Western view of ‘what the environment is’ is quite limited to a white, christian, middle-class, and male view of what the environment looks like. America believes the environment is limited to the Amazonia Rainforest, the vacation spots they shared a few summers with their families, and the gated parks that usually cost money to go around. American environmentalists don’t look at environment as a heavily social issue.

Professor Sachs shared sentiments about how African-Americans, women, and other identity groups are able to make fun of themselves and their social identities through stand-up comedy, cartoons, and other humorous skits, why is there a lack of environmentalist voices?, he asks. And that’s probably because of his (and many others definition of the environment).

Coming from a culture that considers oneself heavily embedded in their natural surround, I never really understood the dichotomy between civilization and nature. The two are deeply embedded in each other. The problem too with comparing oppressed groups using humor and environmentalist using humor is just that – oppression. One way many people who deal with oppression cope with their social dynamics is through humor. Environmental humor rarely exists because it is typically (or as media portrays) a group of privileged people trying to make the rest of the world (very unfairly) compromise their own living conditions because of what environmentalist think is right. White American environmental activists also lack the personal investment in the fight. African-Americans make jokes to appeal to a black audience. People who are not black and watch black comedy run the risk of trivializing the experiences that the black comedians are portraying. Because privileged white men (in particular) can indulge in comedy without society infrastructures working to diminish their humanity, they have always found comedians of other social groups hilarious, simply because the comedy usually appeals to the stereotypes that surround said social groups. For environmentalist to poke fun at themselves means a painful process of realizing privilege and (I say this quite frankly) stupidity. Real environmentalists (people fighting for clean water and saving their communities from over population and deforestation) rarely have the privilege of media and if they did they’ll do what black and women comedians have been doing this entire time – talk about their environments. Women poke fun at the fact that legislation for reproductive rights is often delegated to white men – this is an environmental issue that can revolutionize the population of the world. African-Americans often talk about the inequities that follow their communities because of a lack of resources (food, clean water, safe housing, etc). These are also environmental issues.

So environmentalist have been making fun of themselves, we just didn’t consider them environmentalist because we have this idea that if you are a person of color, a woman, or poor, you somehow don’t fit into the stereotypes of what an environmentalist looks like.