This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
Top Videos
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
'The Planet's on F***ing Fire’: Bill Nye Explains Climate Change to Adults
Bill Nye the Science Guy has lost his cool when it comes to climate change.
In a segment on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight Sunday, the beloved science communicator riffed on the set-up of the PBS series that made him famous. Donning a lab coat and safety glasses, he proceeded to school the audience on global warming, but this time he used some very adult language.
"By the end of this century, if emissions keep rising, the average temperature on Earth could go up another four to eight degrees," Nye said, as CNN reported. "What I'm saying is the planet's on f***ing fire."
Nye then proceeded to light a globe on fire with a blow torch.
"There are a lot of things we could do to put it out—are any of them free? No, of course not. Nothing's free, you idiots. Grow the f**k up. You're not children anymore. I didn't mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12. But you're adults now, and this is an actually crisis, got it? Safety glasses off, motherf***ers," he added.
"I think we've all broken Bill Nye," Oliver said, as USA Today reported.
Oliver invited Nye onto his show after a discussion of the Green New Deal resolution introduced by Freshman New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey that calls for a 10-year mobilization to help the U.S. achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions while promoting green jobs and environmental justice.
Nye appeared to endorse the deal in his segment, The Washington Post reported. He has also previously expressed support for Ocasio-Cortez, showing up to ask a question at her South by Southwest talk in March.
"AOC gets it," he tweeted at the time.
Oliver also asked Nye to explain the idea of carbon pricing, as CNN reported. Nye complied, saltily:
"When we release carbon, say, by burning coal or driving an SUV, all of us pay for that in the form of things like fires, floods and crop failures," he added. "Putting a fee on carbon creates incentives to emit less carbon, and, more importantly, it also incentivizes the development of low-carbon technology, which is huge, because that's vital to reducing emissions globally. And because for some reason, John, you're a 42-year-old man who needs his attention sustained by tricks, here's some f***ing Mentos and a bottle of Diet Coke. Happy now?"
Some viewers were shocked by Nye's tone.
"I just heard Bill Nye swear and it's blowing my mind," one viewer tweeted, as The Washington Post reported.
Oliver also referenced Nye's language in a thank you tweet the next day.
"Many thanks to the fantastic Bill Nye for explaining Carbon Pricing to us with an entirely appropriate amount of profanity," he wrote.
This isn't the first time that Nye has used his platform to bring attention to climate change. In a 2018 interview with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for example, he questioned the leader about his approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. A 2017 documentary focused on Nye's more recent efforts to promote science, including spreading accurate information about the threat posed by global warming.
"Nowadays, I'm talking to adults," he said in the trailer, "and I'm not mincing words. Climate is changing, it's our fault, we got to get to work on this."
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Dr. Brian R. Shmaefsky
One year after the Flint Water Crisis I was invited to participate in a water rights session at a conference hosted by the US Human Rights Network in Austin, Texas in 2015. The reason I was at the conference was to promote efforts by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to encourage scientists to shine a light on how science intersects with human rights, in the U.S. as well as in the context of international development. My plan was to sit at an information booth and share my stories about water quality projects I spearheaded in communities in Bangladesh, Colombia, and the Philippines. I did not expect to be thrown into conversations that made me reexamine how scientists use their knowledge as a public good.
Bottled water manufacturers looking to capture cool, mountain water from Washington's Cascade Mountains may have to look elsewhere after the state senate passed a bill banning new water permits, as The Guardian reported.
The shipping industry is coming to grips with its egregious carbon footprint, as it has an outsized contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and to the dumping of chemicals into open seas. Already, the global shipping industry contributes about 2 percent of global carbon emissions, about the same as Germany, as the BBC reported.
The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC overlooks the Tidal Basin, a man-made body of water surrounded by cherry trees. Visitors can stroll along the water's edge, gazing up at the stately monument.
But at high tide, people are forced off parts of the path. Twice a day, the Tidal Basin floods and water spills onto the walkway.
Trending
Ahead of government negotiations scheduled for next week on a global plan to address the biodiversity crisis, 23 former foreign ministers from various countries released a statement on Tuesday urging world leaders to act "boldly" to protect nature.