Al Franken used his trademark brand of humor Tuesday on “The Daily Show” to shed light on a starkly sobering development for global warming after the United Nations released a report stating the problem was more urgent than previously thought.
Franken, the former actor and screenwriter, “Saturday Night Live” star and U.S. senator from Minnesota, called the situation “the story today that makes all the other stories kind of pointless.”
“According to the U.N, we’re all going to die,” Franken deadpanned.
“The Daily Show” then rolled clips of newscasts covering the report earlier Tuesday, with CNN calling it “a dire warning about the state of the planet” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” breaking down the facts of the matter, including that “every country in the world has to reduce emissions at warp speed to try to curb the warming of our planet.”
“Wow, that’s awful,” responded Franken, in his second day as guest host of the Comedy Central show. “But I guess a shoutout to my baby boomers — feels like we got the last chopper out of Saigon, doesn’t it. And that’s a reference we baby boomers understand.”
The joke is of course in reference to the final U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 after a decade of war.
“Now, part of the problem is, the U.N.’s expectations of collective action,” Franken said. “It’s just easy to sherk our part when everybody has to chip in. So the solution here is to call out people individually.
“The next U.N. report shouldn’t say, ‘We all must lower our emissions.’ It should say, ‘Gary stop driving your car so much. You don’t need to visit your wife’s grave every day. She’s not keeping track.”
Watch video of the full bit below.
