Making climate change sexy…media sexy
In this guest post Dan Ilic reveals how comedy actually became a catalyst for governmental change at the recent Paris Climate Summit.
There are two phrases that put people to sleep faster than “anthropogenic climate change”, the others are “Look at this picture of my kids” and “I think I have a rash”. For the last couple of weeks I had the challenge to make climate change sexy for the world’s media.
But that was the challenge faced each night by myself and the team from Woody at the COP climate conference in Paris. We were tasked with putting a Fossil Of The Day on stage in the middle of the conference centre. We presented to a live audience of media, conference delegates and bored security a diet jokes, and sketches to entertain and make sense of the negotiations that happened nightly in that conference centre, but with the intent to shame governments who were making complete arses of themselves.
The conundrum of course is that the importance of the COP21 Paris Agreement was inverse to how heinously boring Climate Change is. My job; distil the buckets of bullshit down to manageable bite size nuggets of bullshit.
I was interested until he started talking about himself. Then I wasn’t interested anymore.
I was one of the active audience at 9 of the 10 Fossil of the Day awards in Paris, and Dan Ilic and Woody TV production team did a great job every evening of presenting a spotlight on some of the diplomatic bullshit and glimmers of hope from the Paris climate conference. It was my first COP as an observer and it was great to be part of the Climate Action Network daily meeting where Fossil awards were nominated, argued, discussed, withdrawn, and voted upon. I had the priviledge of participating in the Fossil of the Day award given to Australia and Argentina. Julia Bishop’s comments on coal being a long term sustainable answer to poverty certainly deserved an award.
The Fossil of the Day Awards for many years have been a powerful and influential way by the Climate Action Network to connect with people outside the annual climate change conference on the diplomatic lowlights and occasional highlights. Great to see Dan and Woody TV take it to the next level. Use of Marketing techniques and comedy as a source for good!
i find this amazing and briliant and Im stoked you’ve shared. Visionary stuff from our government to go for such a clever and engaging approach. Seriously.