We can use some humor on Earth Day Eve (Opinion)
By Beth-Osnes Stoedefalke and Max Boykoff
Mark the night before Earth Day (April 21) — or “Earth Day Eve” — on your calendars this year. And the following day — April 22 — on your calendar for Earth Day itself.
The gravity of Earth Day reflects humans’ ongoing role in environmental damage as well as ongoing contradictions that we navigate; among them are that those most vulnerable often have the least power to affect positive change, and those experiencing the worst impacts first have contributed very little to these challenges.
The conviviality of Earth Day (now celebrated worldwide and often extended to Earth Week) can emanate from our reflections about environmental progress over the past 56 years. While there have been recent executive branch rollbacks since 1970 — and while much more work remains — advancements include establishing the Endangered Species Act at the national level, and enacting the Paris Agreement (limiting greenhouse gas emissions) at the global scale
Amid solemnity and jubilation, we can find humor together in these times. The night before Earth Day, there is an opportunity to release endorphins and alleviate pain through collective laughter: join the crowd at Boulder Theater on Tuesday (doors open at 6 p.m.) as we host the 11th annual FREE and live climate comedy show, “Stand Up for Climate Comedy,” with several of our University of Colorado Boulder students performing stand-up and sketch comedy along with three professional comedians (Chuck Nice, Katie Hannigan and Brittany Bell Surratt). We also will announce annual awards and international short video competition winners, alongside music from Milo Trout.
Science-led considerations dominate our understanding of climate change in 2026, yet comedy — as a fruitful pathway to emotional, affective, visceral and experiential ways of learning and recognizing — has been underutilized as a tool to help access what might be viewed as difficult and complex conversations. While doom-and-gloom climate science findings can paralyze everyday people with fear, comedy communications are unimpeachably grounded and non-elitist ways to meet people where they are. Comedy translates probabilistic science into compelling stories.
In the U.S. these days, about 64% of people rarely or never talk about climate change. We co-authors — among a growing community of scholarship and experimentation — have studied and trialed how comedy has the power to effectively spark conversations without trivializing critically important climate change issues. We have focused on how younger adults — largely university students — can find these discussions and considerations more accessible, in these times when few of them yet have economic/financial power to speak with their dollars/investments or political power to speak directly with leaders who shape climate-changing choices in their lives.
Over the years, we have refined our approaches to focus these creative works on climate solutions as well as build momentum for increased engagement. We have found that these creative approaches have helped to alleviate eco-grief and climate anxiety that many young people are facing now. We also have found that comedy has made these considerations more approachable and manageable in accessing emotional ways — from worries and concerns to hopes and dreams — of learning and knowing about contemporary climate change. We have gained insights into ways that this enhances perceived agency and problem-solving, as well as opportunities to consider new routes to action.
Humor has helped entertain incongruities, hypocrisies, contradictions and falsehoods that we otherwise put up with every day. Through satire and observations — among many flavors — comedy asks questions and exerts disarming power that creates new ways of considering climate change. Laughter productively relieves climate change anxiety, while climate-themed comedy subverts the logic of status quo climate-damaging behaviors and practices. Comedy can confront polarization, partisanship and division in climate change discussions as it lowers defenses and bridges otherwise difficult topics in less-threatening ways.
Earth Day began in the United States (U.S.) in 1970. This was a time when the Republican Nixon Administration was busy with several things, including the establishment of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, proclaiming we must decide whether “we surrender to our surroundings (or) make our peace with nature (through) reparations for damage we have done to our air, to our land and to our water.”
On Earth Day eve, welcome comedy into your lives as we recapture a missing middle ground — especially for young people — to more capably address climate change.
This is a biweekly sustainability and environment column. Max Boykoff and Beth-Osnes Stoedefalke are faculty members at the University of Colorado Boulder. Though the views expressed here are based upon their scholarly expertise and research/creative experience, these are personal views and should not be considered the university’s official position on any specific issue.
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