Steal This Joke: Uplifting Climate Comedy Celebrates Earth Day 2020

Actually, you can’t steal these jokes on climate change because we’re giving them to you for free. In fact, we’re going out of our way to encourage you to give climate comedy a try. If anything in this article tickles your funny bone, it’s yours. Go ahead, try it on. And, yes, this joke does make your butt look big. Whereas comedian and author Paul Tompkins bemoans the reality of joke plagiarism within the field of stand-up comedy, we embrace it as a channel for disseminating creative climate communication. With my comedy collaborator, Max Boykoff at the University of Colorado, we’ve led our students in performing live climate comedy, we’ve run international climate comedy video contests, and have even published academic articles about the surprising benefits of utilizing comedy to communicate climate — all through Inside the Greenhouse, an initiative at the University of Colorado for creative climate communication.

As a comedian, I find that research is the most creative force on Earth. That is why we partner with Project Drawdown which has researched a list of the top climate solutions. This list is a veritable snack platter of comic material. According to Drawdown’s 2020 revised ranking of solutions, family planning is part of the third most impactful solution for reversing global warming — above solar. Who knew? This knowledge can help us invest our finances, guide policies, and provide funny rhymes. Love the glove. Give the pill a free refill. Put your buck on the interrupted f — …well, you…