‘Leonardo Dicaprio, let me say for the record, should not be flying around the world in his private plane while lecturing people about climate change,’ says Rainn Wilson.
‘That is hypocrisy, and he should not do it.’
He is joking. Sort of.
Having eschewed a private jet to London for Zoom, Rainn is speaking from America’s west coast to discuss that most enormous of existential issues – global warming – and whether it can ever be funny.
After all, as Dwight Schrute in The Office there was nothing he couldn’t spin into a smile raiser. Some were guaranteed to get the laughs – being tricked into beating himself up, doing parkour or the yoga ball moment just three highlights from hundreds.
But he did also murder a cat. And it was funny.
Fictional pets are a very different beast to the facts of climate change though – yet that hasn’t stopped Rainn trying to make impending doom funny, under various guises, after being spurred on by his own inaction.
‘I was looking at the state of the world about six or seven years ago and I was very frustrated by the slow progress in terms of climate action,’ he says. ‘But then I took a long, hard, cold look in the mirror and I was like, “Well, Rainn Wilson, what are you doing about it?”.’
‘And I realised that, besides sending out an occasional angry tweet, I really wasn’t involved in the movement at all, and not making any impact whatsoever other than getting solar panels for my house and driving an electric car.’
That revelation led to a partnership with Arctic Basecamp, a non-profit organisation which shares the message of climate change through the lens of a rapidly melting ice cap at Davos and other global assemblies, targeting global political and business leaders.
‘They seek to amplify the science to the people in the halls of power, and I love their mission,’ he says. ‘I love their “take no prisoners” attitude and Dr Gail Whitman, who runs the organisation, is an incredible scientist – and science communicator.
‘So I joined the board and I’ve done a bunch of activities with them. You know, I don’t know if it’s making a difference, but I’m trying to do something a little more than send out an occasional tweet.’
He hasn’t abandoned the platform though. A tweet was the vehicle of choice for one particular Arctic Basecamp campaign, for which Rainn Percival Dietrich Wilson changed his name to Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson in a bid to highlight increasing extreme weather events triggered by climate change.
‘Of course it was very silly, and I got pilloried by many right-wing news sources in the US,’ he says. ‘They were like “oh can you believe this idiot, Hollywood elitist changes his name to work on climate change, I bet he’s flying all around the globe in his private plane”.
‘No, there’s no private plane, and I didn’t actually change my name guys, it’s all just for fun and to raise awareness.’
Which brings us back to Leo.
In 2016, the Oscar winner was ridiculed for reportedly flying from Cannes to New York – around 4,000 miles – in a private jet to collect an award for his environmental activism.
Deliciously ironic but a dreadful optic, the private plane angle is not only beloved by certain right-wing media factions but also climate change deniers.
‘It’s pretty rare I meet climate change deniers,’ says Rainn. ‘But there are a number of points that they say, and one is “celebrities should shut up about climate change because they’re such hypocrites”.
‘But when I have interacted with them, I think it’s super important to stay open-hearted and loving, and to connect with them as human beings. No one likes to be lectured, no one likes to be yelled at, no one likes to be shamed or have data shoved down their throat.
‘I know I don’t react well to any of that.’
Is that message of peace and love a little naive in this era of Twitter spats and literal coups? Or is it the result of an increasingly rare optimism in the good of the human race instilled as a lifelong follower of Baha’i?
A picture of the religion’s former leader, Abdu’l-Bahá, sits behind Rainn on a shelf. Its primary focus is the abolition of racial, class and religious prejudices by promoting the essential unity of all religions and of humanity.
In short, the antithesis of modern politics, which has weaponised all of the above – and, of course, climate change.
Enter humour, for so long a unifier of opposites through laughter, the universal language, and a latecomer to the party.
‘One of the places that we have fallen short is in comedy,’ says Rainn. ‘We need to figure it out. I don’t know what the answer is, but if you want to get people to listen, really listen, you’ve got to make them laugh a little bit.
‘But is there anything funny about climate change? It’s a tough one. It’s tough to find a joke. It’s tough to find a comedic way into one of the greatest globally encompassing crises that humanity has ever faced.’
Indeed, in an era when everything is fair game in comedy, it is a subject few comedians have attempted to tackle. They and many world leaders have that in common.
Not Rainn though. In 2021 he rounded up 16 fellow comedians to try to answer the question ‘can climate change ever be funny?’ for a TED conference. Queue Conan O’Brien, Mayim Bialik, Retta, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic and fellow Office alum Ed Helms doing their level best to find a bright side.
The cast of Jersey Shore being washed away and a variety of knock-knock jokes serve among the highlights, but Randall Park’s prolonged struggle to find any words, punctuated throughout, perhaps best represents the very real struggle.
A year earlier, Rainn travelled (or jetted, depending on your allegiance) to Greenland to highlight the plight of its rapidly melting ice sheet. The series, available on YouTube, culminated in a fantastically awkward video call with Greta Thunberg.
‘That was a five-part series called An Idiot’s Guide To Climate Change, and we met with a lot of climate scientists up there,’ says Rainn. ‘It was a really fun, interactive way to get to know what’s going on up there – because what happens in the Arctic, doesn’t stay in the Arctic.’
He is referring to the fact atmospheric changes at the poles can have an outsized effect on the rest of the planet – take the 2019 polar vortex over North America. Caused by sudden atmospheric warming over the North Pole, it pushed arctic air south over the continent, leading to 22 deaths.
Not all of the effects of global warming will be so severe, so quickly, but the world is changing, and the effects will become more obvious. Looking ahead, it feels understandable that an increasing number of people are coming down with the very modern affliction of eco-anxiety, or ‘a chronic fear of environmental doom’.
There’s no cure on the horizon, but again Rainn has done his bit to help in a new show The Geography Of Bliss.
‘I travel the world looking for happiness,’ he says. ‘I’m basically that Anthony Bourdain of happiness, not tasting foods, but looking for what brings us joy and bliss.
‘Connection to nature is a big part of that, and it’s interesting because the climate crisis is creating one of the biggest mass extinctions in planetary history.
‘People love their doggies and kitties, right, but there’s a disconnect between climate change and animals dying – entire species dying – so that’s a very valuable path to take in talking about the importance of the issue.’
Dying animals make the ecological crisis may be even harder for comedy to crack. No word yet on whether Rainn will make that his next mission.
Is there a light take on the last ten vaquita porpoises in the Gulf of California or the presumed extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin?
After all, he did murder a cat. And it was funny.
Geography Of Bliss is available to watch on Peacock, available to Sky and NOW subscribers. Rainn’s book Soul Boom: Why We Need A Spiritual Revolution is out now
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