Trevor Noah’s "climate night". Image courtesy of Flickr
By Helen Gloege ’23
Staff Writer
This past week, Sept. 20 to 26, was Climate Week NYC, an event that aimed to collectively pressure businesses and governments towards action in response to climate change. Last Wednesday night, seven talk show hosts participated in “Climate Night,” an event coordinated by veteran producer and writer Steve Bodow. The night brought together shows on various networks including Jimmy Kimmel Live, Late Night With Seth Meyers, The Late Late Show with James Corden, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show With Trevor Noah and Full Frontal With Samantha Bee.
While a good idea in theory, the late night shows demonstrated a lack of effort during Climate Night, reflecting the current inaction around climate change around the world. For Mount Holyoke News, I watched each late night host’s Climate Night segment and ranked them on how well they addressed the issues at hand and provided actionable steps on how to combat climate change.
Jimmy Kimmel Live
Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, featured real climate scientists who had urged action on the same show in 2016. Kimmel’s monologue focused mainly on politicians responsible for inaction on climate change, pointing to Republicans, like Florida Senator Rick Scott, who are known to have combated climate legislation. Kimmel joked, “You would think these politicians who call themselves conservatives might want to conserve.” Kimmel also criticized the Biden administration’s role in offshore drilling, saying, “Biden is on track to approve more oil and gas permits than any year of the Trump administration.” Kimmel ended his segment by encouraging the audience to lobby politicians to vote for the upcoming Build Back Better Plan. Kimmel favored a path to solve climate change through politics, which may have resonated in particular with audience members who are already educated on the climate crisis. For viewers without that background, the show may have left them hanging. Still, Kimmel was successful in providing his audience with concrete action steps that went beyond taking individual responsibility for climate change.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS covered the widest range of topics during Climate Night, focusing both on less severe issues as well as the need for systemic change. Colbert joked about climate change-driven situations that have gained recent media attention, mimicking a subway conductor saying, “stand clear of the closing doors and apocalyptic tidal wave, this train will be skipping 23rd Street because...” the host the paused to check his imaginary notepad “… it just says here ‘fire bees.’” Colbert also interviewed a cartoon earth about climate change, using the segment to promote the understanding that there has to be change at a greater level outside personal carbon footprint and the average individual’s actions, saying that society must “make the right choices, not the easy ones.” Colbert’s choice to dedicate more time to discuss climate change allowed him to bring further attention to the issue, but he failed to touch on solutions beyond relying on the government to make changes. A failure of Colbert’s performance was his lack of specificity.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central also took a closer look at effects linked with climate change, on both the macro and micro scales. For example, Noah discussed how warming temperatures will produce more female sea turtles, as the temperature of the sand affects sea turtles’ biological sex. Noah also interviewed Greta Thunberg, discussing her call to “treat a crisis like a crisis” and the exhaustion that she experiences as a climate activist. One drawback to the show was Noah’s lack of in-depth explanation of ideas surrounding climate change, which risked making it difficult to understand the reality and urgency of the crisis at hand.
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
During Climate Night, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee on TBS zoomed in on specifics, focusing on sewage and sewage systems. Bee went over the history of U.S. water sanitation infrastructure and outlined how today’s combined sewer systems do not separate wastewater and storm runoff. This segment was unpleasant to listen to. Focusing on sewage may have served as an indirect example of climate change, creating the risk that Bee’s message may have been lost in translation.
Bee was the only late night host to link climate change to racism during Climate Night. The late night host highlighted a specific neighborhood where a mostly non-white community lives close to a wastewater lagoon and lacks a quality septic system. While Bee focused on specifics rather than the big picture, she was able to bring the audience up close to infrastructure issues to potentially shock them into action.
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC took a more comical approach to Climate Night, showing a collection of clips of recent news and historic weather conditions. Meyers made jokes about New Jersey tornados, New York City flooding and warmer seasonal weather, saying, “the traditional Thanksgiving feast is going to be replaced by a clothing optional backyard barbeque.” He then took his monologue in a musical direction, singing a climate crisis-themed version of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
Meyers then took a more serious tone, discussing the need to transition to cleaner energy and the need for the U.S. government to pass a “pair of infrastructure bills” that aim to “make significant investments in climate infrastructure.” While Meyers was able to talk about climate change in an entertaining way, his approach subtracted from his message. The audience is much more likely to remember his Billy Joel impression than the infrastructure bills.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Viewers of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on NBC should be advised to keep their eyes peeled during the 40-minute segment — one blink and they could miss the entirety of Fallon’s contribution to Climate Night. Fallon stuck primarily to his standard content, straying only for a short interview with Jane Goodall. During the interview, they discussed Goodall’s campaign, Trees for Jane, which aims to plant a trillion trees by the end of the decade. This reflects the general sentiment that planting trees will help solve climate change, but new research published in “Science Advances” last January found that trees themselves are becoming less able to mitigate climate change due to carbon overload. Overall, Fallon made a feeble attempt at discussing climate change, and when he did he failed to highlight its most important aspects.
The Late Late Show with James Corden
The Late Late Show with James Corden on CBS focused on inspirational news stories about individuals and companies fighting climate change. Corden asked his show’s staff what they are doing to help mitigate climate change, an ill-advised choice considering that, according to the Carbon Majors Report in 2017, 100 large oil and gas companies are responsible for about 70 percent of emissions, and placing sole responsibility on the individual ignores these larger, more direct causes. The choice to focus on the positives was risky, as it may communicate to audiences that there is no need for any urgent action or change.
Corden also interviewed Bill Gates about his new book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” Gates, who has a net worth of about $131.2 billion, encouraged people to switch to renewable energy sources, which would bring their prices down. Gates also encouraged people to make sure the company they work for is engaged in fighting climate change and to pay attention to their own purchasing behavior. Gates’s statements showed how out of touch he is with the rest of the world, which comes as no surprise considering the billionaire has a private jet collection worth close to $200 million. Maybe Corden’s monologue about personal responsibility was aimed more at the Bill Gateses of the world than at the average consumer.
It was clear from the beginning that there was not an adequate effort in creating Climate Night. The programs frequently overlapped in content, which dulled their combined impact. If viewers continue to hear the same action steps over and over without meaningful expansion, it runs the risk of breeding complacency.
The hosts can’t continue to call this a crisis if they only use part of a dedicated night to talk about climate change. Their inability to even focus on the environment for a whole show reveals the lack of care from the hosts and their teams around climate change, an issue in which they could make a real difference if they truly utilized their platforms.