“Murderer!” The old man–probably in his 80s–yelled with such force that spit flecked his chin. He pointed an arthritis-gnarled finger at me. “You people are murderers!”
“Sir,” I said, “I’m not ‘you people.’ I’m a human being.”
The man’s anger dissolved, and he burst into tears. “Murderers,” he whispered through sobs.
“I think the captain needs to speak with you, Ranger Stephanie.” The woman preparing lunch behind the bar stepped forward and ushered me into the nearest hallway.
“The captain doesn’t really need you,” she whispered, “I just wanted to get you out of that conversation.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. I tried to think of where on the not overly large tour vessel I could hide while the old man calmed down.
“What were you talking about, anyway?”
“Climate change.”
I have experienced many scenarios similar to the one above, although not all of them resulted in my being labeled a murderer. (Don’t ask me to parse the old man’s logic on that one–I don’t think he had any. Suffice it to say I was not advocating for the mass slaughter of humans to reduce our species’ impact on the planet’s climate.)
In my US national park career I spoke often about human-induced climate change and the threat it poses to our national parks as well as all life on this planet. I worked at two national parks with “glacier” in their names–Glacier and Glacier Bay. At these parks I had daily conversations about climate change.
In Glacier Bay National Park, I stood on the decks of cruise ships and tour boats and watched glaciers melt. Every day I spoke with folks who denied that climate change was happening, who watched mountains of ice, some the height of a fifteen-story building or larger, crack and slide off the face of a glacier and then turned to me and asked, “Do you believe any of this climate change nonsense?”
“Yes,” I would respond. “I do.”
Sometimes the unbeliever got angry, sometimes very angry, but not every climate change denier I encountered screamed that I was a murderer. Most often they told me something about the planet going through natural cycles.
“It’s not humans,” they insisted, a little desperately. Standing in front of an actual block of melting evidence, even the biggest non-believers couldn’t admit that the planet wasn’t warming, but they’d be damned if they admitted humans were at fault.
As I spoke to them and listened, I realized a few things, things which might be helpful to other people who speak about climate change for a living or just with people they know. My focus in this essay is climate change, but many of these tips can be helpful when discussing any controversial subject.
1. Find something you can agree on
When people told me, “The planet is always changing; it has natural cycles,” I did a little mental happy dance. Great–we’re starting off on common ground.
“Absolutely!” I would tell them. “You are correct; the Earth does have natural cycles of heating and cooling. The planet has been much warmer than it is now, and it has been much cooler.”
The person was inevitably startled that I agreed with them and somewhat mollified. They would nod along. This happens when you begin a difficult conversation not with an attack, but with an olive branch.
“The problem,” I would continue, “is that the Earth is warming much more quickly than it has in the past. The problem is that we humans haven’t lived on this planet when it’s been this hot and it’s only getting hotter.”
In its four and a half billion years of existence, planet Earth has been a ball of molten rock and a solid sphere of ice. Neither of those states would sustain human–or most other–life.
Yes, the planet has gone through shifts in its climate, some of them dramatic. I don’t think this particular brand of climate change denier understood that the planet’s “natural cycles” are actually scary in themselves. And now we are accelerating them.
Whether you think humans are altering the climate or not (we are), the climate rapidly changing is a terrifying prospect. I was happy to inform folks of this.
2. Don’t overwhelm people with scientific facts
Some people love stats. For example: more than 95% of the roughly one million glaciers in Alaska are retreating; that’s around 950,000 glaciers all melting at the same time. Tell me the climate isn’t changing after hearing that.
As a ranger, I had charts and graphs and heat maps to thrust in people’s faces. At Glacier National Park we had contrasting photos to melt people’s hearts and minds: “Here is an image of one of the 150 glaciers that sat in these mountains around 100 years ago, and here is the same spot today, devoid of glacier.”
A simple fact or bit of evidence can make people think. Just like a wall of collapsing ice in their face, visuals are difficult to deny.
At the edge of Jasper National Park in Canada, you can walk to the face of the Athabasca Glacier, the path taking you past markers labeling where the glacier used to be at what year, like a calendar of melting ice. You are literally counting its retreat with your footsteps.
This is the kind of active educational moment interpretive rangers like me salivate over (don’t judge me–you try spending years attempting to convince people that reality is reality and see if you don’t dream of something that would make your work easier.)
But not all of us have an actual glacier to show someone when they deny climate change. What we can all arm ourselves with when entering the climate conversation battlefield is facts.
Know your stuff; be confident.
Don’t, however, unload your entire master’s thesis on ocean acidification and its impact on coral reefs on the next person who tells you climate change is a load of nonsense.
People tend to tune out when overwhelmed, and for many people scientific jargon is overwhelming. I love a good science nugget, but I spent most of my career trying to make them digestible for the general public.
What I learned is to keep things simple. Not because most people are stupid, but because if someone disagrees with you, then their attention span for what you have to say is already going to be limited.
One statistic or fact, like the number of glaciers melting in Alaska that I mentioned above, is good enough. Gauge their reaction to what you’ve said; if they aren’t buying this one fact they won’t be interested in all the others you have to sell.
Information dumping does not win any arguments. If people are not hearing you, then maybe it’s time to try some hearing of your own.
3. Listen to their point of view
When you are disagreeing with someone, it is often helpful to actually know what the disagreement is about from their point of view, not just your own. Radical, I know, but hear me out. (Get it?)
I once spoke to a woman who was enraged about climate change, as many people are. Why, I wondered? Why do people get so furious when confronted with scientific facts? Why is this woman screaming at me?
So I listened to what she was saying. “I don’t want to be blamed!” she told me. She didn’t want to be told that her life, which she loved, was destroying the planet, thank you very much.
She enjoyed driving her gas-guzzling SUV and tossing out her single-use plastics and eating her fast food hamburgers that traveled thousands of miles to reach her plate. She liked her life, and she didn’t want to be made to feel guilty about it.
“Huh,” I said. “That makes sense.”
I’m not saying that she was correct. The lifestyle that she loved is unsustainable and destructive. But her feelings were valid.
It must suck to have people telling you that you are doing everything wrong, especially when most of us are just simply out here trying to survive. When life is difficult, when every day can be a minefield to navigate, you’re telling this person that their few pleasures–their comfy car, their greasy meal–are murdering polar bears?
That is a lot of guilt and shame to add to someone’s plate.
Guilting and shaming are never tools for motivation. They are ways to demotivate people into apathy or worse–spur them into downright retaliation. No one wants to feel blamed for the downfall of the entire planet; we are correct to not take on this level of responsibility.
When you listen to people, you may be able to determine what is motivating their resistance to climate change. Perhaps they feel that they or their choices are being attacked. You can not always change their minds; some people are determined to take everything that happens or that someone else says as a personal attack against them.
What you can do is listen. Acknowledge that they have been heard, which may gain you some points, may even lead to them opening up a little and listening to something you have to say.
Or maybe it won’t. The main thing is that you understand this person better, and, even if the conversation doesn’t end with their conversion to a climate change believer, at least you will know that they are not dumb or mean or a planet-hater or whatever myth we may build up about those who deny climate change.
Perhaps you will discover that they are in fact feeling attacked or frightened–I mean, change is a pretty universally terrifying thing for humans, and here we’re talking about something with “change” literally in its name–not an auspicious entry for a topic of conversation.
Whatever their reason for denying climate change, you can’t change their minds unless you know what they are thinking. So listen. Learn something new. Give them the same courtesy you are asking of them.
4. Don’t be doom and gloom: be hopeful
Imagine you are hosting a Doomsday party. “An end-of-the-world party?” people might ask. “Where we party like there’s no tomorrow; anything goes?”
“Oh, no,” you assure them. “A party where we do nothing but discuss catastrophes and blame one another for causing them. There should be a lot of crying, maybe a few tantrums, and then we’ll collectively self-immolate in the flames of our own self righteousness. Plus they’ll be a vegan charcuterie board!”
How many takers do you think you’d get for such a gathering? My guess is you’ll spend the evening alone eating dairy-free cheeses.
This is how I feel at times, speaking about climate change. “Who wants to join my misery club? It’s awful over here, and we like to self-flagellate after using a plastic straw! Fun!”
After you have laid out your not overwhelming but convincing facts about climate change, I encourage you to stop focusing on the negative. This is one of the most challenging aspects of climate change conversations, because the topic is pretty depressing.
I have known many climate change believers who are convinced nothing can be done; who have become fatalists, some to the point of inaction. This is another reason not to overwhelm people with too many terrifying climate facts.
You don’t want to convince someone climate change is real while also convincing them that nothing can be done about it.
Here’s your task: find something about climate change to be excited about. No small feat, but there are so many exciting solutions out there. If you don’t know about all the innovative methods, new technologies, and other opportunities surrounding climate change action, then do your research. They exist, and they have the power to turn the problem of climate change into an opportunity for global growth and betterment.
Think I am being ridiculous or naive? Read “Five Reasons To Be Hopeful About Climate Change” and tell me there isn’t a lot to be hopeful about.
Pick something that thrills you about our progress toward climate action and talk about it. For example, if you think that using agricultural soil to trap carbon is amazing (it is), talk about that. Let your enthusiasm shine through.
The other person may think you are mad or may not share your excitement, but they will at least have a different taste of what climate change action can look like.
“Join our creative and hopeful collective as we build a bright new future,” has a better ring to it than the doom and gloom. I’d attend that party. (It also sounds kind of like a recruitment line for a cult, so maybe don’t use that exact language.)
5. When they’re not receptive, move on
My go-to response when faced with vitriol, rage, or a mind sealed and vaulted against new ideas is to walk away. It may be challenging to accept that you may never be able to convince some people that climate change is real and human-caused, but that is just reality.
Like climate change itself, some truths are not pretty.
Some folks will take their science-denial, their half-truths, their anger and ignorance to their graves, and that is the way they want it. Painful and infuriating as it may be, it’s better to accept these people as they are and move on.
Your energy is precious. You have actual things to do, a life to lead, perhaps even your own climate action to take. Don’t waste your energy fighting a battle that was already lost long before you entered the chat.
Find someone who is more receptive to your message or do something else entirely with your time. If you can’t get away from the person, change the topic.
If there is a particular person who you are trying to convert, the fact that they may never change their minds may be difficult to accept. A loved one disagreeing with you on something so fundamental to the survival of our planet as climate change can alter the entire complexion of your relationship with the person.
If you attempted a climate change discussion and it didn’t go as you had hoped, know that you tried your best. If you know your grandma will not be receptive to new ideas about climate change and decide to not even attempt to change her mind, know that you saved your energy for the larger work of living your life.
At the end of the day, the only mind we can ever be responsible for changing is our own. Teach yourself new things, like about exciting climate action innovations, and be open-minded. Model the climate action and receptivity to science and new ideas that you want to see in the world.
Stay true to your own beliefs, and welcome others when they tiptoe toward new ideas. Politely hold the door open for them, but let them enter at their own pace.
And a word of hope for the believers...
Any type of change can be scary. It can also be an avenue for growth and possibility. You can deny it’s happening or you can float along with it and see where it takes you, but you can not stop change from occurring.
Look for the beauty in the new, look for what it can teach you and how you can grow from it. Encourage others to do the same. And keep moving forward, into the light of a thrilling new day, unlike any other the world has seen.
For more, check out the next essay in this series: “Five Reasons To Be Hopeful About Climate Change.”