A conversation between Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson summed up 2025 for me – and not in a good way | George Monbiot

Key Highlights

• 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’s $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. The loss of his house hadn’t been confirmed at the time of the interview, but Gibson said his son had just sent him “a video of my neighbourhood, and it’s in flames.
• It looks like an inferno.” According to World Weather Attribution, January’s 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. Mel Gibson.