Disaster flicks like ‘Don’t Look Up’ won’t spur climate change action. Here’s why.

Yet, the climate crisis is very different from an errant asteroid. Stopping it demands far more than listening to scientists and trusting their technical solutions. For fiction to have an influence on the climate debate, it needs stories that highlight the ways climate change is disrupting everyday life, stories about its impacts — visible and submerged — on health and psychology, family and community, inequality and justice. This, far more than films about sudden Earth-killer comets or nefarious geo-engineering schemes, could help galvanize people to confront the dangers they face in their communities here, now, today.