Oh, wait, no, that’s not what Warmist Scott Vrooman wants. Instead, he provides some handy dandy tips on how all the snowflakes can talk to their parents about “climate change”
I don’t expect public opinion on climate change will be swayed by columnists and pundits preaching to their choirs. Those who want to ignore the vast scientific evidence on the subject have likely already skipped to the comment section below to try to convince you that since I’m not shouting these things naked from a wooden hut in the middle of a bog, I’m a hypocrite and deserve to be ignored.
Um, well, yeah. If you’re not, you’re a hypocrite. But, then, 99.9% of Warmists are hypocrites.
For those still reading, I have a suggestion. Most of us don’t have millions of dollars to go toe-to-toe with the disinformation campaign being waged by the oil and gas industry. But most of us do have living parents. So let’s talk to them about climate change. Because if we can’t convince the people who love us more than anything in the world to take action on climate, who can we convince?
No, Warmists have the backing of governments with deeper pockets along with all sorts of Liberal groups and donors. But, that’s a cute strawman you’ve built. Anyhow, here’s Scott’s ideas
- Speak from a place of love and compassion, not anger or self-righteousness. (side note on self-righteousness: if you’ve ever used the arrogant, poisonous term “sheeple,” please eliminate it from your vocabulary, you’re making everything worse) (unlike Scott, who went for the disinformation campaign garbage)
- Make it clear that the topic of climate change is inseparable from the well-being of their children and grandchildren. (instead, we should leave them with trillions and trillions of debt and give government more and more control of their lives)
- Share a couple of informative articles on the topic. Bill McKibben’s landmark article in Rolling Stone, while harrowing, is concise and very readable. This NASA primer is also very good. There’s no need to overwhelm them with data. If they want more information you can point them towards it. The most important thing for them to understand is that on our current path we may no longer have a climate that allows for stable, secure societies within the lifetimes of today’s children. (oh, good, scaremongering and links to unhinged and hysterical articles, one of which is by a guy who has lots of money at stake to keep the “climate change” train rolling)
- Once these distressing facts are laid out, make clear that you aren’t blaming them for this. Your parents likely made all of their decisions with a strong sense of morality and social responsibility, and could only make those decisions based on the information they had at the time. But now that you have provided this new information, talk about how it obligates them, and all of us, to behave in new ways. (well, that’s strange, because Warmists have so far refused to behave in new ways. Hey, moms and dads, tell you kids that from now on they have to walk everywhere and that they can no longer have all that technology which sucks power. See if they still give a damn about “climate change”)
- Encourage them to buy environmentally-friendly goods and services as much as possible. Talk to them about divestment from fossil fuels. But given the urgency and enormity of the problem, also make clear that this will not be enough. This is a challenge that requires us all to act as citizens, not just as consumers. (see my response for #4)
- Now comes the hardest part. If your parents want to align their actions with their concern for their children’s and grandchildren’s futures, they may need to change the way they vote (!!!). Any politicians (even good-looking ones) not advocating for drastic reductions in carbon emissions have, at best, not accepted the facts about climate change. At worst, they are knowingly and cynically sacrificing the future for their own wealth and power. (and there it is, the real reason, getting the parents to vote for Democrats. This whole thing is political)
This is similar to the 1st World Problem of parents talking to their kids about hotcoldwetdry. Fortunately, an entire generation will soon graduate having experienced no statistically significant warming.
