How funny is the end of the world?

Can you make jokes about the climate crisis and laugh yourself to death?

In this newsletter, I discuss whether you can joke about the climate crisis or if it is insensitive.

Can you make jokes about the climate crisis?

Short answer, yes. In my opinion, you can make jokes about anything. I literally joked about my father’s death yesterday. It was his birthday party and he is fine.

there are many red lines

In fact, humor can help to process difficult situations. Such as death, sickness, war, or other cruel things. To come in full circle, my dad worked in end-of-life care and specialized in the humor of dying.

The thin red line

But it is a thin red line. On the one side you have to be careful not to offend someone and on the other side not to become cynical.

Since our system is crashing on multiple levels simultaneously it’s easy to become overwhelmed and be cynical. That’s maybe one reason, why it is hard for me to joke about the climate crisis.

I’m not funny…

For example my last newsletter, I mean the one about Apple, because last week there was none, as you surely noticed (see cynical). It was an ok written article, in my opinion, but not funny at all. Like this one, I write right now.

…but Jews are

As a counterexample, many Jewish comedians who survived the Holocaust were able to write jokes about it. And yes there are also many jokes about Jews, which are mostly just antisemitic crap.

I do not want to compare myself with people surviving concentration camps, quite the opposite. These people lived through a much greater horror than we do, and they still found a way to laugh about it.

It will be a little bit funny

So you can make jokes about anything but it is not always possible to do so and it is even harder to make good jokes,

Long story short, I try to be funnier about fixing our failed system. Next time.

Thanks for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Ian DeBay