No matter how many facts I share or how many times I try to explain the urgency, conversations about climate change with some of my own family often don’t sink in.
Although everything inside me wants to scream with urgency, I need to play it cool. I try different tones, use local examples, global ones—and still, I’m met with deep skepticism. These are people I love, people who read books to me when I was little. Yet when it comes to this issue, it feels like we’re speaking different languages.
It’s a reminder that climate change isn’t just a science or policy challenge—it’s a communication challenge. Facts alone don’t always move people. Values, lived experiences, and trust matter just as much, but they can be hard to break through when long-held beliefs or political ideologies stand in the way.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this: the work of listening, connecting, and persisting in these conversations is just as vital as drafting policies or publishing reports. Because if we can’t talk about climate change around our own dinner tables, how can we expect to make progress on the global stage?
Here are three things I’m reminding myself to do—and I invite you to try them, too:
Listen first. Ask questions and understand where people are coming from.
Connect to values. Talk about climate through the lens of health, family, jobs, or faith—whatever matters most to them.
Keep going. Change rarely happens in one conversation. Persistence, patience, and empathy are tools we all need.
I’ll keep trying. And I know many of you are, too.
