Comedy Debate: To Panic or Not to Panic

Humans have made it through some pretty tricky times. We survived that ice age 40,000 years ago. The black plague epidemic wasn’t exactly a bundle of laughs. Then there was a world war, AND its sequel, which was even worse than the original. We even soldiered through the Boy Band fad of the 90s. Which girl were they all even singing about?

But now we’re in the midst of a Climate Emergency; one accurately predicted by oil company Exxon’s scientists as far back as 1982. We’re experiencing more and more extreme weather events across the globe; floods, fires and cyclones. We have all the scientific data we need to predict the worsening situation, we even have the technology to replace the primary causes of global warming, yet we’re in the grip of a pandemic of global leadership by a bunch of white, complacent businessmen with fossil fuel fetishes. Is this the time to panic?

Or is this the boot in the backside that homo sapiens needed to turn things around? Are we at our best when it comes to an emergency? Did things need to get this bad to tip the populace out of climate complacency and in to action?

RMIT and Sci Fight Science Comedy Debate come together for this special Sustainable Living Festival event; bringing together academics, scientists and comedians to debate whether this is a time for hope, or a time to watch the most well-informed animal on the planet become endangered.