* CC has been used as an acronym for Climate Change later in the article to avoid repetition.
If you’re still one of those families who watch the evening news together and prefer to spend some time talking about the headlines, the matter of Climate Change is almost certain to come up. In my case, it is largely me going on and on about how my generation’s future is precarious and that we need to take action right away, to which my parents respond with: “Ab jo hai woh hai, koi kuch nahi kar sakta isme.” (It is what it is, what can anyone do?)
And just like that, my conflicts are downplayed with a single statement. It is even more upsetting when it’s your own parents because you expect your family to see after you.
And it begs the question: Have you attempted to entice your parents to be worried about Climate Change? If so, how would you go about doing it?
Making It Personal: The Terms Are New, But Their Meanings Are Not
While the concept of environmentalism is extremely old, the term “Climate Change” and its applications are relatively new. And hence, it is imperative that parents and the older generation take it personally. After all, it is their progeny whose lives are at stake here.
“While notions of nature and afforestation may ring more familiar bells, climate change may be a more alienating area of conversation because it often tends to be dismissed as a natural phenomenon rather than a man-made one, especially among the elderly,” says Sushmita Patel, Climate Policy Manager at Youth Ki Awaaz, when asked about the possible reasons for parental reluctance to engage with CC and surrounding conversations.
Another reason why parents have a hard time adopting these phenomena and terminologies is that they are frequently used by leaders and politicians in the news.
Adults may disregard messaging about CC or other themes associated with political groups with whom they disagree, according to Science News for Students. Here, we need to have mutually agreed and constructive conversations about why CC is not an agenda – it’s a phenomenon affecting us all, and possibly putting our lives in danger.
To get over the barrier of these new terminologies and grasp them, the first step is to understand them at the most fundamental level. CC simply means that our climate, which has supported life on Earth for centuries, is changing, is in jeopardy, and requires our attention and action.
For example, many people are now concerned about the deteriorating quality of water that is delivered to our houses for consumption. Pollution is always high in a large metropolis, and the quality of life suffers as a result. This is troubling not only for the young but also for our parents, as this has an impact on their life span, according to a Hindustan Times report. Here, we must educate our parents about urban ideas such as ‘emissions’ and ‘effluents’ and encourage them to take them seriously – how it impacts us, what we can do to protect ourselves, etc.
It’s not something complex that takes a master’s degree to comprehend. To overcome this apprehension, we need to have a more adult conversation with our parents about these topics.
Empathy: Experiencing Change Second-handedly
While British researcher Guy Stewart Callendar first discovered signs of Global Warming and CC in 1938, our parents’ generation did not have the same concerns that we do. Nobody could have predicted how quickly things would change in only a few decades. As a result, the concerns that most youths have about the environment and their future are not the same as those that their forefathers and mothers had.
Hence, our parents view this worry second-handedly.
“It is vital to recognise that climate change worry across the age spectrum is based on cultural conditioning and often related to how people envision their future being impacted by climate change,” Sushmita adds.
Cultural conditioning is the process through which we acquire and understand the influences, norms, and messaging from our surroundings and transform them into actions that we believe are appropriate. We frequently find ourselves in a challenging predicament when our parents discount our concerns, saying things like, “You panic about such minor things. This was never an issue in our time.”
This is due to societal conditioning that the young aren’t intelligent enough to ask inquiries. We’ve also seen this training influence Greta Thunberg, whose advocacy is frequently dismissed by older politicians who claim she’s too young to grasp anything.
It is therefore undeniable that CC has had a significant impact on cultural upbringing around the world.
The onus is now on both the young and the old to better comprehend this phenomenon. One way to tackle it is through empathy.
The most frequent approaches to combating CC are to emphasise the economic benefits first, and then the moral commitment to fellow humans second. Continuing with the previous example, in order to address the problem of deteriorating water supply, we must incur additional money for a variety of technology, such as water softeners, in order to make it safe for our use, which is not available to everyone.
It’s only then that the moral issue here becomes clear: we’ve spent much too much time not caring for the environment, and now we’re paying the price. Instead of dismissing the situation, parents should empathise with their children and devise practical solutions. Felix Drewes shows how empathic ties lead to a deeper knowledge of climate change because we are all in this together in his research article.
So, if we strive to connect our experiences to our parents’ feelings, we’re sure to feel greater empathy and become more attentive.
Nostalgia: What’s Gone And Our Present
No, this is not an implication that our parents are utterly unconcerned about climate change. In reality, the change is more noticeable to them because they have lived through more decades as this situation has taken shape. As a result, instilling nostalgia for a bygone age in them may be an effective method to raise parental awareness of climate change.
“Nostalgia is a powerful instrument that may be used by any generation. Discussions about – how things used to be & how they are today – continue to be popular among all age groups,” Sushmita says. With a grain of nostalgia, they might be able to explain certain subtopics and social experiments that are fresh to them, such as – change in seasons as compared to the olden days, the air getting unbreathable day by day, limited electricity and rise in bills, etc.
When these features of traditional ‘growth,’ such as more infrastructure and better access to basic necessities, are considered in the context of changing surroundings (such as pollution, high temperatures, and so on), they may provide insight into how one should proceed.
Such principles could aid in the development of sustainable lifestyle choices as well as increasing accountability for their peers’ previous and ongoing behaviours. Parents are more likely to take this seriously because “unke zamaane ki toh baat hi alag thhi.” As a result, it’s past time for us to let them know that we want our zamaana to be as enjoyable and enjoyable as theirs.
A Conversation: Where It All Starts
While there are various techniques and strategies for getting your parents to care about climate change, we must remember that it all begins with a dialogue.
However, it is critical that talks do not become solely confrontational or accusatory in nature, as is often the case when young people demand rights that are due to them, in order to persuade them to acknowledge and account for climate change and generate affirmative activities in response to it. Such a combative tone only serves to alienate these crucial friends in the fight against climate change, and it discourages them from taking action that is necessary for systemic or individual change.
Note: The author is part of the Sept-Nov ’21 batch of the Writer’s Training Program.