lLooking back on this crazy year, it seems to me that one event at the very beginning reflects the whole. In January, while recording his podcast in a studio in Austin, Texas, host Joe Rogan and actor Mel Gibson hilariously dismissed climate science. Meanwhile, about 1,200 miles away in California, Gibson earned $14 million. the house was burned in the Palisades wildfire. In this and other respects, their discussion can be seen as a prototype of the entire 12 months.
At the time of the interview, the loss of his home had not been confirmed, but Gibson said his son had just sent him “a video of my neighborhood and it's burning. It looks like hell.” According to World Weather Attribution, the January fires in California were caused by much more likely on climate breakdown. Factors such as extreme lack of rainfall and strong winds have made such fires more likely and more intense than they would have been without human-caused global warming.
It is widely believed that people will wake up to climate change when they are affected by natural disasters. This is equivalent to saying that “there were no atheists in the trenches” of World War I (if you believe this, you haven't read Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Foxcatcher: “Standing in this dark ditch, I could not find consolation in the thought that Christ had risen.” doubling down. When events challenge your entire worldview, it is tempting to conclude that events are to blame.
Midway through the interminable interview, Gibson launched a typically detailed attack on the scientific method while disputing evolution. “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of money in the claims, you know, but I don’t know.” Either way, he thought, “What difference does it make to me?” Then he suddenly switched to climate science and began repeating one of the oldest negative stereotypes.
“Have you ever tasted a glass full of ice and watched it melt? Have you ever seen a glass overflow?” “No.” – You know, it takes up less space. In reality, sea levels are rising not because sea ice is melting, but because thermal expansion of sea waterand melt water flowing from the ground. But Rogan happily picked up the topic. “Well, there's a lot of nonsense associated with climate change…the story is made and then profit is attached to the solution.” He referred to study he has since then quoted repeatedlyclaiming that it shows that “temperatures on Earth are plummeting.” As the authors continue to emphasize, this shows the opposite. But that doesn't seem to matter.
So who did they blame for the fires? Mainly Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. Rogan noted, “How crazy is it that they spent $24 billion on homelessness last year, and how much are they spending on preventing these wildfires?” “Zero”. “Zip.” “He didn't do anything.” Needless to say, this is completely untrue: California tripled its resistance to forest fires expenses from 2016 to 2024. The true amount spent on homelessness in 2024–25 was $2.5 billion. But who cares? Here we see another great theme of 2025: everything is now a partisan issue, and no fact can prevent polarization.
This became even more apparent when they turned to one of Rogan's favorite subjects: former US Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci, who widely and unfairly accused radical right on a wide range of diseases, from AIDS mortality to the Covid pandemic. Rogan suggested Fauci's actions were “evil.” Gibson responded by telling tens of millions of listeners something that if I were Fauci, I would have found extremely threatening: “Well, I don’t know why Fauci is still walking around.” “How is this guy still walking?” – Rogan repeated.
This theme led to another theme of the year: the nagging self-pity of powerful people. Talking about Robert Kennedy Jr. completely inaccurate In The Real Anthony Fauci, Rogan noted: “They didn't put this book on the bestseller lists…they hid it. That’s when you find out that the bestseller lists are actually curated.” “Yes,” Gibson replied, “it's censored. It's all censored. Everything is censored.” In truth, and sadly, Kennedy's trash book spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Along with the rejection of scientific medicine, there was the usual catalog of quack medicines. Gibson claimed he had “holes” in his head, which he believed were caused by post-traumatic stress disorder. But he was given “a very wonderful and wonderful remedy for this: eat a bunch of fish oil, vitamin B complex and go into a pressure chamber for 40 sessions.” Rogan claimed that hyperbaric chambers are “phenomenal for… everything” and can “reduce your biological age.” He didn't warn about dangerswhich can be very cool. Two men got promoted ivermectin, fenbendazole“hydrochloride something like that” and methylene blue how cancer is treated: premature and irresponsible claims that could lead to great harm. But everything is very Mach.
Early in the interview, Rogan asked Gibson what he would do if his house actually burned down. “Oh, I don’t know,” Gibson replied. “I have a place in Costa Rica. I like it there… it's in a very good location.” Sometimes even the consequences seem to have no consequences for the very rich.
Now it seems that Gibson has decided restore his house. While I'm sorry he lost his property, his ability to start over contrasts with the attitude of many poor Californians. displaced by firesome of whom could join the ranks homeless. Gibson seemed to agree with Rogan that the state shouldn't spend so much on them.
For now, the very wealthy have options. They may rebuild or move to places they haven't already destroyed, while others languish in places that could end up looking like Mad Max sets, which Gibson is certainly no stranger to. Those who exert enormous influence then move on, and those who spread misinformation freely come down on us all. They always leave other people to live with the consequences.
However, there was one thing Gibson said that struck him. This was at a time when he rejected evolution and argued that everything was “ordered” by God: “I think that anything left to itself, without any intelligence behind it, will turn into chaos.” This can be seen as a warning for our times.
