Anyone who is "out" as an environmentalist or green-minded person has faced it: the one person who just won't listen to the scientists, who won't believe in climate change and denigrates anything you try to say on the subject.
I have one of them at my work. Last winter, he was gleeful as the country got covered in snow.
"Where's yer global warming now, eh?" he baited me.
I tried telling him that climate change doesn't mean we won't have winter. It doesn't mean we'll never have snow. It doesn't mean that temperatures will not go up and down depending on the seasons.
But he wasn't listening. All he knew was that it was snowing heavily for the first time in many years and therefore the globe couldn't be warming.
Then I played my zinger:
"Remember when we were kids in the 70s and we used to get brilliant snowfalls that closed the schools for days?"
"Aye, it was always great. Sledging and giant snowball fights, you never wanted to go hame!"
"Well," I said, "it's a shame we don't get those winters any more. The only reason the snow is news is because it's so unusual nowadays".
He grunted at me, and the conversation ended.
Fast forward 9 months, and I was sitting in the mess room today watching the news. My colleague walked in, and didn't notice me around the corner. As he took his coat and scarf off, he addressed my other workmates sitting there:
"I don't care what anybody says, the weather is getting weirder".
Wry smile? Me? Of course I did!
Enjoy the snow.
0 comments:
Post a Comment