You’re Worried About Climate Change. Your Parents Are Not

Cheryl* grew up in British Columbia surrounded by nature. It’s no wonder the 54-year-old is such an ardent environmentalist. “I would just go play in the forest, and it was awesome,” she says. But while her parents also love the outdoors, today she constantly argues with them over sustainability. The main point of contention: lawn maintenance. Cheryl visits her parents, who now live in Moose Jaw, Sask., at least once a year and has tried to help by mulching their flowerbeds (which reduces the need for fertilizers) or composting their lawn clippings (which would at least help lower the lawn’s ecological footprint), but she’s met with resistance. Worst of all, they use pesticide and water their lawn religiously. “Their region is prone to drought, and I don’t know why they need a perfectly green lawn,” she says. (Lawns are also bad for biodiversity.)

Every time Cheryl visits her parents, she can’t help but get worked up over their habits, which makes the visits emotionally fraught. “It’s like talking to a brick wall,” she says. “I still love visiting, but it makes me really, really sad.”

Cheryl has accepted that her parents likely won’t change their minds about certain things: composting, recycling beyond the bare minimum or their excessive water use—even if it makes her want to pull her hair out. While she continues to call them out, she has also agreed to disagree. It’s just not worth getting into fights over.

Cheryl isn’t the only one getting into it with loved ones over the environment. Cordelia Huxtable, a Toronto-based psychotherapist and member of the Climate Psychology Alliance North America, says that since opening her clinic in 2020, she’s noticed a steady rise in new clients wanting to talk through their climate anxiety and climate-related relationship problems. (The number skyrockets during flood seasons and climate events like forest fires.) According to Huxtable, eco-anxiety can lead to feelings of isolation as well as anger and resentment—a powerful cocktail of emotions.

Sarah Lazarovic’s lifelong dedication to fighting the climate crisis has occasionally led to her having “very intense conversations” with her family about their lifestyles—specifically, their travel plans. Her parents, for example, love going on cruises, which the Toronto resident describes as “the worst thing in the world.” (She’s not wrong—cruising is even worse for the environment than flying. A five-night cruise that travels around 2,000 km emits about 500 kg of carbon dioxide per passenger, while flying commercially and staying in a hotel room for the same amount of time would emit half of that.) To try to change their minds, Lazarovic attempted to educate them. “I sent them articles about how terrible cruising is—not just from an emissions perspective but [because] how it destroys local economies and pollutes the oceans,” she says. But these articles didn’t have the desired effect—“they still go on cruises,” she says—so she stopped sending them.

At her job at an electrification non-profit, Lazarovic has spent a lot of time getting better at talking to people about climate change, mostly trying to convince them to retrofit their homes with heat pumps and induction stoves to lower their household emissions. Ultimately, as she’s seen through her work, she knows that her family members are holding on to unsustainable habits not because they don’t care about the environment, but because they have emotional attachments to them—the way that people she encounters through her work hold on to things like gas stoves because that’s what they’re used to. So, she tries to look at the positive things her family does and not get hung up on their less-eco-friendly ways. For example, her brother-in-law, whose vacations always involve a long-haul flight, is a contractor who installs heat pumps to electrify homes. “I’m trying to look at the whole picture,” she says. “It’s just not helpful to pick fights, especially when people are trying to do better in so many other ways.”

Huxtable says that’s exactly the right approach to take. The best way to start conversations with people who have different opinions—and have them not turn into fights—is to lead with empathy and curiosity. That means trying to meet people where they’re at and opening yourself up to understanding their point of view. For Lazarovic, that means giving her parents grace: They’re older, and cruising is the most comfortable way for them to see the world. It can be hard, especially if a conversation escalates into an argument, but Huxtable says that shutting down communication and freezing out the other person won’t change their mind. “There’s no prescribed pathway to a climate awakening,” she says. At least, for now, you can start the conversation and “get the other person to ponder what you’re saying.”

That’s how Aisha* now broaches climate issues with her family. The 49-year-old Toronto-based reiki and mindfulness instructor has often found herself arguing with her parents, particularly her father, over sustainability. “He buys fruits and vegetables in those flimsy little plastic bags and stockpiles them,” she says. “He probably has, like, 500 in the basement right now.” Though she’s tried to talk to her father about his plastic-bag habit, calling him out is causing a strain in their relationship. “I try to talk to him about it, but it’s like he selectively can’t hear me anymore,” she says. “Meanwhile, he gets upset because he thinks I’m picking on him.”

Aisha isn’t unfamiliar with climate disagreements leading to relationship meltdowns. While she’s not dating right now, she has broken up with boyfriends in the past over their unsustainable habits. One in particular got dumped after throwing out a barely eaten baguette. (“I thought he was just stupid after that,” she admits.) But she can’t break up with her father. Instead, she’s learned to find other ways she can push back. Recently, she fought to get a pollinator garden planted in her parents’ backyard. While she knew she’d never get him to give up his plastic bags, she thought her nature-loving dad might be more likely to get on board with a garden. After some pushback, it worked: He let Aisha take over a small part of his backyard. As she tended to the garden, he started to help out, lending his opinions and getting excited at the first sight of milkweed and blue vervain flowering. While the garden hasn’t led to any revelations for her father (his plastic-bag collection is only getting larger), Aisha says that working on it together has helped ease the animosity between the two and shown her a way forward. “For a long time, his default response was ‘no’ and my default response was to get confrontational,” she says. “Now, I want to try to meet him where he’s at.”

Plus, Aisha has begun to look elsewhere for ways to make an impact. She’s a “very involved aunt” who is teaching her niece and nephew about sustainability—taking them on nature hikes and bringing her own reusable containers when they pick up takeout together. “Rather than fight with my parents, who are in their 70s, I’m working on the younger members of my family,” she says, noting that the kids now ask their mom to bring reusable containers for takeout, too. This has led to Aisha’s sister becoming more curious about sustainability. It makes Aisha proud to watch the next generation take up the fight—and helps keep the peace with her parents, too.

*Names have been changed.