Interview with Matt Winning by Dr Alexandra Borchardt, Lead Author, and Katherine Dunn, Co-Author, EBU News Report 2023: Climate Journalism That Works - Between Knowledge and Impact.

Matt Winning is a stand-up comedian and an environmental economist with a Ph.D. in climate change policy. He regularly appears on BBC Radio 4 where he hosts the show “Net Zero: A Very British Problem” and the podcast “Operation Earth”. His latest book is “Hot Mess – What on Earth Can We Do About Climate Change”.   

Can you tell us a climate change joke?

If we don’t reduce our emissions fast, then the future will be like the film Waterworld. Terrible.

What came first: Your passion for doing comedy or your research on climate change?

I have been working in the field of climate change since 2008. I fell into it by chance. I worked at an investment bank at that time and I found it boring. That’s when I was offered a Ph.D.. None of my family are academics, but the topic interested me. Now I have been a researcher at University College London for ten years with a focus on climate mitigation. But I have a very odd other career that started at almost the same time. Thirteen years ago I started doing comedy. First as a hobby, then a paid hobby, then it became a better paid hobby. I did that in tandem with my other career. Then it all changed again in 2017. I started doing comedy on climate change. Back then it was an incredibly niche area.

Was there a special moment when you decided to do this? 

I stumbled into it. I had seen people doing science comedy back then, but I always shied away from it, because people were doing it badly. I didn’t want to be that sort of comedian. I tried to do it subtly, weaving it into the show. This was when I got some really bad reviews. People said it was non-committal. So, I decided to do the opposite. I wanted to do comedy that doesn’t shy away from the difficulties. Within a year I had developed a full hour-long show.

How long did this take you?

It was a big risk and took me about half a year trying and failing to get enough jokes and a lot of people not laughing at me. Then it fell into place. I felt I had something. Then I took that first show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It surprisingly went very well. 

How do you work on this? Do you write at your desk? Do you test your jokes on friends?

I do a little bit of everything. I sit at a café and try to write jokes. Then I book slots on small stages and go there with half-tried jokes, ideas. I do some talking to friends. It is the most iterative process you can have. I try two or three, then cut that down to the funniest stuff. With climate, it is almost like writing a lecture, then I reverse-engineer jokes into it, try to improve the punchline. Some subjects are too tricky though. 

Which ones would be too tricky?

I did one or two jokes about carbon taxes, but it is very difficult to talk about financial instruments. Because it is difficult to relate it to people’s day-to-day experience. I prefer topics that people can relate to, doing something on sea-level rise, for example, or transport. Everybody has to drive. Often you want to talk about more complicated topics, about things that are a bit more systemic. But you need to spend more time explaining them. One option is doing them later in the show, you have to draw people in at the start. Once you have the trust of your audience, you can talk about the more complicated topics. The more time you have, the more people are willing to sit through more complicated stuff. 

This sounds like in real life. Have you experienced anything on stage that has particularly impressed you? 

There are moments when you are on to something very exciting. I show slides on stages, one is on the main climate impact assessments. I show six planets and two different worlds, explaining scenarios. In one scenario the world is going red. This is a moment when I can be very silly about it, playing with people’s perceptions while flipping between being a normal person and being an academic who knows all the stuff. What always works well is talking about flying. Some people are afraid of flying. So, I say: We should make more people afraid of flying. We should put glass floors on planes, show movies of plane crashes on board. Jumping logic is fun. 

Are there any red lines? Talking about plane crashes might not be funny for everyone. 

One rule is: You have to be punching up. A joke needs to punch people who have status above everyone in the room. I’m trying to never make fun of people who are impacted by climate change. That is not my intention. People understand that I am doing this as a job as well. I am not coming at it from a point where I am undermining the seriousness of it. I talk about the impacts of heatwaves, for example. How bad it is, but also silly, unexpected consequences such as how  French fries have been smaller because of droughts, that I don’t want my children to live in a world with small French fries, and stuff like that. I also have the occasional rude joke about climate change e.g. You don’t believe how many Brits are flying somewhere else just to have sex with another Brit. Why not stay at home? 

What do you think about climate journalism?

Often the details are great, but the headlines are atrocious. Something like: “We have 12 years to save the world”. But I know this is not the case, that’s why I don’t read it. Complex content doesn’t fit well on a T-shirt. However, I do use good climate journalism to inform my comedy. The journalists then have already done what I have to do: distilling something into what people can digest. The difference is just that I do it with jokes involved. I have a lot of respect for climate journalism. This said, it is not done well over an aggregate level. The main problem I see is a lack of joined up thinking across topics, saying something like “this policy will also affect the climate”. A lot of journalism has to be pigeonholed. What I’d like to see more of is more critical thinking on the systemic nature of climate change. It is not happening just to some people in some countries but to all people of all countries. 

Is academia doing a good job communicating climate change?

Quite the opposite. There is all this work being done, and then there is little work being done on the communication of that. Communication many times is just an afterthought. Academia is generating knowledge for the public good, the same as journalism. The difference is: Journalism has focused massively on communication but has little time for research. Academia is the mirror image, there is so much time for research but no time for communication. Journalists need to work more closely with academics. Or academics need to be trained to do communication better. Climate change is being hampered by the incentive structures of journalism and of academia.

Media organizations battle with news avoidance, what do you think makes people decide to join you for an evening of bad news?

It is hard to get people in the door sometimes. But once people come, they are pleasantly surprised. My goal is widening the conversation. I get people from different walks of life coming to the show. The worst are those that work for environmental charities; they just look at the graphs and don’t listen to the jokes. If you have very strong opinions on climate change, my comedy is not for you. This is about communicating to the vast amount of people in the middle, to get them engaged. My book, for example, could be a present for your brother who would be interested in the topic but would never read a serious book on climate change. We need to make content for people we don’t make content for. 

How do you approach this?

People don’t like being talked down to. There is some peer pressure in the room, people don’t want to be the only ones not laughing. They are like: “If I don’t pay attention, I’ll be the odd one out.” With some shows people contacted me afterwards. They told me that their family doesn’t fly any longer, or that they sold their car. A couple said they changed their electricity provider after they had seen my show. There is an impact. I’m not saying I will singlehandedly save the planet. People are adults, all I can do is inform them properly and let them make their own decisions. 

Have you done anything that didn’t work?

I once played around with carbon offsets. I asked: Can I offset having a baby? A stupid idea bu that’s how people often think. I took it to the extreme and counted how many dogs a year I had to murder to account for a baby. People were quite shocked by me miming murdering fictitious dogs. Afterwards some people usually wait for me to ask questions. There was this last person in a queue. She asked me: How many dogs can I own when I don’t have children? There you can see how bad the offsetting idea really is.