"Climate journalism is crucial, but it’s not enough. Release the comedians!"

"Brad Einstein was going for the comedy jugular. As he paced the stage at the Hollywood Climate Summit — a guitar around his neck and sweat coating his face — he had the crowd cackling with a bit about how they’d probably gone into climate work because they watched “FernGully: The Last Rainforest” at a formative time in their lives “and had a sexual awakening to the smog monster.”

“I know you nasty freaks, you don’t have to feel bad about it. It’s voiced by Tim Curry, it happened to all of us,” he said.

Einstein’s own path into climate work, he continued, was “a little weirder.” He was doing comedy in Chicago, and to make ends meet, he took a job writing tweets for an anonymous energy company. Only when he showed up for his first day did he learn that the company was “one of the largest oil conglomerates in the world.”

The oil giant made him sign a nondisclosure agreement, he said, so he couldn’t share who it was."

Sammy Roth reports for Climate Colored Goggles August 24, 2026. [2]