“I became a climate activist because I read that the planet is getting hotter every year,” I say. “And I’m the only one who should be doing that.” 

I’m being blinded by the stage lights. I feel the stares of the silhouetted audience members. I begin to worry I’m doing something very stupid (again). I spent my whole afternoon reading about the impact of accelerated carbon emissions on human health. What I read made me feel sick. And then I marched straight to a bar in Brussels to make jokes about it. 

I’ve been doing stand-up comedy on the climate crisis for just over a year now, circling between the free open mic nights in the centre of Brussels. I started because of peer pressure. I work full time in climate communications for advocacy NGOs, and often give workshops or talks on effective communication across political and social divisions. Each time, after I spoke on how to tackle humanity’s greatest existential crisis, someone would ask me if I had considered stand-up comedy. I didn’t understand it. Who would laugh at this?  

Then again, who wouldn’t laugh? The decades of political inaction, corporate lobbying, and widespread climate denial in the face of overwhelming evidence of a pressing ecological emergency have always been absurd. I never expected that my career would involve quite so much time convincing politicians and members of the public that we should probably do something about the current and impending climate disasters that threaten our very future. Or at least acknowledge that the house is on fire rather than closing the door and locking ourselves inside. 

But even warnings of imminent apocalypse get boring if you hear them all the time. After years of endless scientific reports letting us know that each passing month is, once again, the hottest month in recorded history (and possibly the coldest one for the rest of our lives), society is overloaded with pessimistic news. On top of this, the dry scientific approach to disaster often manages to make the news both terrifying and boring at the same time – a fatal combination for audience engagement. This style of communication is not enough to inspire the collective action and awareness needed to tackle these polycrises.  

Communicating the science is necessary, of course, but just hearing the gloomy predictions for the future is driving climate anxiety and mental health issues. According to Google, searches worldwide related to “climate anxiety” or “eco-anxiety” increased by 4,590 per cent from 2018 to 2023.  

The first time I tried stand-up, I was unconvinced it would work. “My jokes are about climate change,” I said to the table of comedians on the line-up, just before the show. “Is that too dark?” 

I was acutely aware that amateur stand-up has rather an overrepresentation of men making variations of jokes about sex and what women are supposedly like, and that audiences are primed for that rather than a summary of the failings in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.  

“Not at all!,” was the feedback I got. “Nobody talks about climate stuff in comedy, you’d be one of the first.” 

And to my surprise, the audience laughed at my set. I don’t know how many of them were following climate news or the press releases of the NGOs I work for, but in that basement of the bar, they were listening to me talk about climate change. The open mic hosts invited me to come back.  

When the jokes are fire 

In the last few years, comedy has been making its entry into the world of effective climate communication. Efforts like Climate Science Breakthrough in the UK, where comedians “translate” the analyses of straight-faced climate scientists, to the YouTube series Politically Aweh in South Africa, which discusses climate science with the use of TV show clips, are working to break the barriers to public engagement on climate change, through humour. 

As UK comedian Jo Brand puts it in one of the Climate Science Breakthrough videos, “If people like me have to get involved, you know we’re in deep shit”. Yet somehow that truth is more palatable coming from her than the UNFCCC. 

Online too, NGOs like Fridays for Future and Birdlife Europe, and citizen-led Instagram accounts like @climemechange and @earthlyeducation have embraced the use of memes and light-hearted short videos as tools for audience engagement.  

Comedy has a fantastic ability to lower people’s defences and make hard-to-stomach topics more digestible.

Comedy has a fantastic ability to lower people’s defences and make hard-to-stomach topics more digestible. Climate scientist Mark Maslin noted that his collaboration with Jo Brand got him far more listeners than his scientific work on its own would have, and a slot on national daytime TV. Satire has also been found to reduce political tensions. A limited study of students at the University of Colorado found that after being exposed to climate humour, 90 per cent of participants felt more optimistic about the climate, and 83 per cent felt more motivated to take action. 

Comedy has a long history of addressing tough topics. Ancient Greeks were making funny plays to cope during the long and devastating Peloponnesian War. Netflix shows like Baby Reindeer, about the screenwriter’s experience of being stalked, and Feel Good, a romcom about a comedian struggling with substance abuse, are two recent examples of humour being used to tackle trauma and emotionally heavy topics. 

A light-hearted tone and a touch of self-deprecation can go a long way to dismantling psychological defences to discussions about the climate and other topics we’d prefer not to think about – sometimes more than trying to bash people over the head with statistics to make them understand the gravity of the situation (trust me, I’ve tried).  

Comedy is cheaper than therapy (but you still need therapy) 

Fast forward to a year after my first attempt at stand-up comedy, and I was collaborating with Countdown Comedy Club, an open mic show based in Brussels, to host an open mic night all around the theme of the climate.  

Used to being the token activist in the comedy scene, I thought it would be near-impossible to find comedians willing to touch on this topic. But both seasoned comedians and newcomers took the stage to discuss their traumas from the German train system, the difficulty of dating while eco-anxious, and the love-hate relationship with cycling in the city. The bar was packed. And a lot of the audience members came from nearby NGO offices and European institutions. People who are clearly already aware of the State of Things. 

As well as being a tool for public engagement and increased awareness, comedy is a coping mechanism. Those of us already involved in activist movements, working in advocacy or elsewhere at the frontlines of tackling climate change, have to cope with constant exposure to negative news, and the knowledge that we’re working against sickeningly high stakes. In my own full-time job, I find myself pendulum-swinging between despair about the state of the world, and obsessive workaholism to regain some sense of agency over the situation. A few years ago I even started writing about my experience with burnout and eco-anxiety online, and the overwhelming reaction made it clear how many people are struggling with the same. 

Comedy faces the criticism that it risks trivialising serious topics. On particularly stressful days, I’ve stopped halfway through drafting sketches and wondered how I could ever joke about something like catastrophic flooding, or destabilised food supply chains. But I did. And those have been some of my best performances. When I didn’t hide to the audience that I was angry and tired, they listened all the more closely.  

I sense that honesty made me more human. I don’t go to stand-up shows as an advocate or NGO professional, but as a flawed person who cares deeply about something. I feel that approach makes a difference. It allows the audience to relax. Just like in my online writing about burnout, the personal approach has served to create a more accessible and human space to discuss serious topics and break down barriers.  

It’s not just something I do for the audience’s benefit either. Sharing my work and its frustrations with other people can serve as a far healthier coping mechanism than sitting at home doomscrolling. 

“I’ve got a list of things I’m angry about today,” I told the audience one time. “And the first one is billionaires. Do you want to hear the list?” They cheered in response. 

As humans, we need comedy. And in the climate movement, we need all hands on deck. So if you are a good scientist, we need climate scientists. If you are a good artist, we need artists too. And if you’re funny, we need climate comedians. I’m not joking.