Nicholas Goldberg: Americans don’t care about climate change. Here’s how to wake them up
When was the last time you made mention of climate change to someone? I suspect that your answer will be “never” – but that’s not exactly true.
When your car dies, you call AAA – and when the house you call home falls apart, you call 911. If you’re lucky, you’ve had a chance to think for even a millisecond before calling the emergency number.
Now, with an entire nation of humans locked in over-consumption, there isn’t a single person or group of people in the US that isn’t going to be impacted by climate change.
This is the issue that we’ll be spending most of our national energy resources addressing, the one most of us have been taught to see as the future of our planet.
Yet our national opinion, as a nation, is a very mixed bag. The vast majority of Americans believe climate change is a serious threat, and they’re willing to spend our nation’s resources – and our economy – making it a reality.
But if you dig a little deeper and talk with people who aren’t as convinced, you’ll find that there are some things you can’t change: people are stubborn.
The truth is, climate change is an issue that people of every hue can agree on. It’s not black and white – and the more you talk about climate change with undecided Americans, the less likely they are to get all emotional and irrational.
Here’s a simple analogy to show you how we can get across the differences in opinion on climate change – or to suggest that we don’t care about climate change at all and that we’re doomed to climate inaction.
Imagine you’re on a cruise ship and the captain says that we’re going to pass the Statue of Liberty on our next stop. You might go up to the deck and ask why we should be passing the ship and not the Statue of Liberty.
The captain might explain that we have a choice – either accept the risk of losing the ship or the risk losing
