Dead funny? The ideological use of humour and comedy in Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries 2015 and 2017

The threat of environmental devastation, and the speed with which humanity is damaging the planet, are widely viewed as serious concerns in the twenty-first century. Yet the gravity which accompanies interpretations of such issues can also serve as ‘a fruitful starting point for humor’ born of ‘incongruence[s] between the serious and the non-serious’ (Lyyktimäki 2015, p. 178). In Saci Lloyd’s young adult novels The Carbon Diaries 2015 and The Carbon Diaries 2017, humour and comedy contribute to each text’s attempts to encourage implied young adult readers to engage critically with the threat of ecological devastation, even though the questions of how to reduce the likelihood of ecological disaster most effectively on a broad scale, and how best to bring about responsible use of the environment, are problems which are still a long way from being answered.