My good friend invited me to a meeting of his book club. I’m not a member, but I recommended a book to him and he loved it so much, he convinced his club to read it.

The book is called “Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World” by John Vaillant and it is a non-fiction account of the devastating Fort McMurray wildfire of 2016. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and appeared on many of the year-end best book lists in 2023.

Valliant does a masterful job of weaving together three major themes: the story of a forest fire which led to the largest evacuation in North American history, the rise of the oil industry since the 1850s, and the growth of climate science implicating fossil fuels as the primary cause of global warming.

Above all, Fire Weather tells the heroic stories of the people of Fort McMurray. We meet real people fighting against all odds to save their homes, their trucks and their lives in a town that only exists to support the mining of heavy oil from Alberta’s oilsands. It’s a tale of a monster that returns to kill its creator.

I was excited to be a guest at my friend’s book club. My friend’s friends are some very intelligent and accomplished people with considerable influence in society. Some have started and run highly successful companies. Others are prominent academics. Several play leadership roles in not-for-profit and community organizations. More than one member has been honoured with the Order of Canada for their extraordinary contributions to our country.

To have a chance to speak to a group like this, about climate change, after they’ve all just spent the last few weeks reading a moving story of human tragedy caused by the fossil fuel industry, seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime to win over some powerful allies to join in the fight of our times.

Boy, was I in for a disappointment.

After some opening remarks, the discussion devolved into a pile-on of a whole litany of reasons why people don’t engage in the fight to save our climate:

“The woke people are just finger-pointing – it’s a turnoff.”

“I feel like they’re exagerating. They just want us all to go back to living in caves.”

“But what about all the mining for batteries – isn’t that just as bad?”

“It’s impossible to fix – look at what [the US / Russia / China ] is doing!”

“What about nuclear? I like nuclear but people are so opposed to it.”

“The problem is fast fashion – people are too consumerist and then they throw everything out.”

“Where are the young people?  What are they doing about this?”

“The problem is there’s EIGHT BILLION PEOPLE in the world! Families in some countries are still having 10 to 12 kids! Look at Elon Musk!”

“It’s impossible, we can’t even support Ukraine”

“We don’t have good leaders – we need good leaders”

“[Bill Gates / Justin Trudeau / Al Gore] is a hypocrite because [he bought a big house / used a private jet / raised taxes].”

“Have you even seen the stuff people put in the recycling?”

“There’s no incentive for the climate – show me an incentive and you’ll see action.”

“I think we’re doomed. But I won’t be around for the worst of it.”

I’ve been immersing myself in questions like these for over a year now and I felt like I had an answer for every problem that was raised, but it didn’t seem to matter – the issues were popping up faster than I could keep up.

It felt like the old carnival game Whac-a-Mole. And like any good carnival game, they’re made so you can’t win.

This was not an unusual discussion when it comes to climate – I’ve been involved in several like this now. When it comes to talking about the problems and the potential solutions for climate change, people often avoid talking about personal engagement in a constructive sense.

Instead, people tend to raise issue after issue in a way that is confounding and contributes to a sense of hopelessness.

There is a term for this – it’s called “whataboutism” – a rhetorical tactic in which someone responds to an issue by raising a different issue, often unrelated, that diverts attention away from the original point.

In the context of climate change, this can manifest as shifting the conversation away from the primary causes and solutions, and instead focusing on other problems, creating confusion and diminishing the urgency or clarity of the original concern.

Whataboutism can contribute to a sense of hopelessness and inaction because it makes problems seem insurmountable and distracts from concrete solutions.

So what can we do about whataboutism?

1. Emphasize the simplicity of the problem. Ever notice how good leaders describe a problem by saying “It’s really quite simple …” and then they explain the root cause of the issue at hand? Climate change is no different.

The chart below illustrates this well. Almost 3/4 of emissions are caused by fossil fuel use. Focus on initiatives that eliminate the use of fossil fuels and you solve most of the problem.

When people get confounded, bouncing around the “outer ring” problems like air travel (1.9% of emissions), cement production (3%), reducing waste and landfills (1.9%), deforestation (2.2%) or cow farts (5.8%) – bring them back to the center. If we focus on solving fossil fuel use, solving the rest becomes much easier.

2. Focus on the solutions. There’s a story that Barack Obama would regularly warn his staff “not to fall in love with the problem” when he thought they were spending too much time talking about the difficulties of an issue rather than focusing on the solutions for it.

When this happens in discussing the climate, it’s important to emphasize just how feasible it is to transition away from fossil fuel use. We have the solutions in hand:

• Just about everything that runs on fossil fuels today, can run on electricity.
• All the electricity we need can be generated quickly, reliably, safely and inexpensively from renewable sources like wind and solar.
• A transition to 100% renewable energy will not only cut emissions, but it will save people money, boost the economy and save lives due to the elimination of the main source of air pollution.

When someone says “We’re doomed!” we need to say “Bullshit!” and present a tangible, optimistic, constructive view of the future that we can all work towards.

3. Appeal to values. Ultimately, climate change asks us all to look inside ourselves and to act based on our values and beliefs.

Nobody thinks of themselves as a bad person, but only a really bad person would deliberately do nothing in the face of another’s suffering. The daily evidence of suffering and death due to fossil fuels is accelerating and that creates a painful conflict – how does one justify a lack of action with the belief that they are a good person?

Whataboutism protects our self-image because gives us permission to believe that climate change is too hard to solve or is beyond our ability to influence. If we believe the whole thing is out of our hands, we don’t have to change anything and we can still think of ourselves as good people.

In addition to focusing on the fact that there are practical solutions, we can overcome the hopelessness of whataboutism by talking about the reasons why people choose to fight.

People fight climate change because their values give them no other choice. They act out of love for their kids and grandkids. They act because their sense of empathy won’t stand for suffering. They act to serve justice so that future generations can have the same opportunities that they enjoy. They act because they see themselves as responsible citizens and courageous leaders, not bystanders.

We are our values. When we talk about what motivates us, we connect directly with and strengthen those values that we share with others.

My friend said it best when he challenged the group:

Climate change today is like World War II in 1939.  Hitler has taken Austria, and Czechoslovakia and is menacing Poland.   You have to ask yourself “what kind of leader are you going to be?”  Are you Chamberlain, who argued for inaction and appeasement, or Churchill, who vowed to fight the Nazis with all he had and to “never surrender”?

It was the one moment in the evening when everyone in the room was silent.

4. Be Patient. I like instant gratification. I’d love to be able to tell people how important it is that we work together to cut emissions and have them just agree with me.

But the reasons why people don’t act on climate are powerful. People have to overcome the confusion from all the conflicting stories they hear in the news. They have to overcome a natural resistance to change. They need to fully imagine the wonderful benefits we will all enjoy if we succeed in transitioning off fossil fuels as well as the horrible suffering to come if we don’t.

All this takes time.

So remember this too – every climate conversation you have plants a seed in the receiver’s brain that continues to grow after long you leave.

With every heatwave, every flood, every forest fire, that seed grows and grows and takes up more and more space in a person’s thoughts. Eventually, the tension between thoughts and behaviour becomes too much – and a breakthrough occurs.

That’s kind of what happened to me when I had to buy an air conditioner. It was the last straw – the event that caused the breakthrough and got me to take climate action more seriously.

So it is important to be patient and have faith, that in their own time, most people will eventually engage in climate action. Unfortunately, the motivations to do so will only become more compelling with each passing day. ■