans cause climate change through not being mindful of our environment. Some of our most serious problems—the biodiversity crisis, our excessive consumption, pollution—all relate to reciprocity and our failure to keep Earth in balance. This should be no surprise to the average reader. After all, our own species has failed to maintain equality and justice even within our own ranks.

In Don’t Look Up, inequality is on full display as President Orlean, Isherwell, and an anointed (presumably mega-wealthy) few leave Earth on an interstellar ark as most everyone else dies, akin to how the biggest polluters escape the worst impacts of climate change while the most vulnerable end up suffering. So maybe we are not all worthy of the scathing commentary, but most of us can do with some healthful behavior change. Rather than ignoring our reality and prolonging the actions that caused it, we should empower ourselves to make incremental changes and challenge our leaders to facilitate monumental ones.

Don’t Look Up—while delivering a masterclass on the importance of listening to science—misses this point. To get across the magnitude of what we must overcome, a holistic perspective is sorely needed; individuals need to think about how our everyday actions and environmental decay are linked. Recognizing the environmental costs of our actions, understanding that what we do matters, should provoke changes at both the individual and societal levels. Helping people make these connections might inspire the kind of action the filmmakers are seeking.

In “Returning the Gift,” Kimmerer makes this point clear, arguing that humanity has a responsibility to show gratitude toward nature:

Gratitude is founded on the deep knowing that our very existence relies on the gifts of beings who can in fact photosynthesize. Gratitude propels the recognition of the personhood of all beings and challenges the fallacy of human exceptionalism—the idea that we are somehow better, more deserving of the wealth and services of the Earth than other species.

As Kimmerer reflects, gratitude might seem small and insignificant, especially in the face of climate catastrophe. But perhaps we are more willing to fight for what we respect?

Despite its shortcomings, Don’t Look Up carries important lessons. Climate scientist Peter Kalmus wrote that he hopes the film helps highlight the absurdity of not collectively acting despite collectively knowing—and that solutions should be based in holistic understandings rather than Silicon Valley innovations. Kalmus is right: collective action and solutions that get to the heart of the problem—renewable energy transitions, consuming in a mindful manner, promoting equity, preserving and valuing biodiversity—are critical to save the planet.

But for me, one lesson sticks out. In Don’t Look Up, we are not just humanity. We are also the comet. To stop it, we must stop ourselves.