Why Bill Nye’s The End is Nye Beats You Down With Climate Anxiety — Then Builds You Back Up With Hope
The post Why Bill Nye’s The End is Nye Beats You Down With Climate Anxiety — Then Builds You Back Up With Hope appeared first on Consequence.
“The sun may produce a stream of charged particles that would turn off electricity,” Bill Nye says as he lists the various ways our lack of action on climate change could come back to haunt us. “A comet nucleus could come and hit the earth and just be devastating. If we continue to pump down these aquifers we depend on for agriculture, we won’t have crops and we’ll starve. These are real things that we can see coming.”
Yeah, it’s a little rough out there, particularly in regard to possible climate-related catastrophes. Bill Nye understands that all too well on The End is Nye, his new show for Peacock. A long-time climate activist and reported science guy, Nye’s new series gives viewers a front row seat to cataclysmic environmental disasters.
“[Producer Seth MacFarlane is] very adamant about the following idea: that conservative media is so popular because they scare people. So, we need to scare people,” Nye explains to Consequence. “That was what led, in many ways, to the structure of the show.”
The End Is Nye goes where few other mainstream productions have: Each episode depicts, with gusto, potentially imminent and certifiably disastrous circumstances as they would happen today. It’s a bitter but necessary medicine, and, at least initially, Nye offers no sugar to help it go down.’
Take the first episode of the series, which details the hypothetical mother of all storms: a five hurricane attack on coasts across the globe. It’s a situation that, even for those with no concept of weather patterns or the recent escalation of environmental disasters, reads as an all-too-real possibility. The imagery of gridlocked evacuation scenes and boarded-up storefronts will likely be scarily familiar for those living in the numerous areas ravaged by hurricanes in recent years.
But here’s where the dual structure comes in: After approximately 25 minutes of pure climate anxiety, Nye resets the clock. He gives humanity another chance, pointing out each decision that led to the severity of the tragedy and offering an alternate, much happier timeline.
“Stay with it,” Nye urges. “Because, in the second half of the show, I come back! And everything is great, or everything is manageable, because of science! Because If we had systems in place, if we were paying attention, if we embrace the technology that drives us through science, we can, dare I say it, save the world.”
It’s a nice thought and certainly helps sweeten the show’s overall tone, which seems to come directly from Nye. While he’s more than aware of the worst-case scenarios — the punny title of the series proves as much — he’s astonishingly hopeful about the Earth’s future.
“I’m very optimistic, because young people are not going to put up with this stuff,” Nye says. “You can’t keep the economy going, you can’t have successful commerce, by ignoring facts. You’ve got to face real things and take steps to address [them].”
Nye’s faith in today’s youth is deep and genuine. Speaking to him, his conviction that the next generation of leaders will once again value the word of science and listen to the experts is inspiring. And to those dropping the ball today with lackluster or regressive policy, Nye doesn’t mince words.
“I get it,” he says, including himself in the same demographic. “‘Ok Boomer, what have you done about these problems?’ Well, not much.” But, he notes, eventually that generation will “age out, meaning die, and young people will take over.”
The End Is Nye (Peacock)
Nye’s bluntness is refreshing: Both within The End is Nye and in conversation, he’s remarkably straightforward when addressing the serious, existential topic — and that’s sure to anger certain demographics.
As it stands now, the climate debate is intensely political. Instead of dancing around that topic, Nye takes it head on without ostracizing any potential allies. He recognizes the need for bipartisanship while understanding that certain schools of thought are unsustainable and dangerous.
“Science is political,” Nye says. “Although it’s political, you don’t want it to be partisan. You don’t want it to be one party or another. But, I will claim that it is not sustainable to pretend the world is flat. You’re not going to be able to keep doing that.”
But, much like The End is Nye, Nye can’t help but finish that thought with a sense of hope.
“There could be a lot of trauma, a lot of hassle, headache, and hardship between where we are now and everybody embracing facts, but we’ll get there eventually,” he says. “This whole business that experts are not experts, that you can do your own research online and know as much about something as people who have been studying it for many years, we’ll get over that. Sooner or later, expertise will be respected again.”
As anxiety-inducing as The End is Nye can be at points, the show is ultimately a message of hope — a sobering, urgent message of hope, but a message of hope all the same. And as hard as it is to accept such a message, there’s something about hearing it from the mouth of the Science Guy that breaks through even the most cynical of layers. “Everybody’s in it,” Nye says. “Everybody wants a high quality of life. Everybody wants to be a part of a society where it’s fair and people are living well.”
Why Bill Nye’s The End is Nye Beats You Down With Climate Anxiety — Then Builds You Back Up With Hope
Jonah Krueger
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