Jimmy Kimmel -- yes, of girls-jumping-on-trampolines fame -- used his platform for good this week. Sarah Palin is back in the public eye and not just to promote her Judge Judy knockoff. She's stumping for the climate denial film "Climate Hustle," which explains how climate change is a hoax. Her logic, as usual, is impeccable:
"I want people to feel empowered to ask questions about what is being fed them from the scientist community that something's not making a whole lot of sense when it comes to inconsistent data that is being produced and being fed especially to our children when it comes to global warming or climate change or whatever people are calling it today."She continues: "It's perpetuated, it's repeated so often that too many people believe that, 'Oh, well if 97 percent of all scientists believe that man's activities are creating changes in the weather, who am I to question that?'"
Exactly, Kimmel deadpans. Exactly.
https://youtu.be/9UCdFbyL8y0?t=48s
Kimmel goes on to explain that climate change is not a political issue; it's pure science, and the politicians who are perpetuating confusion are reaping big money from oil companies for doing so. He concludes with a panel of PhDs who promise that they are not f**king with us. If they were, in fact f**king with us, getting a PhD in climate science is *really* playing the long game on a joke without a great punchline.
Kudos to Kimmel for making climate denial the butt of a joke it deserves to be.
Image credit: Screenshot
Jen Boynton is the former Editor-in-Chief of TriplePundit. She has an MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio Graduate School and has helped organizations including SAP, PwC and Fair Trade USA with their sustainability communications messaging. She is based in San Diego, California. When she's not at work, she volunteers as a CASA (court appointed special advocate) for children in the foster care system. She enjoys losing fights with toddlers and eating toast scraps. She lives with her family in sunny San Diego.