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You never know what you’ll think about on a run. One morning I was out huffing and puffing and found unwanted thoughts of apocalypse popping into my head. Nothing too heavy. Just the destruction of all we hold dear.
Specifically, I was thinking about climate change. I presume you’ve heard of climate change, this global calamity that’s threatening to raise temperatures and sea levels, increase the intensity of storms, droughts, forest fires, etc., and potentially destroy civilization. It’s a bit of a problem.
I would like to do something about climate change, but what can one man do? I’m not giving up my car. I’m not going to live in a cave. And I’m not strapping myself to a pipeline in protest. I got to work and take out the trash. I can’t be dangling from a pipeline.
But as I ran, lumbering along to nowhere in particular, imagining how I would survive in an apocalyptic wasteland on a stockpile of Spam and Twinkies, an idea suddenly hit me: climate-change comedy. I could dust off my Twitter account and use it for activism, but with a comedic bent.
Yes, that’s right. Comedy. If you want to get people’s attention in these divisive times, you can’t be preachy or professiorial. Why not try funny, and maybe, just maybe, you can unsettle folks and make them think. That day, as soon as I returned from my run, I set to tweeting and haven’t stopped. Here are some of my greatest hits.
-In the climate apocalypse, I’ll lead an encampment of survivors. When not foraging for food, we’ll put on community theater productions.
-My wife wants us to take a family vacation to Disney World in a few years. I just hope climate change washes away Florida by then.
-I don’t think listening to “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang will feel right in the climate-change end times.
I know—the tweets are ridiculous. They’re silly, weird, depressing, and, on a good day, only semi-funny. But in terms of making people worried about climate change, so worried that they demand action, what we’re doing now isn’t working. Pictures of polar bears on melting ice aren’t doing the trick.
You know those pictures? Climate-change folks are always trotting out polar bears. Sure, they’re cute. Sure, they’re cuddly. But people don’t give two hoots about some sad-sack bears stuck on melting ice. They don’t care about butterflies, bumblebees, or whatever else you want to drag out there either. Cuteness in peril won’t spark people to action.
As of now, most people don’t even realize how bad climate change could be. They know glaciers are melting. They know the weather can be weird. But people don’t get it. They haven’t spent quality time with climate research. Read some of that and you start imaging the world turning into a big wasteland, and you’re walking down the road with Viggo Mortensen, pushing a shopping cart. Or maybe you’re sporting a mohawk, wearing leather, and fighting Mel Gibson for gasoline. Whatever your post-apocalyptic nightmare, it’s not good. So somehow, some way, we need to make people understand the stakes.
-If you’re getting married in the climate-change end times, make sure to hold your reception underground. Maybe try a subway tunnel.
-I’m building a special shelf in my climate-change bunker for my Pez dispenser collection.
-Nutella is great. When the seas rise and people start to panic, the government should hand it out. It’ll stop riots in their tracks.
Let me tell you, climate-change comedy takes work. You try making jokes about the end of the world. This isn’t fun and games. This isn’t rainbows and kittens. My climate ramblings are serious no-cream, no-sugar black comedy.
Some of my tweets scramble around in search of humor (If a bunch of clowns stuffed inside a Ford Pinto drown in the rising seas, is that funny?). Some of my tweets are so dark that I’m afraid to send them out (Unsure of whether to have kids? I say go for it. Never-ending droughts, extreme heat, and rising seas will make their lives an adventure).
Slowly, I’ve somehow built up followers, though I’m not sure how influential a group it is. My followers include car dealers, vaguely pornographic accounts, and people selling knives. That’s the climate coalition I’ve assembled. It’s not exactly Al Gore’s address book.
-To survive the climate apocalypse, I’ll need three things: beef jerky, duct tape, and Liam Neeson.
-As the seas rise and the storms rage, she looks him in the eye and grabs his arm. Forget the decaf, she says. Make it the real stuff.
-What would Sinatra say about this climate-change situation? Ring a ding ding, let’s cool down this thing.
Climate change won’t be easy to solve. This isn’t Reagan invading Grenada. Tackling climate change will require a concerted effort, bigger than the moon landing, bigger than winning WWII.
Of course, I can’t help but wonder: Am I making a difference with this gigantic problem? Am I just another toothless hashtag activist who’s content to dash off too-clever tweets while drinking my boxed wine?
My hope is someone will hear me shout out in the great cacophony of Twitter. Maybe they’ll be inspired, and they’ll pick up my little missive and run with it. That is my hope. I’m just shooting up flares in the darkness, and for now, that’s how I’ll try to make a difference.
Besides, what’s the alternative? Sit back and do nothing? Just forget it and instead flip on football and watch people give each other concussions? We can’t let the earth disintegrate into some real-life version of Waterworld. I sat through it once, I’d rather not relive that terrible, depressing, apocalyptic mess of a movie in which civilization has collapsed, water covers everything, and Kevin Costner is a half-fish who never once picks up a baseball. The flick isn’t the least bit funny, and neither is climate change.
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Photo courtesy Pixabay.