Why TV Comedies Get Climate Change So Wrong
In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, we look at how and why TV comedies get climate change so wrong. We look at the last 30 years of television comedies that address climate change from The Simpsons to South Park to The Good Place to Modern Family to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in order to understand why TV comedies get climate change so wrong. TV comedies use a number of character archetypes that turn environmentalists into obnoxious pariahs, directly deny the existence of climate change in the case of South Park, or build jokes and comedic elements on how hopeless climate action can be. TV comedies ultimately have undermined needed progress on climate change and climate action by approaching the issue of climate change in an unproductive way. To conclude we offer a number of avenues through which TV comedies like The Simpsons, The Politician, and The Good Place might be able to actually spur climate action through jokes and comedy.
Big thanks to Kate Carter and the NCSE graduate student outreach fellows! They researched and wrote the script for this video.
Why do TV comedies always get climate change wrong? Help NCSE build their climate change in scripted media database:
https://ncse.ngo/understanding-climate-change-scripted-media-project
