Matt Winning is set to bring his show, Solastalgia, to the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe. Here he joins Pepper&Salt to talk about his new show comedic storytelling, his solution to climate change and the -potentially – unsung heroes of solving it.
How would you summarise your show?
It is a show about the best and worst day of my life told over hundreds of years and how we got ourselves into this situation and what it’ll take to get out of it. And the answer to that is finding ways for industries and systems to change together. To put aside competition for cooperation.
Just out of interest, what’s your opinion on ESG investing?
The voluntary aspect of it won’t get us anywhere near where we need to be. The show is actually massively about the finance industry and how it has the power to be the heroes and solve climate change by investments in new oil and gas. There seemed to be some progress with the investment community, but we saw at the start of the year with GFANZ that voluntary agreements are susceptible to political winds changing. So we need better regulation.
At the point of where we are with climate change, what do you think can save us or are we past the point of no return?
There is no point of no return. It can always get worse. Every millionth of a degree matters. And that’s why it matters to continue pushing for change because it will reduce the amount of suffering somewhere at some point in time. And the show is kind of about how we as humans deal with that knowledge.
How would you solve climate change?
There are a million things that need to happen. And they all need to happen as quickly as possible whilst making the transition fair and just for communities and workers. But if I had to start somewhere it would be to ban or tax SUVs. They cause a massive amount of emissions for no reason whatsoever. And if I was in charge then I’d move on to a centralised insulation scheme for the UK. I’d also change how we measure success. Move towards happiness indexes over GDP, introduce taxes on certain high-emitting activities e.g. private jets, and allow for greater levels of climate-specific borrowing and dual interest rates.
“‘How we make money’ is both the problem and the solution”
Are the COPs actually doing anything?
Don’t expect too much from them I say. COPs only set the (slowest moving) direction of travel for the world. It’s the unanimous nature of them. Not all UN processes require unanimity, and so it’s easier to achieve progress on other topics, and I see there is beginning to be a push to see if its possible to change COPs so maybe move to a process where 75% have to agree for a motion to be passed. Regardless the real change needs to come from sectors and sectoral agreements – I touch on this in the show.
If audiences were to only take one thing away after seeing Solastalgia, what would you want it to be?
That ‘how we make money’ is both the problem and the solution.
How do you approach such a typically serious topic (for example, climate change) and turn it into something that people can laugh about?
It’s a hard thing to do and I struggled for a long time. It requires splitting my personality somewhat. You need to make it accessible for people and more human, so putting personal stories helps or shared observations about
How did you start doing comedy?
The same way everyone else does. Some sort of childhood incident manifesting itself as needing the love of strangers. But that’s not enough on its own. It was combined with being dumped and thus needing a way to impress the opposite sex. Then I became addicted to the high of trying new jokes and getting laughs. But I guess the answer is also – I took an evening course.
Why have you decided to make the shift from climate comedy to climate storytelling?
I wanted to make a show this time that allowed parts of the show to be heavier or more serious if I wanted to, whilst still being entertaining but not necessarily always funny. I basically wanted to push myself out my comfort zone and see if I could make something different and more challenging. There are various concepts I haven’t tackled in the past because they require quite a lot of explanation, and that tends to be terrible for jokes. But I think we need to talk about them so if they have a purpose within a story then that allows me the scope to discuss in detail.
A few years ago, there was an AI professor who programmed an AI to heckle her whilst she did stand-up based on audience reactions. I probably wouldn’t go as far as to call this a trend, but why do you think academics turn to comedy in order to talk about or just raise awareness for their areas of interest?
I think it is good for academics to learn comedy as a way to communicate their subject better. You need to see the topic through the eyes of a lay-person and that really forces you to think outside the box. But I did comedy for about eight years before I talked about my subject and I’m glad I waited that long so I was actually good enough to do it properly.
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo credit: Jessica McDermott
Pepper & Salt 
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