NEW YORK -- Dressed in a sequin-laced, sleeveless top and puffy pink skirt, drag queen Pattie Gonia strides around the stage in white high-heeled boots that come up to the knees, telling the crowd that nature must be a woman.“She is trying to kill us in the most passive-aggressive way possible,” joked Gonia, who has a neatly trimmed mustache, long black eyelashes and a wig of long and flowing red hair.“It’s not some sort of immediate fire or flood or a cool explosion.
She’s just like, ‘What? I raised the temperature a little.’”“Are you uncomfortable?” Gonia asked, followed by the punchline, "Maybe I wouldn’t have (raised the temperature) if you had taken out the recycling like I asked!Just as the crowd begins laughing, a large screen over the stage flashes a picture of a 2011 tweet from singer Britney Spears asking, “Does anyone think global warming is a good thing?" As Gonia points to the screen, she begins lip-syncing the Spears song, “Toxic.”In its second year at New York Climate Week, “Save Her! Environmental Drag Show” has become a popular attraction during the event that includes hundreds of panels, activities and meetings with scientists, activists, executives from green energy companies, politicians and many others.The show aims to inspire the audience to talk about climate change, caused by the burning of fuels like gasoline and coal, while making people laugh.The show combines disparate things to create absurdities, such as changing the lyrics of Katy Perry's “Fireworks” song to, “Baby, you are a plastic bag,” while Gonia pulls plastic bags from her breasts.
While drag queens and drag kings enact scenes that could be interpreted as metaphors for harming or preserving the Earth, like crashing a car or riding a bike, somber statistics flash on the screen, like 20 large corporations are responsible for a large portion of all the greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere and heating the planet.There are also...