Climate change-themed Drag on Ice event cancelled; global warming blamed

Facebook / The Bearded Ladies

Philadelphia drag performance, purported to relay the struggles of humankind for survival against a corporate greed-fueled oil and gas industry, could not compete with "unseasonably" warm weather that turned the rink to slush.

In an interview with CBC, Canada's heavily subsidized state broadcaster which exists under a mandate to feature Canadian content and stories, John Jarboe — artistic director of Bearded Ladies Cabaret, blamed fossil fuels for the cancellation:

So we had to cancel the opening night of our climate change-themed drag ice show [on Feb. 17] because of climate change.

"The premise is if we can get drag queens out of heels and into skates, maybe we could actually do something about the climate crisis as opposed to just talk about it," said Devan, who plays Oil.

The show features Miss Homo Sapiens and a "girl gang" of Coal, Natural Gas and Oil as energy sources for Sapiens to perform. However, eventually, Glacier takes to the ice and is disrobed by the fossil-fuel performers.

Another character, Nuclear Power, skates to Britney Spears's "Toxic."

Once again, I find myself cheering for climate changehttps://t.co/MjxiqT78kh

— Sheila Gunn Reid (@SheilaGunnReid) February 27, 2023

"Drag and queer performance is an act of survival and the climate issue is the issue of survival, so I think they're actually quite aligned," Jarboe told CBC's What On Earth's Laura Lynch.

The CBC article admits that Philly's usually warm weather was not seen in nearly a century, long before the advent of comfortable SUV commuting.

Philadelphia faced its warmest January in 91 years — with average temperatures about 10 F above normal daytime highs — and saw only trace amounts of snow on the last day of the month, according to the National Weather Service.

The unseasonably warm temperatures have continued into February, with lots of sun, turning the rink partially into slush and making it dangerous to skate.

If only there were such a thing as indoor, artificially-cooled-ice surfaces made possible by reliable fossil fuel energy; some kind of enclosed arena, perhaps, where the Flyers lost to the Canadiens on Friday night.