{"id":3944,"date":"2019-10-28T18:18:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T18:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=3944"},"modified":"2019-10-28T18:20:45","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T18:20:45","slug":"this-researcher-thinks-its-ok-to-joke-about-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2019\/10\/28\/this-researcher-thinks-its-ok-to-joke-about-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"This Researcher Thinks It\u2019s OK to Joke About Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In fact, he thinks laughing about it may help us put an end to it<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

NRDC
by Jeff Turrentine<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As strange as it may sound, thinking about global warming can make a lot of people feel frozen in place. Fear can be paralyzing\u2014and there\u2019s a lot of\u00a0scary news out there<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeling\u00a0anxious and overwhelmed<\/a>\u00a0isn\u2019t a particularly helpful reaction, and it can spiral. We know that collective action is the only thing that can save us. But we also know that we\u2019re not\u00a0seeing<\/em>\u00a0collective action at the scale, speed, and intensity required. In the gap between these two understandings, concern can quickly turn into fear, and fear can just as quickly turn into a kind of incapacitating fatalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Environmental education specialist Patrick Chandler has given this unfortunate psychological trajectory a lot of thought. And he believes he may have found the key to breaking it:\u00a0art<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler is a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado Boulder\u2019s\u00a0Center for Science and Technology Policy Research<\/a>. His interest in the intersection of art and climate change dates back to his previous job in Alaska, where he coordinated the marine debris cleanup program at the\u00a0Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies<\/a>. Sensing that the talks he was giving at conferences year after year weren\u2019t moving the needle, he partnered with the visual artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi, whose\u00a0Washed Ashore<\/a>\u00a0project enlists artists to make dazzling\u2014and achingly poignant\u2014sculptures of marine animals, crafted from ocean pollution. Suddenly Chandler was able to get people\u2019s attention. \u201cI started to see that art could open doorways of communication and directly reach groups that we weren\u2019t able to reach before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since coming to Colorado, Chandler has been exploring the role that art\u2014and especially collaborative, performative art\u2014might have to play in deepening and expanding our climate change discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside a team of professors whose specialties range from theater to evolutionary biology, Chandler is part of an unusual project at the University of Colorado Boulder called\u00a0Inside the Greenhouse<\/a>, which uses drama, film, fine art, performance art, television, and other creative media to enhance people\u2019s understanding of climate issues. Participating students collaborate on climate-themed projects, working closely together from conception to completion. That the finished pieces might convey powerful messages about our global predicament is only part of what interests Chandler. He\u2019s actually just as interested in how the artistic process itself can affect the creators. In that process he sees a model for the kind of imaginative collaboration that\u2019s necessary to tackle a complex issue like climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re just looking at the data surrounding these huge environmental issues, you can fall into a sense of hopelessness,\u201d Chandler says. \u201cI see a lot of fear, grief, and frustration in students of all ages.\u201d He says many who are struggling seem to have found an emotional outlet in the recent\u00a0youth climate strikes<\/a>\u00a0and are especially inspired by the movement\u2019s eloquently passionate organizer,\u00a0Greta Thunberg<\/a>. \u201cYou watch her speak and it\u2019s just heart-wrenching\u2014her deep sense of anguish about this issue. I think a lot of young people are there with her but don\u2019t know where to go\u00a0from<\/em>\u00a0there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler believes the arts can help students work through their\u00a0difficult-to-process feelings<\/a>, which could then lead to action. \u201cI\u2019ve seen the evidence that it can,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd there\u2019s something specifically important about people engaging in creative work together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of that evidence can be found in the scholarly publication\u00a0Comedy Studies<\/a><\/em>\u2014no joke, it\u2019s real\u2014a peer-reviewed academic journal that, in its editors\u2019 words, \u201creflects the increasingly cross-disciplinary and international nature of studies into comedy and documents exciting and innovative research into this hitherto under-represented field.\u201d With two of his Inside the Greenhouse colleagues, professors Beth Osnes and Maxwell Boykoff, Chandler coauthored a\u00a0recent paper<\/a>\u00a0outlining the communication-boosting effect of a climate-focused sketch comedy workshop. In the workshop, students who described themselves as both aware of and worried about global warming were asked to collaborate on climate-themed comedy skits, which they would then perform in front of a live audience. (Sample skit: A family takes their beloved grandmother, who just happens to be a refrigerator, to Rocky Mountain National Park for one last family vacation before properly and responsibly disposing of her via a government-sponsored household appliance recycling program.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers hypothesized that by \u201cbringing positive humor into conversations about climate,\u201d students could learn to \u201cregulate their emotions, grow as climate communicators, and\u2014critically\u2014be sustained in their affective communication of climate solutions.\u201d Surveys collected at the project\u2019s conclusion bore that hypothesis out: 83 percent of the students reported that the workshop\u2019s \u201cexperience of joy and\/or fun\u201d had strengthened their ability to sustain their commitment to action, and 90 percent reported that it had increased feelings of hope. When asked if the workshop had improved their abilities as climate communicators, 93 percent of the students self-reported that it had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the workshop, as the students honed their comedic and performative skills, \u201cyou could feel that shift from fear about the performance to confidence about it,\u201d Chandler says. Linking climate action to performative art is important, he believes, because performance \u201chas inherent action to it. When it comes to climate change, so many people don\u2019t know what to do or how to act.\u201d Creating a play or skit about it, however, \u201cputs them in a space of movement; it ends that feeling of being stuck because they physically have to get into it. Would I take any of these plays to Broadway? No. But are they deeply meaningful to the students who are involved and to the audiences that see them? Yes, because they\u2019re done in a way that\u2019s engaging and joyful, that helps us all sustain hope, and that enables collective action to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists, lawyers, activists, and policymakers are key players in the fight against climate change. To this list, Chandler says, we must add the artists, and even the comedians, whose vision and energy open our eyes to existing realities and open our minds to possible solutions. Or as he puts it: \u201cWe\u2019re going to need creative people if we\u2019re going to re-create the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In fact, he thinks laughing about it may help us put an end to it NRDCby Jeff Turrentine As strange as it may sound, thinking about global warming can make a lot of people feel frozen in place. Fear can … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-01 05:22:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3944"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3947,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3944\/revisions\/3947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}