A Clockwork Climate Disaster

Critics worldwide have wrangled with Anthony Burgess' novel 'A Clockwork Orange' and Stanley Kubrick's notoriously visceral film adaptation. At its rotten core lurks Alex, a gleeful chap that revels in self-serving 'ultra-violence' – beating, stealing, and gang-rape dispatched without a flicker of remorse. His droogs (friends) enjoy the spoils of carnage alongside him while Alex, convinced of his intellectual superiority, smooth-talks his way past every adult who dares question him, emboldened each time his lying tongue excuses him from castigation. He's insatiable – gorging on money, fame, and pleasure to the point that he neither cares for his friends, family, or the broader human society. Textbook sociopath.

A poster of the movie, 'A Clockwork Orange'.

I couldn't help but notice how the movie parallels the rampage of our planet. We've systematically pillaged Earth with barely a backward glance at the consequences. We've never seriously questioned the morality of slaughtering animals for sport or gouging mountains for sparkly trinkets to dangle from our necks. Like Alex, we're pathologically unsatisfied with mere survival – food, shelter, safety seem quaint. Drunk on our supposed supremacy, we demand excess of everything. Some might call it "fulfilling our destiny as intellectually superior beings." But our existence on Earth is dependent on a delicate balance between various forces of nature. Our relentless mining, burning, killing, spraying, and polluting forces the planet to yield its treasures – but that delicate balance buckles under the assault. The IPCC, like Alex's parole officer, repeatedly warns that we can't dodge accountability forever. Soon enough, at Alex's next crime spree, the trap snaps shut and he's imprisoned.

If humans were expelled from the planet for a short while, Nature would bounce back splendidly. The Earth wouldn't shed a tear. Nobody particularly mourned Alex's absence either. In fact, his former droogs thrived without him, landing respectable law enforcement gigs.

The aversion therapy bit exceeds my expertise, but the catastrophic wildfires, the staggering death tolls from floods, hurricanes, and droughts certainly terrorize us. Perhaps Alex's post-release loneliness prophesies our future: when Nature withdraws support, we will have nothing, be nothing.. When floods devour land and fires incinerate our precious "wealth" and "market value," we're reduced to merely naked flesh left to the mercies of a brutal existence. Those we exploited may exact revenge (as they did on Alex) with a vengeance. Yet the instant tragedy subsides and comfort returns – like Alex luxuriating in Alexander's bath or hospital bed – and we snap back to business as usual. The terror evaporates. We've already demonstrated our talent for becoming desensitized to the horrors of climate disasters, as we can see from the mellow response to the recent floods that submerged 1/3 of Pakistan’s landmass under water.

And the politician courting Alex's allegiance? A dead ringer for sinister oil magnates whose representatives at recent CoP summits brazenly declared, "If we aren't at the table, we'll end up as the meal." Our Planet be damned – their coffers demand feeding while they savor their bit of the old moloko plus! The global oil industry haunts every government leader's shoulder – be it their own or their buyers' – busy arm-twisting them to surgically remove any legislative clauses that threaten their profit margins. Life goes on…

Meanwhile, all we do is skip the occasional plastic straw and declare to the world, “I was cured, all right.”

Who's the sociopath now?