A comedy troupe wants to change minds about climate change by making jokes about it
Sick burn? Katie Hannigan is one of nine members of the new Climate Comedy Cohort. Photo: Katie Hannigan
By Katelyn Weisbrod, Inside Climate News. July 5, 2022. Gallows humor has a long and probably necessary history.
But can we laugh about something as dire as climate change?
The creators of a new comedy venture think so. In fact, comedian Esteban Gast believes humor is a way to reach people who haven’t thought much about climate change.
“Research shows that comedy is a great way to break down defenses. Comedy is a great way to have people listen to truths that they might otherwise not. Comedy opens your mind,” Gast says. “We also know that humor and hope motivate people to change and motivate action.”
Gast is a comedian-in-residence at clean energy nonprofit Generation180 and a member of the creative team for the Climate Comedy Cohort, a group of nine comedians from around the United States who will spend the next few months learning from climate experts and collaborating to pitch jokes for future performances and videos.
The goal is to create climate communication with comedy baked in, says comedian Kenice Mobley, the comedy projects coordinator at the Center for Media and Social Impact (based at American University’s School of Communication in Wash., D.C.) and a creative team member for the comedy cohort.
The group will work to find a balance between informing their audience about climate change without diving into a narrative of death and destruction. Rather, the cohort’s creators hope the audience will be learning, laughing and leaving feeling inspired.
“I’m so excited to see the projects that these [comedians] come up with,” Mobley says, “because it has just been doom and gloom mostly in the past.”
The cohort concludes with a live comedy show tour in select states this October. No word yet on locations, but what kind of joke would it be if they skipped the Pacific Northwest?
Columbia Insight is publishing this story in collaboration with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. You can subscribe to the ICN newsletter here.
