Having “those conversations” about climate change

A timely question as the season comes around when many people will be sitting down for holiday meals with people who might not feel the same as us regarding climate change, societal collapse, and so on.

“Does anyone else feel as though they want talk about climate change and collapse preparation to friends and family, but don’t know how to approach it in a way that will generate any real discussion? I feel like the people who know me understand that I am concerned about the future, but none of them are genuinely concerned and can’t connect with me on this one.”

My thoughts:

One thing I have found helpful is to focus on extreme weather — and other disasters (pandemic etc) — as opposed to climate change per se.

Pretty much everyone I know, of all political stripes and right up to the very wealthy economic levels, has been affected by one or more extreme weather events or other disasters. Many have been affected to a catastrophic degree. This includes financial hardship.

Accordingly, I find it helpful to talk about preps & resilience for such circumstances, and how we make ourselves better able to weather whatever comes. Finances is a big one, I have realized.

Of course WE in here know the events are pretty much all linked to climate change, but since the preps and resilience paths for all of these circumstances pretty much overlap, that’s OK.

We should be doing this anyway: checking up on how people fared in the storm; checking to see if they need help w prepping & household resilience; being a model and source of support for our communities and neighborhoods etc.

* Added later: Oh! And how could I forget. A HUGE area for tapping into common ground is “extreme dependence on centralized, industrialized systems to get our very most basic needs met.” Banks/finance, water/sewer utilities, transportation, household energy, food etc. … almost ALL of us by now, even the wealthy and otherwise cushioned of the USA, have experienced a failure of one or more of these big systems and are willing to talk about how we reduce our household & community’s vulnerability, build resilience & antifragility. And bingo, there’s the conversation entry point.