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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Bill McGuire

The climate crisis is no laughing matter, no matter what those on Radio 4’s Today programme think

A man paddling a kayak through flood waters in Brisbane, Australia in 2022.
A man paddling a kayak through flood waters in Brisbane, Australia, in 2022. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

Do you find climate breakdown funny? Do you think it’s a laughing matter that we are on track to bequeath to our children and their children a planet changed for the worse beyond all recognition? I don’t – and I’m sure the presenters of Radio 4’s Today programme don’t either. But I couldn’t help feeling we were having a bit of a Don’t Look Up moment yesterday, hearing them brush off predictions by top climate scientists that our world will end up at least 2.5C hotter as depressing and “gloomy”. This is not to say that laughter and grim news shouldn’t or can’t go together. I work with comedians to help get the climate crisis message across, but we use humour to aid understanding and to help cope, not to denigrate and mock.

Radio 4 journalists react to news of desperate climate scientists
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