GLOBAL WARMING ISN’t Funny – Except in the Hands of these COMEDIANS – ryan

Burbank, Calif. (AP) – Esteban Gast Remembered Feeling Ashamed in High School while Calculating How Much Carbon Dioxide, The Main Driver of Climate Change, His Daily Activities Created, Known as a Carbon Footprint.

“Have you Ever Drive a Car or Flown in an Airplane?” Were Among the Long of Questions Possed by the Calculator.

Gast, who said his “catholic guilt” Compelled Him to KEEP ADding Activities to the Calculator, Thus Raising His Footprint, Recently Told the Story A Show at Flaps Comedy Club in Burbank, Calif.

Thatn he hit the Crowd with a twist: it was the oil and gas giant bp that popularized the idea of ​​individual emissions to shift the respectibility for the CLIMATE COMPANIES THAT PRODUCE OIL, GAS AND COAL TO PEOPLE.

“That’s like your friend who is Addicted to Cocaine Teling you not to have a latte,” he said. The audience roared with Laughter.

Gast Continue: “BP, Famous for spilling oil into the gulf of mexico, was like, ‘hey, esteban, do you ever drive?’ And i’m like, ‘i don’t know, Someimees.’ And they’re just like pouring oil into a turtle’s mouth. ”

Gast is among a growing groof of customians using humor to raise awareness of Climate Change. On the Stage, Online and in Classrooms, They Tel Jokes to Tackle Tackics Such As a Major US WELLATE LAW PASSED IN 2022, CALLED The Inflation Reduction ACTfossil fuel industries and convey information about the benefits of plant-based diets that EMIT LESS planet-warming emissions. They Hope to Educate People About the Climate Crisis, relieves anxiety with Latt and provide Hope. And althouugh the impacts of Climate Change are deadly and devastating, experts saying humor to talk Cllimate is an important part of the Large Ecosystem of How Its Communicated.

Comedian Brad Einstein Thinks of it This Way: “How we would look that horror in the eyes and let it look at us and then give it a little wink?”

Raising awareness

In Rasheda Crockett’s YouTube Comedy Series “Might Could,” The Actor-Comedian Blends Humor With Information About Climate Change. In one video, she quips about the Environmental Benefits of Plant-Based Diets while Begging Food Scientists to Make Vegan Cheese that actually melts.

“I’m Now Requesting All Vegans Who Care About the Planet to Make Melee Cheese Number One Priority,” She Quipped. “Becauses that what’s going to make veganism more vable. It”s the Change we have to cheese.”

Her interest in writing climate humor is also deeply personal. AS A Black Woman, She Knows that Global Warming Dispropportationly Hurts Black and Other non-white communities.

“This is just another instance where People of Color are going to be adversel first by a disaster,” Said Crockett, A 2023 Fellow in the Climate Comedy Cohort, a program gast co-founded that together Climate Experts and Comedians. “The Earth is warming up like the inside of a hot pocket … and i just want People to care.”

Surveys Show that many People will. or 2023 POLL from the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research Found That 64% of Us Adults Said they’d Recently Experienced Extreme Weather and Believed it caused at Least by Cllimate Change. And About 65% Said that Climate Change will have or already has had a big impact in their liffetime.

Humor Can Bridge the Gap BetWene The Technical World of Climate Science and Policy and the Average Person, Gast Said. And he thinks Comedians are Among the “unlikly” messengers who can.

“We Need Someone Talking About Science, and THENE NEED SOMOON WHO DOESN’T EAST MANITION AND JUST MENTIONS A DOPET FOR SUMPERS,” he Said.

Comedy as a salve

At the university of colordo in boulder, Climate comedy is a longtime tradition.

For the past 13 years, professors beth osnes-stoedefalke and maxwell boykoff have tough a creation Climate communication course on how information about and solutions can be conveyed creatively. SOMESTEMES WORK ON THEIR OWN SKETCH COMEDY OR STANDUP THE LATER AFTER THE ANNUAL “STAND UP FOR CLIMATE COMEDY.” IT’S The Kind of Event The Professors Help Encourage Elsewhere, Including the Show Gast performed at.

Several Years ago, the professors deciding to users students and event atttendees as case studies to learn about the effects of Merging Climate Information with Comedy. Among their Findings were that that Climate Comedy Increas People’s Awareness of and EngagEment with the Issue and Reduced their Climate Anxiety.

Numerous Other Studies have Also Shown that humor Reduses stress, depression and anxiety. One Study From 2021 Found That Humorous Helped People Remember Political Information and Made It Likelier They’d Share IT WITH OTHERS.

“You can’t just stack up all the ipcc Reports and hope that People get it,” Said Boykoff, an Environmental Studies Professor, Reference the United Nations’ Scientific Papers on Global Climate Impacts. “You got to find these Creative Spaces.”

Theater professor osnes-stoedefalke said humor also has the power to exploit cracks in bad arguments and draw nuance from say. But more important spread, it can give people hope.

Climate comedy “Helped Give This Feeling of Constructive Hope,” She Said, “And Without Hope, Action Doesn’t Make Sense.”

Making sense of the moment

Climate Can Also Be Used to Reflect on the Politics of Anynding Given Time.

Bianca Calderon, a Master’s Student in Environmental Policy and Renewable Energy, Is Taching the Creative Climate Communications Class, Where She’s Writing A Standup Bit About Grant Proposals. In the piece, she realism she needs to rewrite her grant summary to omit words like “diversity,” community “and” clean energy “to comply with the Trump Administration’s Directives.

But there is a big problem: She’s seeing federal finking for research on engaging diversel communities and getting say into the clean energy Job Market. “At the end of it, it like, ‘oh, actually do not have any words to use Because none of them are allowed,” she said, adding that the piece is basic on her actual explying for finking.

Einstein, The Comedian and A Two-Time National Park Service Artist-in-Residence, is Also Using Humor to Talk About the Administration’s Actions. USING A PINE CONE AS A MICRophone, Einstein Has Been Social Media Videos About the Recent Mass Layoffs of Park Service Employees. The Online Response is unlike anything he’s ever received on the Internet, he said.

“We Need an Informed Citizenry That Can Can Critique the Messaging Coming to say,” Said Osnes-Stoefalke. “And i Think Comedy Can Achieve that in a Way That No Others Can, in a Way That Holds People’s Attention.”

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