This bad news will make you laugh

On comedy and climate change.

Kia ora, welcome to Future Proof. I’m Ellen, thanks for joining me this week.

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 (available to watch now), 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. Part two of Bad News Saves the World, arriving tomorrow, will see Snedden take on cow farts by picking a fight with farmers.

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What the first-ever deep-sea mining trial shows us

Off the coast of South Carolina, the world’s first deep-sea mining trial took place in 1970. Forgotten for decades, scientists have recently rediscovered the test site. Photographs reveal that there has been no recovery 50 years later: “It looked like they were there yesterday.” Clare Fieseler has an excellent long-read on the long-lost mining site. Closer to home, a Pacific tuna fisheries expert has advised caution for Pacific countries considering deep-sea mining: “Will we once again be bystanders in the exploitation of our own resources, as has been the case with many mineral extraction activities in the region?”

Storing carbon in the seafloor

From seagrass meadows to steep-sided fiords, the spongy, muddy fringes of our coasts store carbon. Kate Evans reports on what we’re discovering about these little-understood “blue carbon” hotspots for New Zealand Geographic. Overseas, science start-ups are investigating artificial processes to remove carbon dioxide from the air, and entomb it in the seabed as rock. Many countries are relying on carbon removal to meet their emissions reduction targets, but the as-yet unproven tech remains controversial.

Climate change sparks new extreme categories

A blistering marine heatwave off Florida’s coast last year triggered such severe coral bleaching that US scientists have implemented a new category to adequately describe the impact. A new category 6 has also been proposed for hurricanes in the Atlantic and northeastern Pacific, in order to help communicate how these storms are getting more intense as the climate changes. A similar scale, with slightly different thresholds, is used for south Pacific cyclones.

More stories

• Wonky Box – profiled in Future Proof last year – has rescued more than 2 million kilograms of imperfect produce, and is now expanding into the South Island.

• Dublin is banning (most) cars from its city centre to ease traffic congestion and create new pedestrian zones.

• Scientists are increasingly turning to civil disobedience in the face of climate inaction: “My job can’t just be to calmly document the end of the world”.

• It’s been a good summer for critically endangered tara iti fairy terns, with 13 fledglings.

• Women in Tonga are prepared to leave the island nation in the wake of climate challenges, new research suggests.

• Wellington’s town belt is an unintentional example of global best practice in urban design and could catalyse a more compact and liveable city. 

• New Zealand has pushed for best practice seabird protection measures on the global stage, but may not regulate them here, Marc Daalder reports for Newsroom.

• What’s it like being a zookeeper? Auckland Zoo’s Nick Reynolds has a rare keeper/conservationist role, caring for reptiles.

To finish this issue, check out these incredible scenes from submarine mountains deep in the ocean off the coast of Chile. Scientists reckon they have found as many as 100 species new to science on a recent expedition to document ten seamounts in this part of the south-east Pacific. 

With deepest gratitude and best fishes,

Ellen

Got some feedback about Future Proof or topics you’d like covered? Get in touch with me at futureproof@thespinoff.co.nz