March 11, 2015

As Climate Change Challenges Contentment, It Offers Angst From Which to Forge Comedy

To the Editor:

This Friday, an unlikely couple will meet at the local library: climate change and comic cabaret. This is not the sort of comedy that makes light of its subject, but rather seeks to give a ponderous subject the lift it needs to rise into people’s thoughts. No other subject challenges our contentment with the status quo like climate change, nor offers as much angst from which to forge comedy.

The environmental movement was built in large part on a fear of what is getting into our bodies. Chemicals, radiation — these are the nasties that threaten to invade. But climate change is driven by seemingly benign gases, invisible, odorless, with consequence often distant in place and time. The usual buttons that traditionally trigger our concern and a sense of urgency are not being pushed.

The challenge, then, is to help climate change make the leap from the intellectual to the visceral, from whence it might more constructively drive our thoughts. Facts and figures, grim forebodings, accurate as they may be, have not been sufficient. Better to find in the subject something rewarding, even pleasurable, and ultimately empowering. Comedy seeks to do that through a belly laugh.

To quote loosely from some of the cabaret’s dialogue: “In the future, our cars will run on irony paradoxide. English professors will publish research on what sorts of irony yield the most energy per page. The humanities: Power for the future! You see, there’s hope after all.”

Stephen Hiltner

North Harrison Street