Inspiring Climate Action Through Comedy
The Climate Comedy Cohort is an unprecedented network of comedians who are coming together to learn, collaborate, and create hilarious new comedy informed by the hottest climate science. The Climate Comedy Cohort functions as a 9-month fellowship and comedy contest.
Co-created and directed by Generation180 and the Center for Media & Social Impact’s GoodLaugh initiative, the Climate Comedy Cohort brings together diverse comedians from around the country to flip the script on the way we think about climate change. Research shows that the majority of Americans are concerned about climate change, but most know little about meaningful steps they can take. There’s a lot more people can do – actions beyond recycling or bringing their own bags to the grocery store.
Humans now have an unprecedented opportunity to make a huge impact on climate change in their own homes and communities–and most don’t know it! A new climate law (called the Inflation Reduction Act) represents the largest investment in clean energy in U.S. history. It includes huge financial incentives for Americans to switch to solar, heat pumps, electric stoves, and other types of clean energy. Individuals can also make a massive impact on climate change through policy advocacy. Comedians play an essential role in helping people understand this stuff.
Meet the 2023 Cohort
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Leah Bonnema
Los Angeles, CA
Read MoreLessLeah Bonnema is a stand-up comedian who’s appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Don’t Tell Comedy and Hard Read on Chris Gethard Presents. She is cohost of the podcast Were You Raised By Wolves and author of the romcom-esque novel The Holiday Breakdown. Leah is obsessed with her dog, Gandalf, and soft cheeses.
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Sami Brownowski
New York, NY
Read MoreLessI grew up in the UK, Israel and France. I moved to New York to study jazz saxophone. I played jazz gigs around the city and got into comedy when I noticed audiences laughing whenever I would say something in between songs. I now make videos for TikTok and Instagram.
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Kaycee Conlee
Los Angeles, CA
Read MoreLessKaycee Conlee is a standup comedian, writer, and actor. She has appeared on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and wrote and performed her own mini-special for the “Power to the Punchline” series. On stage, Kaycee has all the charm and likability of the ‘gay girl next door,’ sharing stories from her Florida upbringing, anecdotes about her family, and observations from everyday life.
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Rasheda Crockett
New York, NY
Read MoreLessRasheda Crockett is an actor, writer, and producer who is best known for her starring role as Tracey Davis in BET+’s hit comedy series, Bigger. As a staff writer for Adam Ruins Everything, Rasheda’s assigned episode “Adam Ruins Guns,” was selected to submit for a HUMANTIS Award. Rasheda began her career independently producing original sketches on YouTube which garnered the attention of executives for the CBS diversity showcase in 2019, and will soon release her own series of independently-produced sketches on her YouTube channel.
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Reem Edan
Los Angeles, CA
Read MoreLessReem Edan is an Iraqi-American content creator, award-winning writer, and internationally touring stand-up comedian. She can be seen performing on ShahidVIP’s “Stand Up Sketch Show,” featured on IG pages like “Family Guy,” and has contributed jokes to “Tom & Jerry,” “Scooby Doo,” and “Looney Tunes” social media. She was also named one of “Five Muslim Women Comedians to Get You Through Social Distancing” by Bustle.
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Mark Kendall
Atlanta, GA
Read MoreLessMark Kendall is an Atlanta-based comedian. He is the co-founder of CoolCoolCool Productions, where they use comedy to encourage civic engagement.
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Pratima Mani
New York, NY
Read MoreLessPratima Mani is a Peabody-winning, two-time Emmy nominated comedic writer and performer based in New York City. With roots in NYC’s live comedy scene, she has written for the likes of Upright Citizens Brigade Theater’s Maude Night, Reductress and The Belladonna. She’s an alum of Spotify’s “Sound Up” US podcast bootcamp for women of color and is currently in post-production on her short film “Stitched.”
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Ashley Roberts
Los Angeles, CA
Read MoreLessAshley Brooke Roberts is a comedian, writer, and actress, originally from Chapel Hill, NC. She writes audio rom-coms for the Meet Cute Network, just finished working on the Amazon Prime show Play-Doh Squished, and wrote for NPR’s Ask Me Another for years until their final show. Her big life achievements so far: an award from the Associated Press for exposing a county official with ties to dog fighting and dancing in a Dead Prez music video.
Laugh along with us
Subscribe to The Friday Funny for a brief dose of climate humor and updates about the cohort.
The Climate Comedy Cohort (CCC) is a 9-month fellowship where comedians learn from experts and collaborate to create funny content to grab people’s attention and bring clean energy solutions to life. The idea: They learn a ton, make funny content, and keep using it in their material–even after the cohort. Our approach focuses on investing in comedians as clean energy ambassadors who are agents of change committed to climate action that lasts beyond the program.
The fellowship is led by a group of comedy writers and performers who have worked at The Tonight Show, TruTv, VICELAND, and Comedy Central, in addition to TV shows, feature films, and award-winning stand-up competitions.
Research across disciplines shows that comedy is uniquely persuasive and attention-getting when it comes to serious issues like the climate crisis. At the same time, we know there’s a fleet of diverse and passionate comedy writers and performers prepared to use their skills to improve the state of the globe. Thus far, comedy is a vastly untapped resource. It’s time to change the story.
Climate solutions and clean energy technologies are ready for mass adoption, but people are dismayed by climate gloom and doom, and widespread clean energy action isn’t happening fast enough. Should we be surprised that many of us are too freaked out to engage? Not really, especially if we know anything about the powerful role of positive emotion and simple common-sense messages for motivating action and change.
And this is where comedy comes in, to play a role it’s not yet played in the climate crisis: for hope and optimism and positive engagement, not satirical punches at climate denialism or scary messages. Here’s the big question: When we invite comedians to the crisis in a new way, what’s possible? We developed the Climate Comedy Cohort to find out.
The Climate Comedy Cohort launched in 2022. Learn more about our work with the inaugural cohort.
Meet Last Year’s Cohort
Generation180 is a national nonprofit working to inspire and equip people to take action on clean energy in their homes and communities. Momentum for clean energy and climate action is at a high point and growing, putting us on the verge of a cultural shift away from fossil fuels toward a cleaner, healthier, more equitable future for everyone. Generation180 works to accelerate this shift by providing individuals with clear pathways to action and popularizing a new narrative of agency and hope. The Climate Comedy Cohort is the newest initiative from Generation180 to use cultural strategies like comedy and creative communications rooted in behavior science to inspire climate action.
GoodLaugh is a comedy production engine and knowledge lab that brings together the most talented minds in comedy, social justice, entertainment, and philanthropy to collaborate and create comedy and research to help repair the world and build a more just, equitable future. As a program of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI) at American University, GoodLaugh facilitates comedy production, studies, and convenings with social justice at the core. By making new comedy, distributing new knowledge and understanding, and bringing together unlikely players to leverage humor for social good, GoodLaugh believes that “laughing in the face of injustice” can solve, well, almost anything.