Comedy is a powerful way of making sense of climate change, connecting with others and processing our emotions, research has found.
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If you’re a human existing on planet Earth, you’re in on this joke: the world is ending and nobody seems to care.
In a new two-part instalment of Bad News, Alice Snedden attempts to save the world from climate change. In part one, she prepares for the coming “lawless post-apocalyptic hellscape” with fire-lighting and slingshot skills – in between chatting to climate experts. Snedden’s biting satire is sure to resonate with the many of us who feel rising anxiety and a sense of futility as the bad climate news builds thick and fast.
Having a chuckle is a powerful way of making sense of climate change, connecting with others and processing our emotions, research has found. “Comedy exploits cracks in arguments. It wiggles in, pokes, prods and draws attention to the incongruous, hypocritical, false and pretentious,” Maxwell Boykoff writes in The Conversation. “It can make the complex dimensions of climate change seem more accessible and its challenges seem more manageable.”
Late night talk shows have long been a fertile ground for climate comedy – think John Oliver explaining why carbon offsets are crap or Stephen Colbert eviscerating the concept of individual carbon footprints. Now, activists and scientists are catching on too. The ‘Climate science translated’ project enlists comedians to translate dry science into “human”.
Other creators are exploring climate-inspired gallows humour, like Tim Batt with his show Is Climate Change Funny Yet? Some are sneaking pro-environmental messages into their content. “My ultimate goal is to inspire people to make systemic changes, rather than to try to recycle extra hard,” comedian Rollie Williams recently told The New York Times. It’s a strategy with potential to reach those not typically captured in climate audiences too: “People who might not check out a documentary or a lecture about climate change probably will go see a comedy show,” Claire Elise Thompson writes for Grist.
Good comedy holds up a mirror to these bizarre little lives we all lead. As the impacts of climate change loom large, our ability to laugh and tell jokes will help us face the worst of it. But before you slip too far into doom, here’s a nugget of wisdom James Shaw offers Snedden: “The best antidote for cynicism or feeling kind of checked out or disenfranchised is to get into action. Even, frankly, in quite small ways.”
Snedden’s response? Changing her personal lifestyle is “too tricky”. But going after farmers? That’s Snedden’s surefire solution to this climate mess.