If you’re like me, you care deeply about the impacts of climate change. And if you’re like me, you also dread explaining this to relatives, particularly when you could be eating mashed potatoes instead.
With Thanksgiving around the corner, it’s more than likely you and I will have to face the beast and talk to our families about climate change. So strap in, it’s going to be an emotionally bumpy ride.
1. Dread
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Things were going smoothly. Your uncle has kept the conversation revolving around football and trucks (neutral enough) and the mashed potatoes are as delicious ever. You’re gonna get through this. Then it happens. Your aunt — in terrifying slow motion — says the magic words: “I keep reading about global warming.”
2. Curiosity
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When the avalanche of crazy doesn’t descend all at once, you breath a sigh of relief and take another bite of mashed potatoes. This might not be such a bad thing. Wherever this goes, it’s bound to be more interesting than talking about which pigskin hits the most home runs in the paint (or whatever, sports!).
3. Confusion
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Wait, this was not how the conversation was supposed to go. Your uncle is saying that sea level rise isn’t real because his beach house is fine, your grandma believes Donald Trump’s claim that the Chinese invented global warming, and your cousin just keeps repeating the words “polar vortex.” You down mashed potatoes to subdue yourself.
4. Panic
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By now, there are not enough mashed potatoes in the world to calm your nerves. You realize that you might be the only one in the room with a basic understanding of climate science. If someone is going to say something, it has to be you.
5. Courage
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The whole dinner table just had a good laugh about how snowballs mean none of it is real (thanks Senator James Inhofe). You stand up to say your piece. You feel a lump in your throat. It’s mashed potatoes. You swallow them down. “97 percent of scientists agree that climate change is real and caused by human activity,” you say. “In fact, it’s already affecting all of us: drought, extreme weather, our food supply. Even the president thinks that acting on climate change will put him on the right side of history.”
Dead silence.
6. Satisfaction
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The pause that follows is long enough for you to feel like you got through to everyone (and take another bite of mashed potatoes). It lasts approximately 3.5 seconds.
7. Fear
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Then the floodgates open. You’re a socialist, a hippy, a tree hugger, a degenerate liberal. Spittle laden with stuffing is flying out of your relatives’ foaming mouths. Someone breaks a wine glass. Your mouth is too full of mashed potatoes to respond.
8. Rage
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Wait a second, you’re in the right here. You know the facts and you have science on your side. You don’t have to take this.
9. More Rage
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YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE THIS. You grab the entire bowl of mashed potatoes and storm off into the bathroom.
10. Guilt
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After ten minutes in the bathroom (and approximately two pounds of mashed potatoes) you calm down. Could this be your fault? Were you too forceful? Was there a better way to get your point across? Should you have just kept the peace?
11. Despair
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Twenty minutes alone in the bathroom crying over a full bowl of mashed potatoes will do that to a person.
12. Acceptance
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This is, after all, still your family, and even crazy climate denial can’t change that. Besides, it’s not like yelling at your 96-year-old grandma has ever won you anything.
13. Forgiveness
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You still love your family, and (you think) they still love you. Things got heated, but it’s not all their fault. You know that fossil fuel interests have spent millions and campaigned for years to spread the kind of disinformation you just heard repeated back to you. Unlearning that will take time. You’ve also run out of mashed potatoes and need to leave the bathroom.
14. Adele
Image via Buzzfeed.
When all else fails, take a cue from the good folks at Saturday Night Live and find some common ground with your uncommon family.
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Greenpeace USA! May your day be filled with loving conversation and delicious mashed potatoes. For more on how to navigate delicate discussions during the holidays, check out this article from our friends at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
