Can comedy inspire climate action?

This is a guest post from comedian and former journalist Julie Kennedy.

Storytelling and humour are powerful tools to create change. Stories can make an impact in a way that facts alone never will. We need to feel things, not just think about them logically. It’s the best way to change anyone’s mind.

I am bringing my story to the stage in a show called Crude. Theatre is now the only place where people unplug, turn off their phone and spend an hour without being interrupted. The only way to get people’s attention is to take them as willing hostages!

I am an environmentally-conscious journalist and I was born in the world’s largest oil exporter: Saudi Arabia. My life is linked to oil, from my birth in Riad to my home country, Lebanon, which suffers from daily power outages. Not to mention the poor air quality due to the overwhelming reliance on carbon-intensive diesel generators. 

Ten years ago, I worked in investments in Edinburgh, where I had regular meetings with the management of FTSE100 companies. When I met with BP and Total Energy, it was very much “business as usual.” The only real narrative was climate denial, greenwashing and downplaying the urgency to act.

I moved to journalism and I met the same short-sightedness when I was a reporter at Bloomberg. I slowly realised that print, radio and TV were fuelled by oil. I was reporting on corporate earnings, when we all know quarterly reporting leads to unsustainable decisions. I was obsessed with the idea that focusing on financial numbers is as arbitrary as reporting on companies’ individual carbon footprint, data which we have and might as well use! But calling out polluters means less ad revenues for the media….

To top it all, I realised digital news had turned the 24-hour print deadline into a 5-minute deadline to post online. Google is real journalism’s biggest competitor, and social media has crushed the news. Online, the voice of a journalist is equivalent to that of a blogger, an influencer or a celebrity, who might be selling makeup or cryptocurrency or trying to convince you to bleach your anus. All this noise distracts from the biggest threat to our future: climate change. 

I have witnessed the power of destruction through investments decisions and fake news. So I turned to art to mourn the sacrifice of journalism at the altar of Big Oil and Big Tech…and it’s light-hearted! 

Change happens when all of our stories come together to shift the overarching narrative. This means making things accessible and personal – that’s what makes things memorable!

I hope people connect to my show and all the others that are taking on important issues like climate at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. There’s no other better route to closeness than laughter.