“This time I’m speaking specifically to you, mister.”
First things first: this is not a hit piece or a parody, I swear. If you’re a regular reader, you probably know that my usual posts are not, well, “the most friendly” to conservative folks. I like to think I approach most things with a viewpoint that’s acceptable to a wide political spectrum, but I also know that approach carries a big “most of the time” attached to it. But this time, I am writing this without irony and attempting to pass as little judgment as possible. For my right-leaning readers, think of it like an olive branch, a step away from my usual ivory tower nose-snubbery, if you like. For the majority of this article, I’ll be addressing people who fall into this demographic directly and for the expressly stated purpose of attempting to convince you to care about climate change, if you don’t already. If you check most or all of the boxes in that title, this article is for you. You specifically. And if you, specifically, reading this don’t fall into that particular demographic, you can keep reading too, because I’m funny and interesting, but more importantly, there might be something here you can pull out at the next family party to try and bridge those climate change gaps yourself! And that leads in to the why of this post. Why am I spending the time to reach a group of people who, from some perspectives, may not seem like they want to be reached about these things? On the one hand, it’s an exercise for myself in writing to different audiences, and I had a lot of ideas of what to say. But on the other hand, although there’s already a lot of people on board with fighting climate change, the way things are going, we really need as many people as possible. We need to be prepared.
Perhaps at first glance, you could say this article is meant for “rednecks,” but that isn’t quite the demographic I’m hoping to reach here. I mean, this title’s a whole grab bag of identifiers, but as obvious as some of those identifiers are to figure out, some of them have a few caveats attached. For example, when I say “conservative” I don’t necessarily mean just people who voted for Trump, although for the most part that is who I’m referring to. For all intents and purposes, “conservative” herein largely means folks who tend to hold values on the right, regardless of which political figurehead you may align yourself with. And, let’s be honest here, there’s a gap between people who identify as conservative and people who also care about climate change. This is what I want to address, but I am addressing it specifically in people who live in the non-urban Midwest. So, any part of the Midwest that isn’t really a proper major metro area, because, at this point, that’s what I know the best (I am playing a bit to my strengths, here). So non-Chicago Illinois (though the suburbs can get in on this action), or most of Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, both Dakotas, Michigan, and perhaps a bit into Kentucky and Missouri, though at that point we begin to bleed into the South or Appalachia bit, which is, at this time, beyond my wheelhouse. So, if you find yourself as a conservative man in the non-urban Midwest, I’m talking to you.
I mean, you could expand the checklist even further to include low-to-middle class, Christian, cisgender, and largely neuronormative, sure, but “redneck” is still a different group altogether. Maybe “Midwest country” is a better generalization, but at this point, it’s also a bit of splitting hairs because these identities are fluid! People and groups overlap and shift constantly, and you may find yourself as the target demographic here in one part of your life but maybe not another. Or you are the target demographic, but already care about climate change. Making generalizations about people is a road to hell paved with good intentions, so, although that is what I’m doing here, here’s my qualifying statements. This info will apply to people in other groups, too, and other groups aren’t naturally more attuned to climate change just by the virtue of being not the things in your demographic (though location, economic class, and race tend to be strong signifiers of someone’s overall risk of being affected by climate change, and perhaps, therefore, their exposure to discussions about it).
This is also not to say that people who fall in this class don’t already care about climate change or aren’t fighting against it; I know for a fact that some of you do care about climate change, and at least one member of my family who largely fits this description makes a living in renewable energy. So even that isn’t so cut and dry! But this is a subset of people, your subset of people, who are perhaps the most privileged in the entire world (whether you agree with that or not I’d appreciate you giving me the suspension of disbelief on that one), and therefore the people least likely to be affected by climate change. I mean, the Midwest is (along with the interior of the East Coast and the American West) going to be one of the safest places in the entire world to be once things start really hitting the fan, far from most disasters and sea level rise; why should you care? It won’t happen to you. And perhaps, therefore, you are also the hardest demographic to reach on meaningful climate change discussions. But here’s the thing; it will happen to you, to things you care about, and you are holding potential financial and political capital that could make meaningful differences in the fight against climate change. I hope to prove to you that climate change is something worth using that capital to fight against.
Full disclosure, all of this is, admittedly, coming from someone who fits only some of these boxes. I feel like that meme where the guy says, “I know some of these words,” but instead it’s “I am some of these things.” Or the one where the guy is like “what’s up, fellow kids,” and he’s Steve Buscemi, but instead it’s “what’s up, fellow midwestern middle-aged conservative men,” and I’m a liberal 20-something cisgender middle-class neurodivergent white guy in the midwest who passes for heterosexual nine times out of ten. But science shows that, especially with people who may or may dig their heels in, you’re more likely to listen to someone who looks like you. And I look like I could grow up to be a midwestern middle-aged conservative man, kind of like the pre-evolution of a very specific Pokemon, so I might have a decent chance. Either way, here we go.
I am taking a bit of a leap of faith here, because I’m working from the assumption that we all agree climate change is real and is happening now. The assumptive part here is that we’re all on the same page. We’re way past arguing about whether climate change is real or not. The science about it isn’t assumptive; climate change is real and it is happening right now. I know not everyone believes the science, but for the sake of argument, let’s start with that base. We all there? Tell you what, even if you don’t believe in climate change, I’ll throw you a bone on this one if you can go along with me for the length of this article. To follow along here, you don’t even have to agree that humans are causing climate change (they are, but you don’t have to believe it to get the picture here); you just have to agree that it’s real and it’s having an impact right now. So, if we can all agree on that baseline, I can help fill you in on why you, you specifically, should care and why you, you specifically, should be doing something to stop it.
This is a lot of blustering and posturing right at the beginning, but by now I’ve hopefully laid bare all my cards. So let’s get to the heart of things here. Why you should care about climate change. Again, and I truly mean this without irony, but I dug into my experiences and tried to pick out some of the values and topics that I think you, the demographic this is mostly intended for, might care about. Specifically, values and topics that are going to be affected by climate change in uncertain ways, and if you care about these things, you should care about climate change. There are lots and lots and lots of reasons to care about climate change, but it can be hard to make a personal connection and want to take direct action on behalf of people half a planet away or wildfires that seem to only affect The Liberals In California. So let’s talk about things that will affect you and things you love within your lifetime. Climate change is going to impact how you experience these things, and how you pass them on to your children and grandchildren. Because even if it may not affect you now, it’s going to affect your kids and their kids.
So, if you care about beer, hunting, and national security, you should care about climate change and should be taking steps to stop it.
Alright, so. Beer. I’ve now either gotten your attention or insulted you. Either way, you want to know where this goes, right? Here, beer is only a half-joke, because, yes, it’s a choice I drew out of a hat of various commonly-repeated nouns I pulled off of the closest country radio I could find, but I do know that lots of people in your demographic like beer. Lots of people outside of it, too! And beer matters to a lot of people; it really is, well and truly, a cultural touchstone in the Midwest. Right? But climate change is a threat to beer production, variety, cost, and availability. Major beers, like Bud Light? Regional favorites, like New Glarus? Minor craft breweries, like Indeed Brewing? All equally at risk of being negatively affected by climate change. And to a certain degree this expands to other alcohols that rely on agriculture, too!
The most straightforward reason is that climate change is going to make things in the Midwest hotter and drier. Droughts will be more frequent, crops will fail more often. This means less grains overall, and in a world where the population is continuing to grow, more and more of those grains will have to go to food, and fewer can be spent on perceived luxuries, like beer. So the cost of resources to make beer goes up, the cost of producing beer (especially in small, craft batches) goes up, inhibiting smaller operations from being able to afford to produce as much, or possibly even pushing small breweries out of the market. And apparently it’s going to make beer taste different, too. No consensus on whether it’ll taste better or worse (probably worse), but beer will change. If we can stop climate change early and prevent the most damaging of heat waves and droughts and changes overall, we can protect the basis of beer.
Next, hunting. Of the three I’ve picked, this is the one that’s most likely to affect you and your children most personally, although I’m also kind of broadening the term a little bit. Because what climate change is putting at risk here is not just hunting, but fishing, ice fishing, snow mobiling, four-wheeling, camping, skiing, hiking, and anything else you can do outdoors. Even just sitting on your porch with loved ones is going to change, just because the average number of days with comfortable temperatures is probably going to decrease. Climate change is going to make it too hot to sit comfortably outside for a chunk of the year, even more so than usual.
Especially in the central US, temperatures will get hotter and the air will get drier. Ecosystems in the Midwest will change dramatically, as snowfall decreases and winters shorten. This is gonna introduce a whole bevy of issues. For one, winter sports are gonna be way harder to access as cold temperatures are locked farther north, and they aren’t going to last as long, either. And the forests where deer and game birds live are going to change; if stands of trees in central Wisconsin or Iowa or Minnesota can’t get the water that they need, or if the drought is so great that there isn’t enough food for animals, game populations are going to drop. And there will be greater limits on what you can and can’t hunt, in order to protect whatever populations of animals are left.
Plus shorter, warmer winters will increase the number of ticks, mosquitoes, and other nuisance insects every year, and no one wants more fucking ticks if we can avoid it. I hate those things. But since these bugs spread disease, more mosquitoes and ticks can also drive deer and moose populations down, something that the north is already seeing.
Admittedly, a good number of folks who hunt have already got the memo on climate change and its impact. In fact, if you want a really easy way to fight climate change and interact with other people in your demographic, finding a local hunter’s conservation club is a great way to do it. Because you don’t have to take climate action abroad; making changes at home and protecting ecosystems in your own community is important, too. And it’s that community that’s going to be hit by climate change, at the end of the day. The woods, forests, plains, marshes, rivers, lakes, and streams that you may know, that you may walk, are going to be hit by climate change. If you want your future self as well as your children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy the same nature (or any nature) that you’ve had the joy of experiencing your entire life, then you should be fighting climate change.
Oh, and speaking of passing things down, a combination of climate change and microplastics are literally making people less fertile. Microplastics especially affect male fertility, so if you’re young and worried about your own babymakers, you ought to be fighting not just climate change, but plastic pollution, too.
And now the final one. National security. Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch because this isn’t really something that is going to affect you regularly. But I do know that national security, from immigration to defense budgets, is, statistically, a big-ticket topic for folks who lean a bit more to the right. So let me appeal to your patriotism for a minute; climate change is going to put America as a whole at risk. Urban, suburban, rural, north, south, east, west, red, blue, everyone is going to feel the heat. But it’s my prediction, at least, that national security is going to get especially intense, and fighting climate change is fighting for America’s future.
Climate change is going to make a lot of people homeless. There are going to be a lot of refugees and migrants fleeing crises caused or exacerbated by climate change. And while a lot of them are going to coming from the global south, these disasters are going to hit the US pretty damn hard, too, costing billions (perhaps up to trillions in the long-term) of dollars in repair and relief efforts after disasters. These disasters will also make US citizens into bonafide climate refugees. Imagine all the people that left New Orleans after Katrina, but every year. The political, human, financial, and logistical strains from an increased number of disasters both in America and abroad are only going to get worse, from having to spend more money on relief efforts to having to deal with an influx of migrants both internally and externally. Things are going to become unstable. If you really want to fight for America and her stability, you should be fighting climate change.
But here’s the interesting thing; we can disagree about how much to spend for preparing for those disasters and what to do with these refugees and migrants when they get to the United States, or when people in the United States start having to move en masse. How I feel about what we should do with the country’s budget and migrants is, I guarantee, very different than what you might feel about what we do. And that’s ok; we can both admit we’re probably not going to agree on that point. But when it comes to climate change, that doesn’t matter. However it shakes out, an increase in migrants and refugees is going to worsen any security issues not just at the country’s southern border, but in the interior of the country just because of the sheer number of people.
Turning a blind eye is not an option, because climate change doesn’t give us that luxury. The disasters aren’t going to just hit abroad, and these migrants won’t just be coming from Mexico and South America; they’re going to come from everywhere. And it is in the best interest of every single person involved to stop climate change before it begins forcing people to flee their homes. And even if you don’t feel strongly about helping migrants and refugees for the sake of helping migrants and refugees, helping them now will help you down the line. Wanting to stop climate change because you want to preserve stability for yourself and your family is still wanting to stop climate change.
I think we can all agree that millions of people fleeing their homes, all at once, is a situation that’s very difficult to handle. But regardless of how you feel about them, or where they should go or what they should do or what responsibility our country has to these people, it would make sense to be preparing for this future, right? Or even trying to avoid this future entirely? So if we want to stop people from having to leave their homes in the first place and placing stresses on America’s national security, then it would be a good idea to fight climate change sooner rather than later. Plus there’s the added bonus of preventing future expensive disasters, too. If you are worried about the upfront costs of fighting climate change, believe me, the immediate costs of fighting it now is going to be a lot cheaper than repairing the damage done down the line.
I think you probably get the picture by now. If these are things that matter to you, and things that you want your family and your community and children to care about, show them that you’re willing to fight for it. If you care enough that you want your family to care about the same things you do, and have the same pleasures, safeties, and special places that you did, put your money where your mouth is. You can fight climate change, and for good reason, especially because, as much as it is going to take effect in your lifetime, it is going to hit your children much, much harder. Think of it this way. Although I, personally, shudder at writing the phrase, if you really want to Make America Great Again, you have to make it green again, too. Simple luxuries from a cool beer to a weekend out hunting deer are going to get fewer and farther between, or in some places perhaps disappear entirely, because of climate change. But there are things you can do to help protect those things that matter to you.
So what can you do about it? Well, there are, of course, lot of individual actions you can take. Eating less red meat and more vegetables instead, installing solar panels on your house, upgrading to more fuel-efficient (or even electric) vehicles, recycling more often, reducing energy spent on heating and cooling, planting trees and stopping pesticide use are all things, ranging from simple to complex, that you can do in your everyday life to make a difference. But if you want to have a bigger impact, and really throw your weight behind fighting climate change, you have to get political. Really! The root cause of climate change is, largely, the use of fossil fuels. If we want to have a shot at stopping it before it’s too late, we need to stop developing new fossil fuel industries and start developing renewable energies at a much larger scale. So you can pressure elected officials at all levels of government to strive for these solutions. Campaign for your town to install a wind turbine or solar field. Vote for state and federal representatives that have climate change at heart, or write to elected officials that don’t and tell them that they should care, too. Press candidates to take real steps to fight climate change, and join organizations that do the same. Plus, increasing renewable energies has the added bonus of making the United States more energy independent. Tired of gas prices always changing because a war is happening somewhere? Don’t need to worry as much if all the energy the US uses is produced in-house!
But maybe energy policy isn’t your thing. There’s more that you can do at home, too! In your community and your region, you can push for conservation efforts that protect the nature around you. This could be cleaning up state parks or public lands, or pushing for legal protections for those areas. This could be resisting new fossil fuel developments in your area, telling officials that you’d rather your area’s economy be green, renewable, and resilient instead of being tied to a black, oily resource that’s guaranteed to eventually run out. You could join local conservation clubs and districts, like those local sportsmen clubs I mentioned up above. You can work within your own community to make your town and the surrounding area more prepared for the disasters and changes that climate change will, sooner or later, bring about. The possibilities are endless. Fighting climate change is about fighting for things that you care about.
Climate change should not be a partisan issue. It isn’t about right or left. If anything, rural folks might feel the pinch stronger than city people. We don’t have to agree on all of the specifics, or all the policies, or in some cases, we don’t have to agree at all. There’s enough room here that, no matter how you fall on the aisle, there’s space to wiggle around in. But we do need to agree on the big picture. Even if a climate policy may seem distasteful at first, I urge you to think twice about it. Or offer an alternative that’s more to your liking but still fights climate change. Every other issue that you care about, whatever it is, is tied to climate change. Nothing is separate anymore. Cliamte change will either make that issue so much worse, or, in the very worst case scenario, none of it will matter anymore because there’s nothing left to care about. Climate change is real, it’s coming now, and it is worth stopping, even if it’s only for the sake of saving yourself.
As a last word, hopefully you’ve gotten the point by now. Even if you figured out what game I was playing from the very start, hopefully I’ve given you some food for thought, even if I haven’t changed your mind entirely. Or, perhaps this article feels reductive to the depth of feeling that you have, to the number of things and people that you do care about. Perhaps you feel that this whole post is going for low-hanging fruit and making the assumption that you only care about yourself and a few buzzwords. Maybe you have the impression that I, the author, feel like if I want you to care about something, it has to all be about you. But you know that’s not true. Maybe this makes you angry, because you care so much about so many things, and suddenly the notion of climate change affecting all of them is infuriating. Good. You should be angry. Climate change should make you furious. Because regardless of it’s beer, hunting, and America, or if it’s your friends and family and people and institutions in your own town that sit near and dear to your heart, things that you care about are going to be overwhelmingly and negatively affected by climate change. You are going to feel it in your lifetime. But your children are going to feel it a lot stronger. Anything you want to pass down to them, from family values and cultural practices to outdoor places and activities you love, is going to be a lot harder to do in a future affected by climate change. Trust me on this one, when it comes to climate change, we’ll regret more having done nothing than having done something.
You can act. I’m now asking you, specifically, to do so. Thanks for reading.
