Part 3 of the Climate Crisis Songs Series: ‘That Funny Feeling’

Welcome to part three of my climate crisis song series, where we will dissect the song, ‘That Funny Feeling’ by Bo Burnham. The verses in this song and their relation to the climate emergency are pretty jarring and in your face while being hauntingly poetic.

For this song, we will talk about rising ocean levels, humanity running out of time, and the theme of existentialism and desensitization. Because this song means more to me emotionally than the previous two parts, the later verses I discuss focus on that emotional aspect rather than climate data, which is covered at the beginning of this part’s breakdown.

Remember in Part One when I said, “Let’s dive right into this wave of the climate crisis that is the ocean at our door. (You’ll understand that reference by the end of the series!)”? This song is where you’ll understand that. That said, here is the second-to-last piece of this series!

(Also, apologies, I said in part one that that article would be the longest, and I was wrong about that.)

Some Context About the Album That ‘That Funny Feeling’ Is From

Before we dive in, I wanted to take a moment to add context for the final two songs in the series, as they weren’t just songs; they were performances. (If you already know all this, you’re welcome to skip to the breakdown if you like; I will discuss the special/album in this section.)

This next song, and the last one for that matter, are two of my most favorite songs ever since I first watched Bo Burnham’s Netflix special, ‘Inside,’ in the summer of 2021.

If you haven’t seen or heard about the special, it’s comedian Bo Burnham locking himself in a room during quarantine and the first year of the pandemic, making a Netflix special entirely on his own. He wrote, directed, recorded, and edited it, among other tasks like lighting and sound. 

Watching the special, I felt seen and understood about so many of the issues I’d thought about or worried about recently, especially the climate crisis. There isn’t even mention of the word COVID, the pandemic, or climate change. Yet, you notice the themes and know exactly what’s meant when Burnham speaks or sings about those topics, as you will see below. And the words elicit such strong emotions for me on several levels.

I could talk for hours about this “comedy” special (and have). I listened to the album repeatedly for about six months after first watching it. I’d never been so moved by an album to such a degree before. So I’ll say this for now: this special and overall album was the rawest and most honest, cathartic piece of pandemic art I’ve seen. 

But I digress. Let’s begin our look at ‘That Funny Feeling.’

‘That Funny Feeling’ – Bo Burnham, ‘Inside’ (2021)

In the video for the song (above), you’ll see that the setup shows Burnham looking like he’s singing a song at a campfire. And while it starts like a sort of parody of those guys with guitars pretending to be humble about playing but actually acting kind of pretentious about it, it quickly shifts from light-hearted to the more serious themes of the song. Which ultimately becomes a commentary on how things of different magnitude are put on an even playing field as one scrolls through social media. To illustrate this concept, I will include some additional lyrics below, paired with the ones I will discuss.

Two verses containing lyrics relating to the climate emergency, as well as the chorus and the outro, describe the way I and many others have felt these past few years watching all the extreme weather catastrophes and feeling the shift of the climate here at home: 

(Lyrics from Genius Lyrics)

“Female Colonel Sanders, easy answers, civil war,
The whole world at your fingеrtips, the ocean at your door;
The livе-action Lion King, the Pepsi Halftime Show
Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go.”

…

“Total disassociation, fully out your mind,
Googling “derealization,” hating what you find;
That unapparent summer air in early fall,
The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all.”

…

“There it is again;
That funny feeling, that funny feeling.”

…

“Hey, what can you say? We were overdue,
But it’ll be over soon; you wait.”

“The whole world at your fingеrtips, the ocean at your door.”

This lyric is pretty self-explanatory, being a reference to ocean levels rising. And in trying to keep this part short, I’ll mention two things: the trajectory we’re on and what we’re already seeing. 

The Trajectory

According to a 2020 NASA-led study, greenhouse gas emissions could add 15 inches to global sea level rise by 2100 – not including the amount already set in motion by Earth’s warming climate. To learn more about the highlights of this study, check out this interactive report. 

That report states that “ice sheets alone contributed around 1.2 millimeters per year to sea level rise between 2002 and 2017,” which comes to 3/4 of an inch over the past 15 years. And while less than an inch doesn’t seem like much, it’s staggering when you consider the volume of ice that equates to. Per the report, “Since 2006, an average of 318 gigatons of ice per year has melted from Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets.”

For perspective, one gigaton of ice would cover Central Park in New York 1,000 feet high. And on top of that, glaciers contribute “about as much to sea level rise as the meltwater from massive ice sheets contributes.” So stack two gigatons of ice in central park, and it’d be 2,000 feet in the air or 0.38 miles.

If we want to visualize this further, if ice sheets and glaciers contribute an estimated 636 gigatons of ice melting per year, that’s 636,000 feet of ice a year, or 120 miles (193 km). Stacked on each other, this ice tower would reach well past our planet’s first three atmospheric levels, high above the clouds, in between where sounding rockets fly, auroras occur, and satellites orbit. So in one year, our oceans rise with enough water to almost reach space. And we’ve lost that much every year since 2006. 

Already Present Impacts

If you’ve followed any weather or climate news over the past few years, I trust you’ve seen the impacts of “just” 0.7 inches of water levels rising between 2002 and 2017. 

From beachfront property getting flooded daily in high tide to increasingly catastrophic hurricanes and longer hurricane seasons, the rising (and warming) sea levels are already impacting people. But, of course, that’s just from how much it’s risen so far; imagine what more than a foot of sea level rise will do.

Most, if not all, communities living in coastal regions worldwide will be displaced by the end of the century. And the impacts will vary significantly because the sea level rise is not even across the ocean due to varying depth and elevation factors. (Check out this Sea Level Rise Viewer from NOAA.)

So, the ocean is very much at our door. Yet we keep our heads down, even with the “whole world at [our] fingertips,” showing us what’s happening across our planet. We have the technology in our hands and means to act, and instead, it’s just used to distract. And we seem to watch in horror as more waves of the ocean approach or pretend it isn’t about to drown humanity.

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“Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go.”

“Twenty-thousand years of this“

The first half of this lyric is a bit more tricky and requires some background knowledge of what Burnham might mean here. The general theory among fans who’ve discussed the meaning likely relates to when humanity began moving from a Paleolithic society to a Neolithic one, as we started practicing agriculture and domesticating animals roughly 20,000 years ago.

To put it differently, we’ve been at this for about 20 millennia, and in that relatively short time, we’ve really fucked up the planet, each other, and everything around us. And before I explain the “seven more to go” line, I want to add some perspective to what I mean by a short period of time.

We know Earth is 4.6 billion years old, but you might not know how long research suggests humans have been around.

According to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), the oldest hominins (species regarded as human, directly ancestral to humans, or very closely related to humans) have been around as early as seven million B.C.E.

“The earliest species of the Homo genus appeared around 2 million to 1.5 million B.C.E. Current evidence supports modern Homo sapiens appearing around 190,000 B.C.E.” (PRB).

So not even counting the blip of time that human species have existed during Earth’s lifespan, we’ve done enough damage in the past couple hundred years to initiate a whole new mass extinction event (which is further along than we thought). This is the sixth mass extinction event to happen on Earth, only this time, it threatens our lives and the lives of all the other species we share the planet with. And we’re running out of time to act.

“Seven more to go.”

This brings me to the “seven more to go” lyric, likely referencing the Climate Clock, launched in September 2020. According to the clock’s website,

The Climate Clock melds art, science, technology, and grassroots organizing to get the world to #ActInTime.

The project is centered on a simple tool: a clock that counts down the critical time window to reach zero emissions (our “Deadline”), while tracking our progress on key solution pathways (“Lifelines”).

By showing us what we need to do by when, the Clock frames our critical mission — a rapid and just transition to a safe climate future — and puts it at the very forefront of our attention.

Climate Clock

When this song was recorded (estimated early 2021), the clock was ticking down from seven years remaining for us to act in time. Even today, the website states, “The next ~7 years is humanity’s best window to enact bold, transformational changes in our global economy to avoid raising the global temperature above 1.5ºC, a point of no return that science tells us is likely to make the worst climate impacts inevitable.”

Looking at the clock today, in May 2023, we have little more than six years. Now, this clock changes depending on the action taken around the world. As more countries take the initiative against the climate emergency and enact bold changes, we can slow the clock, opening our window of opportunity just a bit. But what we do with the window also affects the clocks. If the amount of regression outweighs progression, and we continue to release more emissions and get complacent, we will heat the planet faster. We will run out of time even sooner.

A Final Warning

Some climate scientists fear we’ve underestimated just how badly we’ve impacted things and thus overestimated our time window; it’s now or never.

As reported by the Guardian, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report (AR6) back in March of this year.

“The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late,” the Guardian reported. “The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”

Because the next assessment is due in 2030, and the clock is expected to run out before then, this is quite literally a “final warning” on the climate emergency. Will we heed that warning and enact bold change to save our planet and our lives? Or will we continue business as usual until it’s too late to turn back?

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“That unapparent summer air in early fall,” 

I don’t need to go into detail again about how winters are disappearing here in the Western U.S. Much as I explained under the “Westcoast winter” part of ‘Split,’ the past three years in Vegas saw abnormally high temperatures in November. 

So the first time I heard the lyric “that unapparent summer air in early fall,” my stomach dropped, my heart ached, and tears filled my eyes. And with the verse immediately following, that response was instantly more pronounced. 

“The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all.”

I’ve lost track of how frequently I’ve sat outside feeling the abnormal weather or sitting on my phone doom-scrolling the news about the latest climate catastrophes and just feel… somber.

Back in early 2020, during the Australian bushfires, an estimated three billion animals perished or were displaced. It broke me emotionally and mentally. I remember I felt so much grief and pain about it; it physically hurt me. I spent a day lying on the ground in the backyard with my dog and leaving my phone inside because I needed to stop hearing and seeing news about it.

It’s those moments when the world feels bleak, reality sets in, and existentialism creeps up and sits with you. And it’s those moments where you feel the grief of losing life as we know it here on Earth, where you have no choice but to mourn for the loss we’ve already witnessed and the loss that’s yet to come.

Humanity might not die out because of climate change (though it will undoubtedly take many people’s lives), but our way of life and possibly all the advancements we’ve made will be lost. 

And sure, we might adapt. But with how much time we’ve wasted and the limits we’ve already passed crossing five of the nine planetary boundaries, we’re set to lose a lot regarding biodiversity, social progress, and so much more. 

So when I heard the words, “The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all,” it hit me like a train. It’s not that I’m feeling like the world is ending (though that’s a difficult feeling to shake regardless); it’s that life will continually get exponentially worse over the next few years and decades. That the feeling of our nostalgic, bright, and hopeful youth is truly a thing of the past, and realizing that it’s probably downhill from here for humanity.

Our way of life is rapidly ending on several levels: environmentally, socially, economically, and politically. And we’re just quietly watching it continue to deteriorate in real time.

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“There it is again; That funny feeling, That funny feeling.”

By the time I’d heard this song, I’d since become so burned out by climate crisis news that my emotional response to that news had increasingly become less responsive. Not to say that I’ve become entirely apathetic to it all, I absolutely have not, but I feel numb or empty now most of the time. And I am aware of this.

I consciously acknowledge when I lack emotion about things, and I then have to intentionally makes myself care and feel motivated to do something, say something, or write something; anything but ignore it or give up.

Before, the passion came naturally to me. Now, it takes effort and energy to do what I used to do effortlessly.

What is “that funny feeling” exactly?

When I see or hear about extreme weather events around the world or feel it here at home, I get a weird feeling. It’s the feeling I felt while I watched fires ravage Australia and saw Vegas blanketed in smoke from the California fires; or when the polar vortex hit Texas, and people literally froze to death (which I wrote about in 2021).

It’s like a dull heaviness in the pit of my stomach or deep in my chest, like a faint cry for… I don’t even know… Fear? Action? Something. Anything.

I suppose I could put that in better words with my understanding of mental health and my own brain. In that case, I’d guess it’s my brain’s defense mechanism against the subconscious fight, flight, or freeze response I experience when I see news like climate catastrophes or mass shootings. Maybe you know the feeling.

It’s like a buffer against an oncoming anxiety attack or overwhelming emotion. It doesn’t save you entirely from the damage caused by an unrelenting news cycle in a world where society’s driving itself toward a cliff, but like dark humor, it might preserve a bit of your sanity. You know that what you’re observing should elicit an emotional response, but instead, you sit there and say, “Of course, that happened,” or “Of course, that happened, again.”

That’s why this song was so incredibly cathartic to hear, especially when the lyrics after “seven more to go” are “Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul; A gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall.“

Desensitized to our Demise

As I write this, the word “desensitized” popped into my mind, and I realized it is what probably best explains what “that funny feeling” really is. We’ve been so completely disconnected from each other and everything happening around us that we’ve become emotionally shut down to varying degrees. And that “funny feeling” is when we acknowledge something is terrible but say, “Oh, I should feel something about this, but I’m numb to it.”

It’s that feeling deep inside us that, in part, screams, “Please give a shit about what you’re seeing,” “Don’t turn away from this,” and “Don’t let this make us lose our humanity or give up hope.” It’s our empathy clinging to life while our brains disassociate us from all the bad news to protect our sanity.

Which is the other part of that “funny feeling“: the part of us that goes, “Oh, fuck, the world feels like it’s ending. The sky is falling, and people are trying to avoid it with paper umbrellas on their way to work.” And if that thought doesn’t give a person “that funny feeling,” I don’t know what will.

That “Oh, fuck” feeling is how I felt after climate activist Wynn Alan Bruce self-immolated in front of the Supreme Court on Earth Day in 2022 to protest the climate emergency, and the news barely covered his death. People I talk to today still don’t know about it, which prompted me to make my ‘Don’t Go Unnoticed‘ sticker.

Watching everyone around you ignore what feels obvious and imminent can slowly chip away at your spirit. It’s hard to fight that voice inside that says, “If no one else cares, why should I?,” “Nothing matters; we’re out of time,” or “Nothing is going to change; we’re fighting a losing battle.”

Fighting this back-and-forth of empathy versus apathy is a daily battle. But giving in is easy. And the most important things in life are the opposite of easy. So we must keep pushing forward, feeling that funny feeling, even while we’re desensitized.

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The Outro of ‘That Funny Feeling’

When I heard this song all the way through, especially after the previous verses, and connected the overlaying point of the song (this emotion Burnham is explaining), it struck me deeply and emotionally. It hit the center of how I’d felt for a long time and made me feel the pain and grief I’d felt before and had bottled up for a long time. It poured out of me as tears streamed down my face, my stomach ached, and my heart raced.

And you know what? I am grateful for that experience. It was painful and unexpected. But it also felt therapeutic; like I’d sat through an intense and challenging therapy session. The entire song exudes the pure existentialism I’ve felt over the years as the climate emergency and other crises we face worsen.

And these final lyrics I am leaving you with perfectly wrapped up all the emotions that this roller coaster of a song made me feel, and it left me with a weird sense of peace that I didn’t expect.

“Hey, what can you say? We were overdue, But it’ll be over soon; you wait.”

Here in the song’s outro, where Burnham sings, “Hey, what can you say? We were overdue, But it’ll be over soon, You wait. (Ba-da-da, ba-da-da, ba-da-da-da-da-da-da),” it made me feel relieved in a way. It’s hard to explain precisely, as this verse can be interpreted in several ways.

“Hey, what can you say?” for me is a callback to the aspect of that “funny feeling” that makes me almost shrug and say, “What can I do about it?”

“We were overdue,” I feel, refers to how humanity is due for a shakeup, whether it’s the bold change we need or some apocalyptic situation. Or, to put it plainly, we’re overdue for the “find out” part of “fucking around.”

“But it’ll be over soon; you wait,” feels like a calm acceptance and a callback to the “seven more [years] to go” line, which, as I said, is a warning that our way of life will be over soon, especially if we keep waiting to act. So, to spin it in a more positive light, I try to treat this instead like a checkpoint to look forward to.

It makes me tell myself, “I can make it to 2028-2030 before I ever consider giving up hope and giving in to despair.” Which I know sounds grim (it is grim). I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t exhaust my soul to wake up every day in such a dystopian nightmare. But I remind myself that I can’t give up on hope. Not yet. No matter how often I get “that funny feeling.”

Don’t Despair; There’s Still Time to Care

This concept of not giving up helped inspire me to finish making my ‘Don’t Despair finally! There’s Still Time to Care!’ sticker design that I released in 2021. (If you look closely at that design, there’s a reference to this song.) We still have time to act, but we have to act now.

That said, there isn’t a local organization here in the desert addressing sea level rise. So, in addition to reminding you to check out initiatives like All-In Clark County and organizations like Nevada Plants to help address the impacts of climate change, I’m shamelessly self-plugging my sticker above.

As a Sticker for Solidarity, I donate to a related cause. And for this sticker, I plant a tree through One Tree Planted for each sale!

A Peek at the Last of the Climate Crisis Songs

In the last part of this series, we’ll examine the second song from the ‘Inside’ album I want to discuss: ‘All Eye’s On Me.’

(Updated) Part Four is now available. In it, I discuss the theme of existentialism a little more before wrapping up the series!

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