Fight Climate Change: Talk About It

“Pastor, I wanted to say something to you after that sermon,” he began, placing his hand on my shoulder as if to stop me from running.

The demographics of my location and the people around me were stereotypical of climate change deniers, so I braced myself for some negative feedback. I had been invited to this man’s church to talk about Christian responsibility toward the environment, and I had broken the rule that I once gave myself and my readers: I had said the words “climate change” in my sermon.

This elderly gentleman with a white beard and cane looked me right in the eye and said:

“Everything you said is true. Climate change is going to kill us all if we don’t do something about it. I’m a retired oceanographer, and I’ve seen it getting worse year after year.”

The Most Important Thing?

It is not an answer you might expect from a climate scientist. Yet Dr. Katherine Hayhoe– professor, climate scientist, and chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy- has repeatedly said that the most important thing we can do to fight climate change is to talk about it.

I’m not one to disagree with Dr. Hayhoe; most of this post draws heavily from her work. I say that the first thing we should do to fight climate change is to educate ourselves on the topic. This is so we can do the second thing, which is talk about it.

Why Talk About It?

I do not really listen to pop music. Never have. I’m far more of a country, rock and oldies kind of guy. But I know a lot of pop songs from the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s, even though I never bought those albums or tuned my radio to those stations.

I know them because when I was younger, I heard them everywhere. You simply could not get away from them.

That’s why we need to talk about climate change. It is a terrifying reality, unfathomable in scope, so our natural inclination when confronted by climate change is to ignore it.

If we ignore it, we can’t fix it.
If we don’t stop talking about it, we can’t ignore it. Like a catchy pop song, talk of climate change needs to be everywhere.

If we ignore it, we can’t fix it.

If we don’t stop talking about it, we can’t ignore it. Like a catchy pop song, talk of climate change needs to be everywhere.

But What If…

Humans have an innate survival instinct to fit in and be accepted. This goes back to our tribal days, when being ejected from the community was likely a death sentence. We want to be accepted, we fear being rejected.

Talking about climate change will make some people reject us. There are very likely people in your church, neighborhood, workplace, friend group, even in your family who will see your position on climate change as a moral failing and will attempt to ostracize you, ridicule you, dismiss you, and throw you out.

But there might not be as many as you think.

You also never know where an ally might come from. In the story I opened with, I expected hostility from this man because I instantly judged him based on his appearance and our location. Instead, I found a champion.

Yes, talking about climate change is hard.

But it’s not always as hard as you expect it to be.

There will always be reasons to keep your mouth shut. There are many more reasons to open it and speak.

There will always be reasons to keep your mouth shut. There are many more reasons to open it and speak.

How To Start

If you have educated yourself on climate change, you should be able to talk about climate change with everyone.

But you can’t say the same thing to everyone.

Communication does not occur in a vacuum. Much depends on context, and context is often relationship. Even between an author and a reader who have never met, there is relationship.

When talking about climate change, focus on relationship. What is your relationship to climate change? Or, to put it another way, why are you concerned about climate change?

Be as personal as you are comfortable being here. An engineer I’ve often found myself presenting alongside begins and ends every presentation with pictures of his grandchildren, because they are the reason he is so concerned about climate change.

But also, find what matters to the person you’re speaking with. Where do their concerns lie? A different colleague of mine, who is an expert on heat trends, found herself discussing high school football and little league baseball when presenting to a group of county commissioners, because that was what interested them.

The best place to stand for any conversation, particularly a potentially divisive one, is on common ground. Find that common ground, and you’ve found a friend.

Save the Science

Science is immensely important. We need more of it.

It is also, in many cases and to many people, immensely boring and immensely overwhelming.

When beginning to talk about climate change, don’t bring up the science. Don’t parade around the data. Don’t quote the studies.

All of that will come later, and you’ll have an opportunity to share that science later, because you’re going to start with the personal. Once that relationship is firmly established, then you bring out the science (even if it’s in the same conversation).

Don’t Argue

Years ago, before I went into the ministry, I read an article that explained how humans argue. The gist is this: we argue to win. Winning is our top priority. Being right is not as important as winning.

This is why someone can be presented with overwhelming evidence that they’re wrong, and still continue to argue.

When it comes to talking about climate change, this is a huge waste of your time.

If you begin talking about climate change and someone else begins to argue, stop. It is no longer a relationship of communication. It is a relationship of war.

And Then What?

To fight climate change, we must talk about climate change.

To talk about climate change with people, we must talk about it as people. We must share our human concerns and interests, and make space for the other person to share theirs.

And then, once we’ve talked about climate change, we must activate.

A Final Note

One thousand or so words on a blog post are hardly enough to cover this topic. Please do yourself and this planet a favor: read Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by Katherine Hayhoe. Watch her videos. Learn to communicate across these divides. More than just the climate is depending on us developing that skill.