Ahead of the international COP26 meeting, in which world leaders will convene in Glasgow from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 to discuss the Paris Agreement and pressing climate crisis, the United Nations has released a video urging world leaders to step up for climate change — through the voice of a species that’s, warningly, no longer around.
The 2-minute-long ad features the voice acting of Jack Black as a post-extinction dinosaur named Frankie, who has disrupted the general assembly to issue a warning: If you don’t start taking this seriously, you’ll end up just like us.
“You’re headed for a climate disaster, and yet every year governments spend hundreds of billions of public funds on fossil fuel subsidies,” Frankie says. “Imagine if we had spent hundreds of billions per year subsidizing giant meteors. That’s what you’re doing right now.”
The video sends viewers to DontChooseExtinction.com, an interactive site hosted by the United Nations Development Program, which heads the organization’s Sustainable Development Goals. The site explains the most commonly heard excuses for not addressing climate change, like “We need fossil fuels for our economy.” It also provides resources for individual action to address the decades-long crisis, including the Global Mindpool, an education initiative and digital information hub for people around the world to learn more about a sustainable future.
Frankie the dinosaur has no sympathy for the complex reasons world leaders use for not stepping in to address climate change. “At least we had an asteroid,” he says. “What’s your excuse?”
