Featured Image Credit: Netflix/GB News
Topics: Climate Change
Aisha Nozari
An interview conducted by GB News host Bev Turner has been spliced with a scene from Adam McKay’s climate crisis comedy Don’t Look Up, and the similarities are unnerving.
Turner’s interview with meteorologist John Hammond has been cut with a scene from Don’t Look Up in which Jennifer Lawrence’s character, astronomer Kate Dibiasky, tried to warn TV anchor Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) that a massive comet is heading towards earth, only for Evantee to make light of the situation, telling Dibiasky: “Around here, we keep the bad news light.”
Watch the clip below:
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Dibiasky’s frivolity was practically identical to Turner’s response to Hammond’s warning that the UK was about to be hit by a suffocating heatwave that could lead to ‘hundreds, if not thousands, of excess deaths’.
After Hammond attempted to highlight how seriously we should be taking the influx of record-breaking temperatures, Turner quipped: “John, I want us to be happy about the weather.”
She added: “I don’t know whether something has happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom.”
Turner went on: “All of the broadcasts, particularly on the BBC, every time I’ve turned on, anyone is talking about the weather and they’re saying there’s going to be tons of fatalities. But haven’t we always had hot weather, John?”
Hammond’s grim predictions were of course right, with the temperature passing 40C for the first ever time in the UK on Tuesday (19 July) as more than one thousand people lost their lives across Europe as a result of sweltering heatwaves.
Don’t Look Up director McKay also weighed in on the clip, tweeting: “There are clips like this from quite a few European countries floating around but not any from the USA.
“Why? Because the US for the most part doesn’t have any substantive discussions with climate activists or scientists on broadcast news.”
Social media users were quick to express their dismay beneath Twitter user Ben Phillips’ edited clip, with one person simply writing: “Surreal.”
A second added: “It’s not hard to understand. The entire planet is heating up, not just a freak event,” while a third penned: “People made fun of Don’t Look Up and all I saw was a slightly exaggerated depiction of what our media and government are actually like.”
UNILAD has approached Turner for comment.
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