Moving from climate doomerism to optimism through humor todayheadline

The video’s name itself might bust you up: “Face Plant: Sexy Soil Talk.” Dirt isn’t often considered hot. And with the face of actor Nick Offerman of Parks and Recreation buried up to his neck in soil, viewers knew this was bound to be funny. Offerman helped NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) create the comedic short last fall to draw attention to cover cropping, regenerative agriculture, and climate change. 

Offerman and NRDC collaborated with Morgan Sackett, who also directed The Good Place and Parks and Recreation, on the video. Both Sackett and Offerman grew up in small towns and know the struggles of farming, which Sackett said inspired their creative approach. “Learning through comedy is like the old saying: take a spoonful of sugar, and it makes the medicine go down. I think that is true,” Sackett said. “Even [for] the documentaries we do that are not funny, we always say make them entertaining, and then people will want to learn more about things.” 

But how entertaining are hurricanes, droughts, and heat waves — or the fears that come with them? Historically, not very. From 2016 to 2020, just 2.8% of TV and film scripts included any mentions of climate change or related keywords, according to a 2022 study by nonprofit consultancy Good Energy. 

Over the past couple years, however, comedy creators and entertainers have increasingly explored climate — from mentions in the blockbuster Barbie to the hit sitcom Abbott Elementary. Just as we find relief in political satire on late-night TV, climate-themed comedy is now part of a growing effort to help us cope with the doom and gloom that can settle in when we grapple with climate change. “If we don’t find healthy ways to cope, we can’t take steps to move forward,” said Katy Jacobs, NRDC’s director of entertainment partnerships. 

Jokes can help people process even the toughest topics — and open up about them, Jacobs added. “We are normalizing talking about the climate crisis and dealing with the feelings that come with it,” she said. “I think being able to laugh can get people out of their own heads, and bring them together.”   

Building an audience ready to take collective action has been one of NRDC’s most time-tested strategies for success over the course of its 50-plus-year history as an international environmental nonprofit. From there, the organization can help push the needle through its policy advocacy. 

Social media creators and other laugh-getters have also been key parts of the strategy, helping the conversation reach wider, and often more diverse, new audiences. Pattie Gonia’s Instagram stories, for instance, had the environmental drag queen urging the Biden Administration to stop new oil and gas leases before announcing its proposed 5-year plan for the Outer Continental Shelf — and reached LGBTQ+ viewers and beyond in the process.

TikTok content creator Kaden Kerns made a provocative video for his nearly 3 million followers, encouraging viewers to tell P&G to stop clear-cutting the climate-critical boreal forest to make toilet paper. And in 2023, comedic YouTuber Rollie Williams called for viewers of his Climate Town channel to tell the EPA “yes, yes, a million times yes” to proposed rules reducing power plant pollution.

Whether through a central theme or background issue, a film or TV show can help climate become an everyday topic that audiences can’t shut out. Towards that end, the NRDC Climate Storytelling Fellowship lends financial and creative support to screenwriters developing clever work that offers new perspectives on climate change. Past fellows have written half-hour comedy pilots and worked with screenwriters like Mike Schur, known for his work on Parks and Recreation and The Good Place, and Pamela Adlon, writer and star of Better Things and Babes. 

Schur also appeared at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival with prominent comedy creator Quinta Brunson, who wrote and stars in the Emmy-winning sitcom Abbott Elementary. In Abbott’s second-ever episode, the climate crisis is the subject of jokes, like when a warmer-than-usual February is described as “hotter than the devil’s booty-hole.” The episode, among others, was a topic of discussion at the Sundance panel “The Last Laugh: Comedy in the Age of Climate Change.” The panel was produced by NRDC’s Rewrite the Future initiative.

“I remember when I was writing the pilot of Abbott, it felt good to talk about climate change,” Brunson said at the panel. “I was approaching it from the comedic standpoint, and I like to approach things [by] finding the most universal thread for everyone first.” Climate change makes that easy, she added. After all, “If the planet doesn’t survive, it kind of affects everyone?” she joked.

Jokes themselves are universal, and so humor is effective at engaging different kinds of folks, according to Sackett. “There were certainly people who were like, I don’t need to hear this b.s. from some actor — you’re always going to get that,” he said. “But I think you’re really trying to get to the people whose lives are full and they’re busy and they haven’t dug into this stuff. And this might give them a little way in.”

NRDC’s Climate Storytelling Fellowship, produced in partnership with The Black List, CAA Foundation, NBCUniversal, and The Redford Center, supports screenwriters with pilot or feature scripts that engage with climate change in a compelling way. Fellows each receive $20k and creative mentorship from an established screenwriter. Past mentors include Brit Marling, Daniel Scheinert, and Mike Schur.

To make entry accessible for all, submission is free and includes one free evaluation and month of hosting on the Black List, an industry-facing website showcasing unproduced screenplays. The next cycle opens in April 2025. Reach out to rewritethefuture@nrdc.org with any questions!