.jpeg?q=50&fit=contain&w=1140&h=&dpr=1.5)
On Episode 21 of Season 9 of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver did not hold back in taking jabs at people and companies whose recent actions warrant, at the very least, some verbal reprisal. Some of the “victims” included Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Alaskan Senate Republican candidate Kelly Tshibaka, late Republican Congressman Don Young, Sarah “[expletive]” Palin, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, Last Week Tonight’s own network’s streaming services HBO Max.
Two weeks prior to this episode, Oliver had not gone easy on parent Warner Bros for the decision to not release Batgirl anywhere. And now, on the latest episode, while discussing the Alaskan politician, Palin, who is a candidate for the state’s house seat, Oliver quoted an article in 'The New Yorker' titled Sarah Palin’s Last Frontier, written by Antonia Hitchens: “Sarah knows how to work a crowd…but it’s Sarah, Inc.” This quote led Oliver to segue into his next quip: “[Sarah, Inc.] honestly sounds like the title of a sitcom starring Kat Dennings that has already quietly disappeared from HBO Max” he then used the opportunity to twist the streamer’s slogan to “HBO Max, It’s not TV. It’s a series of tax write-offs to appease Wall Street.” This refers to the series of recent changes the streamer has made as they make efforts to combine their catalogs with Discovery+.
As has been widely reported, HBO Max has made sweeping and startling changes across the board, some of which include the cancellation of Batgirl, purging over 200 episodes of Sesame Street, and the removal of over 30 titles from the platform.
.jpeg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)
After 60 whole seconds of a compilation of Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson “being right about stuff”, Oliver introduced the main topic of the episode by comparing Oscar Isaac to Planet Earth, as in they are both progressively “getting alarmingly hotter every year”. This Sunday’s show focused specifically on some corporations’ attempts to ostensibly reach a net-zero emissions target. One very common tactic corporations take to become “carbon-neutral” is to “offset any remaining carbon.” But of course, if Oliver is bringing this subject up on a Last Week Tonight episode, it naturally means he’s going to expose the unseen reality behind it.
Instead of reducing emissions, the majority of corporations are relying on offsets. “If the idea that you can simply invest a little money and make your carbon footprint disappear sounds too good to be true that’s because it absolutely is.” In many cases, this is used as a strategy for companies to appear to consumers as more concerned with environmental impact than they actually are. In this episode, after slamming “business daddy” HBO, Oliver tells viewers exactly how offsets are “bulls***”. Watch the clip below to learn more: