I had ‘The Talk’ With My Family
I want to share something personal today, just because I was able to do something that I had been meaning to do for a long time but could never find the right moment to do: have a climate talk with my own wife and daughter.
Finding The Perfect Moment
I completely understand the feelings that many describe when they talk about the anxiety of trying to bring up climate change in conversation with friends or family, much less strangers. It’s something that you know will be controversial and opinions can vary, it’s a hot topic so emotions will run high, and bringing it up is going to make you a “downer.” It feels scary to bring up for so many reasons. If you get so far as what is causing climate change, it almost inevitably will lead to connecting with carbon emissions that we all have: the conversion will most likely imply that they’re living “wrong” and may make them feel accused.
If this is a conversation you want to have, it’s hard to find the right time to bring it up. Dinner? “No…I don’t want to ruin a nice dinner with a downer talk.” After work? “Nah…Everyone’s tired and doesn’t want to have deep discussions.” In the end, there is no “perfect moment” and if you wait for the perfect moment to bring up climate change, chances are you’ll never bring it up at all. You’ll always find an excuse.
I had to think about it the opposite way around: everything connects to climate, so any time is a good time to bring it up, and then try to make it as non-judgmental of a conversation as possible. Someone talks about how rainy it is? Guess what? Climate affects weather. Food? Did you know the places we’re growing food are all going to have to change soon? Traffic? Man…Just think of how much fossil fuel we’re burning in just that traffic jam alone.
The perfect time for a climate chat is any time.
In my case, I don’t even remember exactly what it was that came up in conversation to have me bring up climate change, but it was a weekday and already past 10pm. I had many reasons to NOT have the conversation right then, but in the moment I just decided “I’m going to make the climate connection and we’re going to have this talk.”
The Talk: My Strategy
I won’t say the talk went stupendously and that I felt amazing for having had a talk where everyone decided they wanted to act on climate and become a force for change in the world of climate activism, because that wasn’t how it went. It actually was really challenging and somewhat stressful, and I definitely wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was.
My basic strategy was:
- Bring up climate change
- Ask them how they feel about it (a very open question that they can take in whatever direction they choose)
- Try really hard to listen more than I speak (I tried to keep an 80%/20% ratio in mind).
#3 was probably the best thing I did: I let them talk and tried not to negate or be judgmental of anything they said, instead just be supportive and try to empathize. Try to follow one of my favorite life-rules: “Listen, don’t wait to talk.”
How It Went
As I mentioned before, it wasn’t completely without stress or conflict, there was definitely some tension and irritation at certain parts of the conversation, but there was also openness. My wife brought up worries about climate change forcing us to change our daily lives, and my daughter mostly had questions about how we know it’s actually happening, and whether we can really do anything about it. Although there are parts of it that I probably could’ve gently guided the conversation a little more skillfully so that the conversation stayed a little more focused rather than jump from topic to topic, I still took it as a win for them to sit down and be open about how they feel regarding climate change.
The part that felt best was when my daughter asked if we could continue to discuss it more the next day, and my wife continued to discuss it for the rest of the evening after my daughter had gone to bed. The next day, my daughter came and brought it up to me, and she had actually gone on the internet and went down a few climate denialism rabbit holes and was burning with questions about why the climate denialists are wrong: not necessarily a discussion I wanted to have, but being able to keep the climate channel open was a win. I had to temper my own feelings well here: it was probably my first time dealing with outright climate denialism and it was coming from my own daughter. In the end, she did seem to understand what I was saying and said she does want to make changes to her life to help stop climate change.
Do I want to do this again? Absolutely.
In future, I think I need to try to make this a regular thing….Normalize climate discussions in my life. The hardest part is starting the talk. Once I’m comfortable with that, I think I would actually enjoy having these discussions more: learning to deal with climate denialism, learning to empathize and find ways to connect with people no matter who they are or where they’re from, or learn to help others recognize the dangers and help them to want to change…especially the ones that are the most trying: climate denialists, conservatives, and science-non-believers. By trying to understand and empathize with them and discuss the gravity of climate change. Influence through connection, rather than “proving they’re wrong” or “crushing them with indisputable facts of science.”
If there’s one thing I need to improve on during the discussion itself, is to understand my own reasons for having the discussion. What am I trying to achieve by having the conversation? I’m not sure I have the answer yet, and that’s a problem.
So if anyone out there is interested in having a climate discussion, get in touch. I’d love to have one. It would mean more connection, and a chance to grow for me. A chance to help myself and others Live ECO.
Thanks for reading!
2 thoughts on “I had ‘The Talk’ With My Family”
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Thank you for a personal, open, and moving post.
Conversations with family sometimes are the easiest, like when they see you acting, join, enjoy the more sustainable activity, and want to learn more. Sometimes the hardest, like when they bring it up, then react defensively no matter what you say, and amplify their emotion, blame you, and so on but they’re family so you can’t get away.
I’m curious about two things: given your passion and abundant work on climate, how did they not pick this stuff up about you already? Did you also talk about other environmental problems like plastic, PFAS, deforestation, extinctions, etc and what ties them all together: human behavior?
It was certainly a new kind of challenge for me. I really do want to have this conversation more, with more people, but it’s such a challenge to bring up, especially since politics and blame often come into it.
They definitely pick up on it already, and it comes up from time to time. Sometimes they feel like they are being judged by me. Any time my wife asks if I want to buy something (like a watermelon wrapped in plastic) at the supermarket and I say “I don’t need it, you can buy it if you want it!” and my wife doesn’t understand why, my daughter will often hit the nail on the head. She’ll pick up on it and say “He doesn’t want to buy that because it’s wrapped in plastic but you could just buy the one without the plastic.” Haha
In this conversation, those other topics you mentioned didn’t come up, but I have talked about plastic, extinction, and human behavior with them before. Hopefully I’ve opened a door to this kind of conversation now and maybe we can have them more often. I’m actually thinking about having a deep one at some point where I take some time to just explain my whole point of view. It’s kind of a dark conversation, but because we don’t usually get that deep into it, I think they’re missing how deep I think the problems are (they ARE deep, but I think that it’s meaningful to me will be more important to them than how deep the problem actually is).
Thank you for commenting! And thank you for thanking me for the post! Sometimes there’s a little voice in my head that says “Who’s going to really care what you think or what happened to you?” So to see that it’s appreciated makes me feel more confident to share.