\n<\/p>\n
L<\/span>ooking back on this crazy year, one event, right at the start, seems to me to encapsulate the whole. In January, recording his podcast in a studio in Austin, Texas, the host, Joe Rogan, and the actor Mel Gibson merrily dissed climate science. At the same time, about 1,200 miles away in California, Gibson\u2019s $14m home was being incinerated in the Palisades wildfire. In this and other respects, their discussion could be seen as prefiguring the entire 12 months.<\/p>\n The loss of his house hadn\u2019t been confirmed at the time of the interview, but Gibson said his son had just sent him \u201ca video of my neighbourhood, and it\u2019s in flames. It looks like an inferno.\u201d According to World Weather Attribution, January\u2019s fires in California were made significantly more likely by climate breakdown. Factors such as the extreme lack of rainfall and stronger winds made such fires both more likely to happen and more intense than they would have been without human-caused global heating.<\/p>\n <\/span>Mel Gibson.<\/span> Photograph: Albert L Ortega\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n There\u2019s a widespread belief that people will wake up to climate breakdown when disasters affect them. It\u2019s equivalent to the claim that \u201cthere were no atheists in the trenches\u201d of the first world war (if you believe this, you haven\u2019t read Siegfried Sassoon\u2019s Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man: \u201c<\/em>Standing in that dismal ditch, I could find no consolation in the thought that Christ was risen\u201d). For some people, disaster seems to provoke a doubling down. If your entire worldview is challenged by events, it\u2019s tempting to conclude the events are at fault.<\/p>\n Halfway through the interminable interview, Gibson, while disputing evolution, launched a typically detailed attack on the scientific method. \u201cYeah, well, there\u2019s a lot of money in, you know, claims, and I don\u2019t know.\u201d Anyway, he mused: \u201cWhat difference is it going to make to me?\u201d Then he suddenly swerved to climate science, and started reciting one of the oldest denialist tropes.<\/p>\n \u201cEver have a glass full of ice and watch it melt? Did you ever see the glass flow over?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \u201cTakes up less room, you know.\u201d In reality, sea levels are rising not because sea ice is melting, but through the thermal expansion of seawater, and meltwater flowing off the land. But Rogan happily took up the theme. \u201cWell, there\u2019s a lot of horseshit that\u2019s involved in climate change for sure \u2026 a narrative gets established and then there\u2019s a profit attached to the solution.\u201d He referred to a study he has since cited repeatedly, claiming it shows \u201cthe temperature on Earth is plummeting\u201d. As the authors keep pointing out, it shows the opposite. But that seems to make no difference.<\/p>\n <\/span>The ruins of Mel Gibson\u2019s home, destroyed in wildfires in Los Angeles, January 2025. <\/span> Photograph: MEGA\/GC Images<\/p>\n So what did they blame for the fires? Mostly Gavin Newsom, governor of California. Rogan remarked: \u201cHow crazy it is that they spent $24bn last year on the homeless, and what do they spend on preventing these wildfires?\u201d \u201cZero.\u201d \u201cZip.\u201d \u201cHe didn\u2019t do anything.\u201d Needless to say, this is completely untrue: California tripled its wildfire resilience spending between 2016 and 2024. The true figure it spent on homelessness in 2024-25 was $2.5bn. But who gives a damn? Here we see another of the grand themes of 2025: everything is now a partisan issue, and no fact can stand in the way of polarisation.<\/p>\n This became even starker when they turned to one of Rogan\u2019s favourite themes, the former US chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, who has been widely and unjustly blamed by the radical right for a remarkable range of ills, from Aids deaths to the Covid pandemic. Rogan suggested Fauci\u2019s actions were \u201cevil\u201d. In response, Gibson said something to the tens of millions of listeners that, in Fauci\u2019s position, I would find highly threatening: \u201cWell, I don\u2019t know why Fauci\u2019s still walking around.\u201d \u201cHow is that guy still walking around?\u201d Rogan echoed.<\/p>\n This theme led to another of the year\u2019s motifs: the whining self-pity of powerful men. Talking of Robert F Kennedy Jr\u2019s wildly inaccurate book The Real Anthony Fauci, Rogan remarked: \u201cThey kept that book off bestseller lists \u2026 they hid it. That\u2019s when you find out that bestseller lists are actually curated.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d Gibson replied, \u201cit\u2019s censored. It\u2019s all censored. Everything\u2019s censored.\u201d In truth, depressingly enough, Kennedy\u2019s rubbish book spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.<\/p>\n Alongside their dismissal of science-based medicine was the usual catalogue of quack cures. Gibson claimed that he had \u201choles\u201d in his head, which he appeared to suggest were caused by PTSD. But he was given \u201ca very miraculous and great remedy for it which was to eat a bunch of fish oil, vitamin B complex and get into a hyperbaric chamber for 40 sessions\u201d. Rogan asserted that hyperbaric chambers are \u201cphenomenal for \u2026 everything\u201d, and can \u201cdecrease your biological age\u201d. He gave no warning of the dangers, which can be very great. The two men promoted ivermectin, fenbendazole, \u201chydrochloride something or other\u201d and methylene blue as cancer cures: premature and irresponsible claims that could cause great harm. But all very Maha.<\/p>\n Early in the interview, Rogan asked Gibson what he would do if his house had indeed burnt down. \u201cOh, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Gibson replied. \u201cI got a place in Costa Rica. I love it there \u2026 it\u2019s in a real nice spot.\u201d For the very rich, it sometimes seems, even the consequences have no consequences.<\/p>\n It now appears that Gibson has decided to rebuild his house. While I feel bad for the loss of his belongings, his ability to start again contrasts with the position of many poorer California residents displaced by fire, some of whom might have swelled the ranks of the homeless. Gibson appeared to agree with Rogan that the state should not be spending so much on them.<\/p>\n For now, the very rich have options. They can rebuild or move somewhere they haven\u2019t yet wrecked, while others languish in places that might come to look like the set of Mad Max, with which, of course, Gibson is not unfamiliar. Those who rack up vast impacts then walk away, and those who spread misinformation freeload on the rest of us. They are always leaving other people to live with the consequences.<\/p>\n There was, however, one thing Gibson said that hit home. It was while he was dismissing evolution, and claiming that everything was \u201cordered\u201d by God: \u201cI think anything left to itself without some kind of intelligence behind it will devolve into chaos.\u201d It could be seen as a warning for our times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Looking back on this crazy year, one event, right at the start, seems to me to encapsulate the whole. In January, recording his podcast in a studio in Austin, Texas, the host, Joe Rogan, and the actor Mel Gibson merrily dissed climate science. At the same time, about 1,200 miles away in California, Gibson\u2019s $14m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3788,1072,4677,1547,7042,13173,5354,21324,21325],"class_list":{"0":"post-39259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-conversation","9":"tag-george","10":"tag-gibson","11":"tag-good","12":"tag-joe","13":"tag-mel","14":"tag-monbiot","15":"tag-rogan","16":"tag-summed"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}