Why Isn't Anyone Laughing About Climate Change? | Climate x Comedy Part 2

In part 2 of Marcius's conversation with comedian, writer and sketch performer Ashley Botting, they get into the nitty gritty of finding the humor in comedy, review old disaster movies, and actually solve climate change. All in a day's work.

Show Credits:
Vishrudh Sriramprasad, Producer
Claire Davis, Theme Music (Long Gone, Get It Right) | @clairedavismusic

Kheya Patel, Art | https://kheyapatel.com/

Contact: podontherise@gmail.com

Transcript

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Paper straws, we talked about a little bit, plastic straws. I think they're funny somehow, sometimes. I think they're funny. Well, the what's funny is the is the um the struggle I had yesterday in that bar going God, that's nice. God, that is not going to wither at all. It's not going to absorb anything. God, that's nice. Uh-huh. Do we need turtles? I don't know. Hello, my friends, and welcome to the On the Rise podcast. I'm your host, Marcus Exdivor. Now, today's episode is part two of my conversation with Ashley Bodding, the performer, the actor, the director, and just one of the funniest people I've ever known. You can find Ashley's work on hit TV shows like This Hour Has 22 Minutes, or Because News, another show I love. She's also an improv and sketch performer. You can see her around stages in Toronto in the area. I really had a great time with this conversation because it felt so open and free. And I think I Ashley had a good time too. Now, there's a secret to that that I didn't share in episode one. Ashley and I actually go way back. We're old friends. We'd actually fallen out of touch, but we're able to reconnect through this conversation. And that's why we were able to laugh, be silly, uh ask questions, challenge each other a little bit, and just wrestle with the hard stuff openly together in a pretty honest way. I think that climate conversation really needs that. I mean, frankly, we could all use a little bit more of that these days, I think. One of the biggest tragedies with the way we talk about climate change sometimes is the weight of the climate emergency doom framework at the white knuckle squeezing tight means we just squeeze out all the room for nuance, for being wrong, for changing your mind, or for even just having a normal disagreement without hypothetically somebody coming up to you and accusing you of being in the pocket of an oil company because you have a disagreement with them. I mean, that's never happened to me. That would be insane. But I think you know what I mean. Now, if you loved episode one, where we really focus a little bit more about uh comedy and Ashley's process of writing and performing and how she gets into that, this episode focuses a little bit more on the comedy plus climate thing and how that works or doesn't work and when we might be able to use that to our advantage. We talked a little bit about electric vehicles, including Tesla. And if I put my Dr. X hat on for a second, I think I diagnose a bit of range anxiety in what Ashley was saying. We talk about what happens when media executives try to force green stuff into comedy. And if you listen closely in the conversation, I'm pretty sure at one point Ashley actually said that she had a warm and fuzzy feeling about the future. I don't really provoke that kind of reaction in people usually. I'm not usually accused of that. But look, I will take it. As the old saying goes, flattery will get you everywhere. Here's part two with Ashley Botting. Okay, so here's actually a question that's been on my mind for a while about this subject. Um a lot of the framing of how climate's happening. So climate, the changing because mostly because we're uh trampling on nature a little too much and we're creating too many greenhouse gases in the way we live. Fine, that's like roughly the fact. We know that. So we kind of know what's causing it, and that makes it seem like if we don't do anything about it, we're just kind of dumb. Is it possible to make jokes about this situation without it feeling like we're just ridiculing an audience or saying, look how stupid we are for not doing the things we know we need? Like we know we need to use more clean electricity, not less. And that's a very technical thing. But my fear is this reduces to, hey audience, you're dumb. People were dumb. We're collectively stupid for not doing a thing we know we should do. Does that concern you because then we just resigned to being dumb and doing nothing? We just go we're dumb. No, I'm thinking it's not funny. But I want to know what you think. Like, I'm if I were hypothetically in another verse, a funny person writing or on stage, I would be worried. Or like when I pitch at my thing, you know, in six months, I'd be worried about a premise that's like things are fucked because we did it and we know and we're so stupid for not fixing it. Like, I I don't want to get into that vibe. Or like I think that's a bad route. But like, do you understand what I'm asking? And what do you think? I do. I mean, I to that I say, are people laughing? Yeah, great question. Are they laughing? I guess I have a fear that it won't get laughs, but you Oh, well then that's a comedy problem. Yeah, right. Thank you. Yeah, that's not a science problem, that's a comedy problem. Um uh yeah, if people if people are laughing, then I then you have comedy. And you might not like the comedy that you have, or then someone else. Or pointing out the foibles of an audience, maybe is a better way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If if it's I mean, I'm asking honestly, because even Yeah, I mean it God, it just depends. Like, I mean, you know, look at all the comedians who do crowd work, right? And they and they get crowd work because when you're talking when you're improvising as a stand-up um and you're talking to an audience member, and you know, whatever you're like talking and you're making kind of making fun of that audience member, right? It's what everyone's seems pretty popular these days. Yeah, it's it's also really great for this in a society, but it's also really great for social media because then you're not burning your act, you're not like um you're not putting any of your act on, it's just the improvised segment. Yeah, and if people are really good at it, then it's like I love that, I love that girl, I'm gonna go to her show, um, and then she has her really, you know, polished act, and then she'll do more crowd work in that show, create more videos. Actually, it was under the impression because if I'm scrolling on my phone, I'll see crowd work pop up on a YouTube short. And I have assumed that, like, oh, this new comic that seems to be putting out material only online, they specialize in crowd work. I didn't realize that. That's also true too. Like, um, who was like Matt Reif is a really famous uh crowd work comedian, and he just did a whole special on Netflix that was just crowd work. Um, some people are really good at it. Okay. But um yeah, Mark, like it really depends on like who's saying it and what their prov what their point of view is and if they're inherently comedic and if what their what their what their setups and jokes are like and and and how things are landing, right? Like, so you know, nothing is off the table if it's if people if people are enjoying it. I I you know I believe that, and you know, that's part of free speech. And it's getting harder now because like there are there are so many comedians whose work like a lot of people have a really, really hard time with, like you were saying the subject that they cover, but people are laughing, that's giving them levity and they're buying tickets. The other day, my friend's brother said to me, He's like, Oh, you go, are you gonna go see this guy live? And I was like, No, I I wouldn't go see him live. And he was like, Oh, I love him, I'm gonna go see him live. I'm like, and here we are, you know? Okay. And who am I to tell you, well, sir, I don't want to live in a world where I look at someone and go, You're a bad person because of the way you want to laugh, you know? And that probably won't make me very popular because I think we, you know, a lot of people in my community want to be scolding, and I I have a really hard time doing that. You think comedians want to be scolding? Is that what you say about your community? You mean I brought a professional community. I think like if my my sort of part of my community, just like the people that I know, if you if you give any sort of um inches to people who are saying the things that we don't like and go, yeah, but we gotta support the right to say it because of free speech, it's like, well, you're you know, cancel, cancel kind of culture stuff. Which is, you know, a hard topic for me to wade into publicly because I disagree with that. I think that's really hard I think that's really damaging. I have yeah, please. No, I have a fear of that too, and I see it um I I believe there's a little bit of a pol of policing of speech going on in the climate conversation. And this is not the beginning of like a climate-delying rant, but so for instance, gently pointing out you know, I used to live in LA, as you know, home of all kinds of entertainment and artistry, uh, watching the LA, you know, LA burn. And you know, that was widely reported as sort of a climate-fueled disaster. Among other things. Among other things. Okay, right? But the thing is, um, as far as I can tell, like looking at the scientific literature, the among other things were the important things. Interesting. So I have a very I'm very nervous about like if we try to stretch the truth, just even a hair, to try to make a point, like, hey, let's let's put that in the climate bucket when you know LA has there are probably a lot of other factors that drove that fire, is what I can tell. Yeah. And that doesn't mean every fire certainly. That you are wrong. You a climate scientist. And you and you too are feeling concerned that your community was a very important thing to do. Because if I if I if I like if I were to stand up at a conference and say, like, what I really want to drum home, everybody, is the LA fires are not our greatest example. Or like another one is the increase in severity of storms and tornadoes in the Atlantic, that's not our best evidence for climate changing. Because it turns out the frequency and severity of the storms actually hasn't changed as much as I think broadly thought. Does it worry you that you're focusing on the wrong thing? And that the important part of the conversation is being like um detoured to something else? You know, I think there's a lot of focus in good areas, but I worry that if we try to narrow the range of speech because we're saying this is an emergency, it's not a time, we're in a climate emergency. Here's how the logic goes, we're in a climate emergency. It's not a time to entertain differing perspectives. So this guy who might want to stand up and be like, actually, you know, the LA fires, we're not quite it's like, shut up, just shut the fuck up with that. What we need to do is just get our messaging tight, right? It's sort of how it becomes politics, right? How does things be all politics? And blame. You get your messaging right, you stick to the talking points, you have a hero and a villain, and you do it that way. And like politics works very well for mobilizing people, obviously. Okay, understatement of the year. But I think I'm particularly the type of person that wants to come at solutions in maybe a slightly unorthodox way. Like, I'm a let's use technology, let's use technology that cause good business, because business is a way to make things go fast sometimes, and we need to solve this fast, so maybe business can help us go fast. I'm not saying that's not wildly unorthodox, tons of people think that. No, but so instead of going uh blame, blame, blame, the system is broken, blame, blame, blame. You're going, this is happening. How can we now use our resources, the tools we've created to fix it? Yes. I don't want to ignore the facts of what's happening, but I don't think continual retread of the state of play. Look how bad it is, look how bad it is, look how bad it is. Look at this terrible fire on TV, look at this hockey stick curve going on. I need you, me as a Luddite who doesn't know anything about this truly, who doesn't know the data and probably wouldn't understand it. I need people like you to say the things that you're saying, to go, hi, like there's nuance here, and and go, um, look, it's not great that it's happening, but it is happening. Yes. Um, and so what are the solutions, not the, you know, not the looking backward and blaming and pointing fingers? And I need to hear that for hope and optimism around this because I don't have enough inherent knowledge and I'm not gonna read the academic papers to um have optimism. And so when I hear someone like you say, you know, there is technology that can be employed and it can be um economical to do that, I go like, okay, so I'm not gonna be swimming to work, you know? It's absolutely the case. And I mean, I think you know, that's one of the things I want to do with this show is try to just open up the aperture of the conversation just slightly. Yeah. I'm not saying I want to platform views that I think are nuts, but I think if there's a little bit more public wrestling with the difficulties rather than sort of pretending that it's all buttoned up and we just have to do X, Y, Z. Um, but you know, that said, like maybe we don't know X, Y, and Z, but we know like A, B, C, D, E. Like we know exactly how to how to work. I was telling you before I got into this, not because I have a deep and abiding love and spiritual connection to nature, even though I understand a lot of people think that way, and that's cool, and I respect that. I was just curious. I was a curious engineer. I didn't understand why people react to this topic as I was a graduate student. I like to build shit and design things as a technical guy. And I thought this is socially important too. And it crosses with politics and life, but I can also approach it from a nerd perspective and just a scientific perspective. And so I just got into it that way, not I didn't have like an emotional pull or a calling. It was more, this is interesting. I think I can do this, I'd like to help. It feels good to work on something that's interesting and fun and might actually mean something greater than me to help other people. That sounds like a calling. That sounds pretty. I'm not trying to run from a calling, but like I have a strong instinct of, well, I just explained it, right? That's how that's what motivates me and keeps me motivated. Right. And be I think because I have the perspective of, okay, it's real shitty, but like let's roll up our sleeves and start digging out of this hole. Like that's that's how we get out, right? We just climb out. That for me, that's the that's why I say things like, I'm, I know we know how to solve, I know we can solve this problem. This is not a death sentence. Yeah. It's hard, and we're gonna argue about how to do that. I don't hear that perspective ever. What you just said is something that I never hear. I it exists out there, I would love to amplify that force. Yeah. I want to be one of those people, and I want to invite other people that can think that way. Because then sitting here reflecting on, like, you know, you asked me what do I think know about climate change. And walking in here, I think my knowledge was that it's happening, sure. That it's scary. Yeah. Some people think it's not happening, and that's politicized. But someone going, yeah, let them, they can argue over, you know, in the legislative building, whatever when it is, and we over here can go, I think there's a solution. I think we have the tools to create that solution, and I think that's maybe not if not imminent, like, you know, soon-ish. Um, and I guess I would sort of ask you, because I'm sitting here going, like, uh, as a as a layman, like what do you think like I can do this week, this month, this year to make this problem better? Or is it on me at all? Is it on my vote? Is it on my is it in my wallet? Is it all of it? What, you know, because it is it is so big that it makes me want to hide and be small. I can definitely relate to that feeling, even though I was talking a big game about like being optimized, like breaking it down into a technical problem is a way that I can cope. Be like, oh, because I I understand technical problems, I feel comfortable thinking about them. I can this is sort of a control. I can find agency. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, it's just a puzzle with 10,000 pieces? Great. I I'm good at puzzles. Let's start, you know, start with the corners. Exactly, right? I know how to do this, right? So making it seem like something that I am comfortable with, that's what I can do. Right. What you can do specifically is, and maybe this conversation could be a spark, is think about like with your gifts, how can you help? Can you find humor in some of the premises? And that's why I'll throw a few at you later. Yeah. But like just a couple of factoids, like for personal life. Um, I think climate is like a very big systemic problem. That's why it feels crushing. A lot of shit has to change, and they're all interconnected. And it's one or two people, it feels impossible to change the system. And we share the air and the oceans, right? Those don't have borders. Exactly. And even though the world is the politically organized according to lines on a map, like the climate is like whatever. I don't care if China had the factory or Canada had the factory, like it doesn't matter. That's why these treaties are sort of ridiculous at some level, even though they're crucial at another level. Um, for individuals that want to take action, um, you can always think about you know how you spend your money. Uh it's pretty hard to like do a deep inventory of how you do all your spending, but just like think about it and you know make one slightly different purchase a week. That's what I say to people. Or um voting. The systemic thing has got to be tackled by governments or big institutions, whether we like them or not. Maybe we can reform them, but voting is an important thing. I don't want to be a school, but I believe in voting. But for individuals that want to work on their own, you know, carbon footprint or things like eat less beef. Yeah. I'm not a vegetarian, I eat meat, but like if you eat meat seven days a week, how about just try six? Yeah. You know? Or like stip one steak. Isn't it that's politicized? Skip one steak dinner. Sorry, I'll like have that. People are like, my life, my shrink. Warm beers and cold showers. Remember I said that earlier, right? They want to take our steaks. What the you know? Yeah. There are I knew a guy who founded a synthetic meat company. We're gonna cook up synthetic proteins in a lab. And I had, you know, we had two interesting conversations. One, is this vegan? Which was like fascinating. Oh, interesting. I was at a table. It was like a dinner tasting, and then the room was split. Some people were like, basically, the the moral animal cruelty vegans were like, I'm down with it. I'll fuck with this. The uh it's wrong to consume the flesh of living animals people were like, this is disgusting and repugnant. You know, I'm gonna fight your kind of fascinating sidebar. His thing is people will never stop eating meat, will never change that culture. So I'm just gonna replace the thing with something less bad. Well, it's kind of sounds like what you're saying, which is like we're never gonna make this go away. How can we um use science to make it better? One of the things people can do is uh take fewer long-haul airplane flights. Yeah. If you really care, like it doesn't matter how long you could leave your car idling in your driveway 24-7 for, I don't know, six months. I'll work out the math. That's way less emissions than just taking one flight to Europe. So that's why there's a hypocrisy of like, we're all flying in for this climate meeting. You really have to believe that you're gonna achieve something good that's worth outweigh all that stuff. I want to ask you a little bit about like how audiences give different laughs, changing culture, what's considered funny changing over time. Because I don't think climate was really part of the cultural discussion 10 years ago. I kind of observed around five to seven years ago it came on in this part of the world, in North America, where it wasn't before. It was just for like the technocrats or the political people or the environmental scientists or whatever. Now it's crossed into culture where like newspapers and magazines and media will cover cover it. Occasionally it gets into comedy, films here and there, novels. Um do you think that changing culture has a big impact on your work? Is that something you think about? Like what's funny 10 years ago is not funny today? Or is it yeah, talk about that? I think what's funny 10 years ago, uh there are some things that endure. Um, and when if you can make it endure, uh it's funny to watch, like, I don't know, like Seinfeld now and go like, yeah, it's problematic at points, but that's still really funny. How did they do that? I mean, there's an old joke, this is just an aside, but like every premise, every episode of Seinfeld could have installed with a cell phone. Great. Um with a smartphone. But um, yeah, you know, it's like I think of some of the work that I did early in my career, and I look back and go, I'd never do that now. Yeah. Good, because it means that social norms are changing, and it means that expectations of the way people behave and the way that we represent people on stage is changing, and we expect that as society. I found this. Um, my dad gave me this uh joke writing book from the 50s that he found. And I took all these screen grabs from it, and it was like the the following are uh topics that will get it was basically for like writing for um TV in the 50s, late night TV joke if you want to be a joke writer in the 50s. Got it. And it was like these are great topics. You can stick to these topics, you'll have some great laughs. And it was like the fat man. Um, there was one that was like um uh a homely woman, um, your wife and her ability to keep a house. I just like Why am I imagining like Don Rickles? Popped into my mind. My friend was like, okay, so knock knock who's there, the fat man. And I was like, oh my god, like none of these, none of these would would be okay today. And nor should they be, right? Like when people, you know, look back and go, you said this 15 years ago, therefore you should no longer be able to make a living. I'm like, that's not, I don't think that's it. I think you need to go to that person today and go. That's not, yeah. Yeah, is that do you still think that and why? Or like how how you know, have you changed that thought? I'm curious about that, you know, before you um uh defame their entire family. Um so yeah, I think I think it definitely has to change over time. I think the thing with climate change though is it's like it's not going anywhere. It's not even like it's not even like um like the pandemic that had, you know, bookends that we can now look back, you know, tragedy plus time, we can look back and go like it feels like a marathon that's just never something. But is it? Well, no. It has to be something with an end. So this might, I'm splitting hairs here, but it has to have an end, but the end might be very far away. It might take us a long time to get there. Like solving this problem. So, what does that mean to you? Like that the the earth is not warming by degrees every year. What is what does an end look like to you? Yeah, so like the earth was rel the earth was always vibrating and doing changes, but now we've started to push it in one direction. So it's like instead of a pendulum swinging back and forth, now it's slightly warmer, slightly cooler, slightly wetter, slightly drier. And yes, there were slow changes and fast changes. Now it's not swinging back and forth, it's just like we're just railing it in one direction. Yeah. It's getting warmer, it's not cooling up and down, it's just steadily going one direction. The seas are steadily rising, weather's getting more unpredictable, other stuff's happening, right? If there are storms that are emerging that didn't, you know, floods, all that kind of stuff. We're starting to see the effect now. Um stopping it means getting back to the natural breathing cycle of Earth, which one of the ads. And so it we can imagine a state where the change is not continuous and in one direction anymore. Do you think that um mass tragedy is going to have to happen before we can get to that? Like, do you think it's going to have to be massive climate refugees losing entire you know, cities to water? I um I don't and I don't I don't mean to be dire and just like is it is is like you know, is is that what has to happen for people to really open their eyes? I'm shaking my head because I just desperately want the answer to be no. Yeah. But I have a pit in my stomach that I fear the answer might be maybe. Okay. I read a novel called uh Ministry for the Future. This incredibly long novel. It was kind of excruciating to read, written by Kim Stanley Robinson, famous sci fi writer. For me, it was like reading, I don't know, a hundred and fifty thousand-word novel about work. Like it was like very detailed, like the scenes were like, you're in a policy meeting and some diplomats are getting together, some scientists, you know. It was strange in that way. I bring it up because the first chapter could have been its own standalone short story. It's a very visceral story about heat death. Okay. A tragic heat wave happens and a huge number of people die. Like millions of people die. And that's actually one of the more terrifying events that we could imagine seeing, you know, maybe in our lifetimes. I don't know if we need that kind of thing to be a wake-up call for the rest of us to like get our shit together. But that scene stuck with me for months. Okay, I'm I'm familiar with this topic, I work in it every day, I think about it all the time, and thinking about it every day for 20 years. But it still stuck with me. I had the feeling of I never want to be hot ever again. I I just want to be cold. Just reading, you know, 30 pages, a chapter in a novel, just reading about that had a visceral reaction on me. So of course I would never want to be caught up in something like that, but it really struck one of the strongest emotional connections I ever had with this topic, which is a story, and it was a story about tragedy. So I don't want that to be true because I don't want that to happen. I want us to I want ration and reason to win out, but I'm also realistic, and I know a little bit about how the world works, and I fear that it will take something more dramatic. My hope is that we don't just have to sit around and wait for how bad it can get. We can actively show the opposite, which is show a glimmer of hope, like, hey, these EVs really can make a difference. Hey, these carbon rule technologies aren't everything, but like they help. Hey, this thing can really stabilize the way we do agriculture. Hey, this thing will help with flood risk and make it so that, you know, all those homes won't wash away. Maybe only a small fraction are at risk. I think telling the stories of the green shoots is what we need to get away from the lock-in of the idea that it's only gonna be a huge tragedy that can lock like another. When you say green shoots, you mean like a garden analogy, like little right? New good things. Right. New sparks, new life. Right. New ideas. That's why I think that mindset goes very well with technology, because technology is all about new things. And you know, unfortunately, most new technologies don't work out. If I were to play the Cynic and say, well, unless it unless it uh serves the bottom line, and unless it um uh unless capitalism can see that it will um you know make for higher profit margins, um, I don't think that's ever gonna work just just you know, by virtue of being like altruistic, I don't I I don't see that happening. Yeah. What do you say to that? Uh I think it's a great critique. I don't think it's necessarily true. I'm the type of person that Burr believes firmly that some of the solutions to climate change will be wildly successful moneymakers. I don't think capitalism is the best at managing our resources on Earth. That's like an understatement. It tends to drive one-way rapacious, like just taking and using. Yeah. However, I think we're gonna solve climate change way faster than we change our economic system. And so I'm more like, let me inside of capitalism, how can we solve this problem? So I I accept the idea that there's probably a better system for us. I'm not like uh I'm not really wed to capitalism. I just I was born this time, so this is what we have. But I think we can, I think getting off capitalism is a way harder problem than solving climate. That's what I think. That's great. That's great, nice to hear that you believe that it can one can be done within the other. After we solve climate, we're still gonna be dealing with uh personal bigotry, we're still gonna be dealing with uh discrimination, we're still gonna be dealing with income inequality, and I think we're still gonna be dealing with uh capitalism long after the climate has stabilized. That's my personal hot take. That's in that's incredibly optimistic and makes me feel warm and fuzzy in a way that I was hoping I would feel today. Um it's I've been thinking about Teslas a little bit and how, you know, how uh a year ago, if someone bought the. Before we talk about Tesla, sorry, I want to get there, but yeah. Why does it make you feel warm and fuzzy for me to say these other big social problems aren't going anywhere? Well, no, okay, fair enough. Well, those other big social problems might be human. They might just be something that we continue to manage as we, you know, if if if we acknowledge that we are like a sort of a tribal species and that, you know, and the other is uh coming for resources and you know, and that shunning it helps this the tribe. I mean, all of that. If if that's true, then that just might be what we continue to do. And as long as we're self-aware and go, maybe this isn't great, let's stop doing it in perpetuity. And that, as you said, the pendulum can continue to swing. I think the pendulum's a great analogy because I just want it to continue to swing. I just want it to continue to move. Um, but uh, so it makes I don't feel warm and fuzzy that people are bigots, and I would love to make it very clear. But I do feel warm and fuzzy that someone like you, who knows you're the person I know who knows the most about this, who isn't preaching to me um on a podcast or um or uh you know uh asking me to read some academic article that I frankly don't want to um because it's boring. You didn't open my email. I didn't send you a few glasses. I'm on it. I just have to get to my inbox. Okay. Um so but you're in the prep. 100%, 100%. Um so if you you're you're the one, you're the one who knows. And so if you're telling me that you have faith and you've seen all the numbers, then I feel warm and fuzzy because you know it's sort of like, yeah, this is gonna sound really weird, but like daddy's telling me it's gonna be okay. I will take that as a compliment. Yes, yes. I think it's I'm not to be clear, I'm not calling you daddy, Marcus. I um would never do that. But you are someone's daddy and you are telling the world that it's okay. I think it's like there's no formula that I can show you. I guess I could try. There's no formula that I can show you to say it is 100% going to be okay. That's not what I'm trying to say. And that's not what you're suggesting. But it's more like the being o the being okay, us getting our arms around this problem, that scenario, whatever you think about that, that is well within the range of possible, based on like the basic physics facts that I understand. And so I've chosen to orient myself like in that direction. It's like, well, it's like, so you're telling me there's a chance. Like, and we and I kind of understand that path. Do you hear people talking like you're talking right now a lot? Not, you know what? My claim is that there are many people that have this belief. First of all, there's just many people that don't. There are many people that would disagree with me. There are many professional scientists that I know that will probably disagree with me. But I am I think I have the personality a little bit more of like an engineer, even though I trained in science and engineering. Engineers like to build things and solve problems, whereas scientists are a little bit more about finding things out. So if you I'm caricaturing now. But yeah, there are people that think this, but there are plenty of people that don't. I think this view is probably still in the minority, but it's not like it's only me and 10 people. Like there is a sizable community. But it's not, and it's definitely not what you see in media. I think maybe what I'm reflecting to you is just a lack of I a lack of optimism that I'm feeling in general right now in all media. And um And it's not just in climate, right? It's not in the world, and clickbait is um, I don't know, I don't know whether or not my index finger is more likely to move from fear. I don't, you know, there's probably um brain science around that, but I it's just it's really nice to be having an optimistic conversation in this particular political climate, social climate. Like, you know, you insert it, but this in all of the climates that are just so doom and gloom right now. Um, and you know, I I've been really struggling with the world right now, so it's really nice to hear that. I can relate, and I mean, even, you know, I live in the United States, I've worked there for a while. It's pretty, the mood is pretty dire with respect to climate. Yeah. And so a lot of my climate homies are, you know, they're stunned or they're, you know, weeping and depressed, or they're even wondering, like, people are actively minimizing sort of their climate identities. Like, should I take this out of my bio? We will we not get money in our company if we say we're a climate. Do we have to say we're about American dominance now? Or do we have to say resilient? Like, do people are parsing their language? Um I have even asked myself, like, do I want to continue like working in this field? Am I going to be able to continue working in this field? Is it gonna collapse around me? And you know, I work from home, so I'm a little bit isolated, so I don't exactly know what's happening out there at every second and every place. I guess nobody does, but anyway, I'm not. I've resolved that like I'm still interested. I still think it's interesting, I think it's valuable, I still enjoy the work, and I do think there's real shit we can do. It's also nice that you're not that your tone is not laced with anger. And I don't know how you keep that at bay. I I have a lot of anger and frustration at um, let's say sort of political process, but it's mostly like the way I think about it is not like it works this way, or like err Canadian elections or gurr US Senate or whatever. It's more like we have the tools. What what I used to work in the Senate as a staffer. Like, no matter what you think of the institution, it has the fucking power to move things. So I'm more frustrated, but like, how come we're not using our power? How come we're not using our resources? It's not just like that. But like, uh you know, something I talk about when I give talks, I sort of worked out a little math, is like, money ain't the problem. Here is like a rough estimate of how much it would cost to just make this climate problem go away. You know, like let's just solve shit with money, you know? I want my bathroom clean. You could just pay someone to do that if you really don't want to do it yourself. We could solve this climate problem with money. How much money would it take? So you do that, you get a number, and then you ask yourself, well, can I afford to hire somebody to clean my toilet? Can I afford to do this climate thing? You add up how much money we have, and it turns out the money required is probably a lot less than we have. We can totally afford this. It's not gonna bankrupt us. So that's where I get anger and frustrated. But I don't know. I guess I always just force and push myself back to like, yeah, but you have personal agency too. Yeah. And you've chosen to pursue a line of work that's given you tools where you can whack this problem. So, like, use your tools, dude. It sounds deliberate, yeah. And really conscious, use your tools truly. Yeah. Yeah. Let's use your tools of being by far the funniest person I know. I want to throw a few random premises at you. And I just want you to riff on, I'll add my two cents too. Like, do you think there's anything funny in there? Could anything be done with this thing? And these are all things that I think are real from the actual climate world, at least I know. Okay, so let's just do lightning route. Flying on private jets to attend climate conferences. That's inherently funny because that's inherently human, and humans are inherently hypocritical. Yes. So I think that's that's very funny, and that's very much, you know, trying to solve a problem with the problem. I mean, it's it's it's absurd. Um, so yeah, there's an absurdity there that's very funny. And it's also like so, I think, you know, if we're if comedy is, you know, like punching up, if you're on a private jet, that's elite, that's elite, right? So we can punch up toward the people that are doing that. Yeah. Um do I think that's inherently funny to me. Another one that's along the lines of um arguably using the problem to solve the problem. Um, I work a lot more on artificial intelligence now and applying that to try to solve climate-related problems. Yeah. Um, is that funny? Is that a similar, like absurd premise? For me, I think I don't know. There's so much doom and gloom about AI right now. Yeah. So I don't, I mean, it depends. If you can give that AI a personality, i.e. like how or something, like if you can give that AI some human characteristics and make it a character, and we can watch its foibles as it tries to accomplish what it wants to do, that's pretty funny to me. Um, but the idea of this like overlord technology that is as smart as and very soon will be smarter than us, trying to solve a problem that we made. I mean, that actually, now that I'm saying it, you know, there's so there's so much healing in comedy, so maybe, but I think for me, like AI is like right now this weapon that I'm like, oh god, what's it gonna do to us? I once read a novel called Robopocalypse. Pretty bad novel, pretty fantastic, as maybe like a screenplay. I was like, this should be a film immediately. And the premise is a super powerful computer has lodged itself in a data center of the Arctic and is controlling the world, and the rebel humans have to fight back Robopocalypse. Um pretty hilarious. Okay, um, gluing yourself to stuff. Climate activists glue themselves to stuff sometimes or throw paint or soup on. So funny, we did a sketch about that at 22 minutes, and it was um one of our cast members, Mark Kritch. His face was it was Munk, right? It was the was it was the screen, was it? They think there have been a few. Yeah, okay. So it was one, I think, in the Netherlands, and we made his face the face of the painting, and we just threw soup at it, at him, which was just inherently funny because that's funny. I don't, I don't I mean, we were just taking a new story and going. Soup on face is funny, someone trying to talk through soup and eyes is funny. Yeah um, I mean, yeah, it kind of like it depends what the context is, right? If someone's gluing themselves to a um to a Redwood and you know, and their kid is having their recital or whatever, or or and you know, or like what is at the expense of what are their stakes? It's always what the context of that character is doing. But yeah, gluing yourself to anything is funny. Pretending the problem doesn't exist at all. We use the word hoax earlier as a joke. Like is that is that funny? Well, it depends on the character. I don't find that funny. Really? I don't know. I would But if I were to write um a satirical piece and that character were uh so stupid and so and you know, when we gave them such um uh characteristics of the kind of people that we hate, and that person was saying it's a hoax, and watching them get into trouble for that, or watching that person like um, you know, and I I don't know, like I just saw um I just saw Mickey 17, it's that new Bong Jun Ho movie. It's like um but just like basically Mark Ruffalo plays a version of you know what everyone knows to be Donald Trump and he's you know and he's he's hated, but he's so stupid, and his choices are also stupid that it's funny to watch him walk into his own demise. Yeah. So it can be funny. It just depends on the context. Ski resorts making artificial snow. Well, if is it is it not working that day and people are skiing on grass? Like just the idea of them doing that. I think artificial snow is hilarious. I don't know if it's actually funny, but I think that's gonna be a thing. Like, I don't know where, but like snow patterns are changing. Some ski resorts are gonna be like, we're out of business or we're in business and they'll buy snow machines. Yeah. Again, it it's I mean, it's absurd that that's where we are, but also like nice to have the technology so that you and I can ski. Okay. Um, but uh, you know, again, I go, like, what are the stakes of them getting that snow? Who's coming that needs to ski that mountain? Oil companies attending climate change conferences. I mean, that whole that whole uh greenwashing, the message of oil companies, uh, and like, you know, the it BP, we care about the earth, and we want to see our like that that whole They're not even saying that anymore, by the way. No, because they're not incentivized to do it anymore, right? I think that's a fair assessment. Yeah. Uh but yeah, I think that's they went in the green direction because they thought there was money to be made. And I was like, yeah, expand your solar exact but what they've done now on a business level, not to get boring, is like it wasn't as profitable as we thought. Yeah, yeah. And we see the pendulum shifting with the Trump admin. So just what's happening with like banks pulling out of arts funding and stuff like that. It didn't do what you needed to do. It was never altruistic. Yes. It was never, ever, ever, because capitalism doesn't count for that. There's no trip. Exactly. So it's but it serves a need that is profit and the and so uh is that funny? I guess I'm getting angry talking about it. Um no, it's not funny because they I I think they've just now started to go. It's it's funny if you point it out, if you like hold up that mirror, but the fact that they've just dropped it because it didn't serve their, you know, they remove the triple of the triple. Well, what the oil companies say, if you ask like a rational person from an oil company, they'll say, well, if you want to like basically get rid of our industry, we we need to like phase it down or whatever, or and we need to be part of that conversation. And I think there's actually logic to that. Yeah, I have a conservative friend once who said to me, I I said to him, Fuck oil companies, maybe 10 years ago. I was like, the oil companies is like, yeah, Ashley, do you ever want to drive anywhere? That's the thing. You know, I'm like, yeah. I know. I think it's a fact, but what they would say is that their stuff is indispensable and there's no replacement. I would be like, Right. There was a world without oil, and there would be a world without oil. And there will be oil without oil, too. We're gonna figure it out. Yeah. We kind of already know. But um I think the other side of it is, oh yeah, you're just there to ruin things, you're just there to slow down, you're just there to rebrand yourself. And I think that's the thing that people don't like as much. No, and we all knew we were being lied to with the dolphin commercials. We all knew that that was not we all knew it was so that you know, like we we could get into trucks. We knew that. Yeah, and we all went, okay. Yeah, plausible deniability kind of. Yeah, you know what's funny about that though? The person who has to pitch that, the person who has to make that commercial, the creative behind that, and their inherent struggle, their their ethical and moral struggle in making that, or whether or not they've just totally sold out. That's funny to me. That's the first like trigger of an idea I've had for my little silly person. That person trying to write that ridiculous ad. Totally, totally. That's funny. A couple more. Um, fast fashion. It makes me so sad. Um, so why sad? Uh, because of just with oil, it's it's so damaging, but at least you get from A to B with fast fashion. You get to look hip for cheap. You get to look the only thing is looking hip for cheap for a little while. You're right. And to me, like, it just makes I saw this, I saw like, you know, yeah, we've all seen the documentaries, but the most recent one, I think it was on Brandy Melville. It's like, God, just just just so you can feel like you matter to a group of people you don't care about for a short period of time, while a whole industry cycles to make you believe you need the next stupid fucking thing to be happy while children, yeah, while children in another country break their back so that you can wear it. It that that I actually find really, really sad. The it's just not there's nothing that's all it's only just to be cool and to be seen as cool, and in my opinion, replacing, you know, any kind of personality with some dumb shirt. But that is a hot hot take from Ashley Botting. It makes me deeply sad. It's so stupid. I I bought this from Amazon. I am a hypocrite. It's think this is made of oil. This is polyester, Marcus. I get it all. Get out, but it still angers me. How dare you. I know. Flip this table. I do. I once made a joke about wearing a polyester shirt at this like very stuffy stage presentation. It like, I don't know. I maybe about a chuckle. Yeah. I was trying to be like, even my shirt's made of oil. Like I was making the point, like, it's everywhere, people. If we want to get rid of it, we have to recognize it's everywhere and just look at that, and then we can start to get rid of it. Yeah. Thank you for not yelling at me. Paper straws, we talked about a little bit, plastic straws. I think they're funny somehow. I think they're funny. Well, the what's funny is the is the um the struggle I had yesterday in that bar going, God, that's nice. God, that is not going to wither at all. It's not going to absorb anything. God, that's nice. Do we need turtles? I don't know. You know. Did you ever wonder if the straw do you ever have a straw that then it the paper it's been in the drink too long and then it starts to get thick, and then you can't really use it as a straw anymore? Yes, and it closes like a wind clock. It closes, thank you. Like someone wheezing. Exactly. Your drink is wheezing. I don't want to live like that. Wheezing is funny, but I don't. I don't know. Straws. My friend Chris Wilson had a s a song in a second city show where he's like, it was just about everything we're doing wrong, and I remember he was like, and we drink from straws because turtles. Do we need them? Just like the perspective of like do we need turtles though? That's funny. It always got a huge laugh. Okay. There's one thing we were talking about a little bit before. We said we would talk a little bit about Tesla. Yeah. As I guess Tesla's interesting because it was and arguably still could be a real spark of change in the green positive climate direction. And also fits into like the capitalist paradigm. Like you can make money selling a good thing. Yeah. And that's great. That we're all abandoning because we're mad at a couple of things. Now, exactly. People cannot stand Musk, and people are, you know, he's become people are allergic. Marcus does, I think, speak to the virtue signaling of green stuff, right? If you had a Tesla before, you were a certain kind of person who could be viewed in a certain kind of way and garner the respect of a certain kind of peer. It used to be a Prius. It used to be a Prius when it was more hybrid. And then we went from the. What specifically is the message that Prius drivers were giving us, would you say? I'm better than you. Cuck? No, I'm kidding. Well, yeah, I'm on the I'm on the cutting edge. I'm better than you, but like I don't, I don't want to go. Toyota shares are dropping as we speak. No, no, no, but no one's buying Prius's. Are they still buying Priuses? Oh, they the hot the new Prius is modeled after the Tesla. It looks like a company. Is it still a hybrid? I I'm kind of thinking about getting a new car. So I was looking at cars, but I'm pretty sure there's a new Prius, and it's a hybrid still. Yeah. Okay, but that's a that's different, right? Because like with Tesla, you're going like I'm trusting not only that it's gonna, that those kilometers or those miles are exactly as they say on that battery, and that technology is not gonna wanna all, but that charger is gonna be in the place you say it's gonna be and that it's going to work so that I can get to where I'm going. Like I don't actually own a car. Um that makes me a good person, right? Sure. Yeah. I compensate for the Amazon. Environmentally, thank you so much. I needed you to say it. Um, but I think I wouldn't buy an electric car because I'd be too afraid of like whether or not the infrastructure can handle it. Okay, thank you. Um but um but all that to say now we are putting the virtue signaling of whether or not we agree with what's happening politically in the United States above the planet. You could argue that you could argue that you know the current political situation in the United States will shift again at some point, God willing. Fingers crossed. Touch wood. Touch wood. But you know, the planet's still on the trajectory that it's on. To our point, you know, it's borderless. There's there's the you know, there are no depends on elections. It doesn't care about that. So it's like no one's actually thinking about how holding onto your Tesla, even Even though it may still serve that singular man serves more than getting rid of it because you're mad at Elon. But that says to me that it's all about the virtue signaling, right? What do I believe in? Who am I? Who do I want to be perceived to be if you get rid of that Tesla solely because of Elon Musk? Man, this is such a big thing. Like, I don't wanna repeating what you said, like the green shit cannot be seen as elitist virtue signaling stuff. If it is exclusively, it will never work. It will always be a niche thing worthy of ridicule, right? And I hope, well, I don't own a Tesla. I don't, you know, I don't invested interest in Tesla, but uh yeah, it's fascinating to see how that's going. I wonder if it's gonna rebound. Tesla is under in trouble because um a huge several huge Chinese automakers are maybe gonna take their market share. Who knows? Yeah, I keep seeing TikToks about how amazing Chinese electric cars are. They're coming and they're cheap, and there's a lot of them, and they're not sold here yet, so people don't really know. Great mics. Have you seen them? I've seen a few of them online. They look amazing. Apparently, they're taking over a lot of the world. Anyway, so like Tesla may have its own headwinds. Um Tesla's profit was largely driven by selling carbon credits to other car makers. Whoa. It's not just we made a car, it costs a dollar, we cost us 20 cents to build it, so we get it. It wasn't just profit on cars, it was yeah, we sell cars and we make money. But also the electric car generates this fictitious thing called a carbon credit. Which is that is given to you by who? The government? GM famously. Who issues a carbon credit? The government uh creates rules, they create a carbon credit system. Yes. And it says, if I pollute a lot and you pollute less, I can create a fictitious thing called a carbon credit. Yeah. And I can sell it to you. Because there's a law that says there's a cap on my actions. But I'm sure that these are these are um institutions, government institutions that are now being dismantled. Heavily under threat. Okay. Legally or illegally. Yes, heavily under threat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh specifically, the I the the basis for the government, without getting into technical details, the basis, the scientific basis of the government's ability to make the rules in the United States is being challenged right now. Right. In the Environmental Protection Agency. It's called the endangerment finding, if anyone wants to look it up. Yeah. That's being challenged, and the current administration is going to try to say that's illegal, it should never have happened, because that's what they've said for the last 15 years. So Tesla basically made a lot of money by telling other car companies that they could pollute more. Correct. They were selling allowances to other car companies. And so GM was, you know, famously ridiculing Tesla when they first started. Like, who is this idiot? Car company, we've been doing this for 100 years. You think you could just come out of nowhere and make a car? Yeah, they did come out of nowhere and made the most popular car in the world. Really nice truck. People love it. You've been in that dashboard. Right. And then Tesla had this amazing revenue. So when people say things like, Elon is the biggest government contractor or he's the biggest uh winner of government Largas in the US, what they mean is, yeah, his space companies get contracts, but they also mean the revenue of Tesla was largely driven by carbon credits, and that is a creature of the government. It's not a natural thing that emerged in the marketplace or in the community or whatever. So that's like just a weird, interesting quirk. And I don't know exactly where that's going now, but interesting. Who knows? I think this is why I guess the news can't take their cameras off that guy, but it's eminently fascinating. But yeah, the electric car thing in particular, that's a that's like a tangible thing that's coming into people's lives, and cars are pretty ubiquitous. And so I don't know. We'll see where it all goes. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Can you think of any examples? And we'll close pretty much on this. Examples of climate being referenced in pop culture. We talked a lot about is something funny, is not funny, your process with comedy. Yeah. We talked, we both uh have watched the film Don't Look Up. Yeah. I think that's a good example. Are there any others that you can think of? A lot of people didn't like Don't Look Up, a lot of people really loved it. I thought it made the point really clearly and really succinctly about this comet being this thing that's headed for us. And there's a there's a time limit. I really liked it. Like Adam McKay a lot. I like when I think into actors are improvising. I just enjoyed, I enjoyed that film a lot. Yeah. I've been in some fights about having liked that film so much. Um I I think my first exposure to like uh a sort of a climate aware was um Joni Mitchell's um Big Big Yellow Taxi, you know, like uh Pave Paradise put a parking lot, Hey Farmer Farmer, put away that DDT. Because I remember sort of hearing that at a young age and like loving her voice and still such a massive fan of hers. And hearing him being like, What's DDT? Let's look that up. I now hear DDT might not have been that bad. You probably know more about that than I do. But you're you don't really hear that much about it. I mean, so I remember like there was a character on 30 Rock that David Shore played called Greenzoe, and I think that they were I think that they were sending up that there needed to be like um corporate uh climate actions, and so he was this guy that they had to put on TV. I could be wrong, but my memory of it is they had to put him on TV. I gotta check that out. Um and yeah, and he played this guy named Greenzo. You see it from time to time, but I wouldn't say it's like all over pop culture. I think it is either. I'm just like sort of curious. I mentioned this novel that I had a complicated relationship with, Ministry for the Future with the heat scene. That's I mean, I don't know if that's pop culture. It's like an enormous size on the movie. When it turns into a movie, it will be. Maybe one. Yeah. Speaking of movies, Armageddon, I put Armageddon and uh Armageddon and Deep Impact, which I think were asteroid movies. I think it's a little bit like, you know how some people say diehard is a Christmas movie? Yeah. Those weren't climate movies, but they were like disast- they were disaster movies. Yes, yes, but they're not about like the like climate change. No, but they were in the same way that Don't Look Up use the asteroid analogy to be like, here's the. But that was so deliberately. It was. So I'm just wondering, like, can we look back at disaster movies? I think Kevin Costner made a horrible movie called Waterworld once. Oh yeah. I remember there was a review for that. The review was two words, it was shit world. Right. I remember it was so bad it was funny when it came out. It's an old movie now, but I wonder if we can look back at those horrible disaster flicks and laugh at them as climate movies. I'm not watching Waterworld again for the environment. I'm not doing no more games. Would you watch the honest trailer version if somebody made like a three-minute version of it? Of course I would. For the world, I'd take the time. I'd do another task while I played, but I would I would let it play. Here's one last one. And this is maybe a little more poignant. I really love the fool the movie Children of Men. Right. Post-apocalyptic near future. Humans can't have babies anymore. Right. Go. And then a person has discovered who's pregnant. And that's a big part of the plot. So it's sort of like it's a near future, things are obviously worse than they are now. Yeah. And some key capability or aspect of our humanness has been taken away. So it's not a climate movie at all, but it just pops into my mind. That point out a large problem that could decimate humanity and ask the question can we as humans solve it? There you go. And so I think they all are related in that way. We maybe we're not the reason the asteroids are headed here. I hear there is one coming. Um but we're not the reason, but we are the reason why the hockey stick is um in the air. Okay. Yeah, so interesting. So but I, you know, I feel I feel slightly lighter having had this conversation. I'm thrilled to hear that. I hope we can do it again sometime. This has been great. Thank you for doing this. Oh, my pleasure. Um we know you write for a fantastic show called The Source 20 Minutes. Tell us what you're up to, products you're excited about. Yes. Where can we find you online? Um listen to CBC Radio's Because News. It's like a panel comedy show. And then uh just follow me on Instagram, Ashley Botting, A S-H-L-E-Y-B-O T T I N G. Um, yeah, gonna be doing some more of my own stuff in the future. Doing, I wanna write some essays and uh make people laugh. Ultimately, that's what I want to do is make people make people laugh. So uh I'll I'll keep doing that and maybe every once in a while I'll mention, you know, Greenland or something. Thank you, Ashley. My pleasure. This is fun, thank you. It's so fun. Greenland. Yeah. That's the end of part two of my conversation with Ashley Bodding. We want to know what you think. Am I taking it too far with this climate and comedy stuff? Is this not something to joke about? Or do you think this is exactly what we need to joke about? No matter what you think, we'd love to hear from you at podontherise at gmail.com. That's podontherize at gmail.com. And we put a special request for corny, climate, and comedy jokes. We'd love to hear from you. Now, you can check out links to our other episodes here on YouTube. If you think watching people talk on video is dumb, you can always hear the audio on Apple and on Spotify podcast. Thank you to Ashley. Thank you to Sean Pascal of Poetry Jazz Cafe for letting us film there. Thank you to my producer Vish. And of course, the music of the great Claire Davis to take us home. Until soon, y'all.