Stephen Colbert spent some time on Monday night, between Radiohead songs, dissecting realities on global warming and energy using very sharp satirical tools:
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(Please click the pause button on the two video players; on some browsers they start automatically otherwise.)
Here’s one piercingly true line:
In the face of all this mounting evidence, America has stood with one voice and boldly proclaimed: “Eh.”
After a performance by Radiohead, he sat with Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien from the band and dug in again on Americans but also on how a rock band can square its carbon concerns with its energy needs (like a masterful juggler adding a ball in mid-performance, he threw in a jab at “clean coal” in the process):
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Here’s part of their exchange, starting with Colbert’s hypothesis on American indifference.
Colbert:
I believe that it just isn’t bad enough. Because if it was bad enough –-we’re not bad people — we would take action. And if we run through the fossil fuels, if we load the sky with carbon, then it would be obvious. Right know you kind of have to be a scientist to understand what’s going on.
Yorke:
Not if you live in Bangladesh.
Colbert:
What’s going on there?
Yorke:
It gets wet quite a lot now.
Colbert:
But didn’t it always get wet there? I don’t mean to be facetious, because I don’t know what the word facetious means. But it is really hard for those of us who live in the U.S. — and there’s a lot of hgh ground here — to understand what’s motivating people in the rest of the world to get worried about this – like for instance Europeans. … Why do you guys believe it more than we do?
O’Brien posited that this is a myth, noting the hardships experienced by Texans of late. The conversation swung immediately to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s rejection of science pointing to disruptive human-driven warming and Yorke focused on his campaign contributions from industry, particularly oil companies.
Colbert:
Obviously. That’s what runs the world. Oil. Did you guys come here on an oxcart? If you believe in saving the environment, you gys aren’t playing zithers over there. That takes electricity and that’s got to be powered by clean coal.
It took a couple of seconds for that last point to sink in and generate a wave of laughter from the musicians and the audience. There are more relevant clips here.
Some of the climate disengagement that Colbert alluded to was reflected earlier this week in a column on the NPR Web site by Robert Krulwich, the unconventional science communicator:
I got a call the other day from some producers I very much admire. They wanted to talk about a series next year on global warming and I thought, why does this subject make me instantly tired? Global warming is important, yes; controversial, certainly; complicated (OK by me); but somehow, even broaching this subject makes me feel like someone’s put heavy stones in my head. Why is that? [Read the rest.]
Give it a read in relation to Colbert’s barbed points and see what you think.