Adam McKay pledges to donate $4 million to the Climate Emergency Fund, to support calls for more aggressive action against climate change.
Adam McKay, American film director, producer, screenwriter, and comedian, got his start in the 1990s writing sketch comedy for Saturday Night Live. Comedy still features heavily in his art, but his latest big film, Don’t Look Up, shows just how grim comedy can get. No one who saw it would mistake McKay’s politics – the film revolves around those who believe scientists about a critical danger, and the absurd lengths others will go to not to see the evidence.
Don’t Look Up bombed in the theaters, with only $1.5 million in box office takes, but it was release in December 2021. It did much better on Netflix, where it became the second-most-watched movie on the platform within a month.
Adam McKay very much does not want reality to reflect his fiction, which ends with the extinction of mankind.
Climate change is “extremely alarming, extremely frightening, and quickly becoming the only thing I’m thinking about on a daily basis, even as I’m writing scripts and directing or producing,” McKay said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
The Climate Emergency Fund distributes money to volunteer organizations taking disruptive action for the climate, all of the world. Much of the money goes to legal aid for those arrested or sued during protest actions. According to Margaret Klein Salamon, the fund’s executive director, their most important goal is to bridge the philosophical gap between traditional wealthy donors and activisits interested in direct action.
McKay’s donation is the largest the fund will have ever received. He says he intends to continue to use his platform and his resources to support direct action.
“I really do believe, without any hyperbole, scientifically speaking, this is the greatest challenge, story, threat, in human history,” he said.
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