Unfamiliar Unity

Thanksgiving tends to be a rather volatile season around my parts, and hailing from a conservative family, Simon really thought of one of the best ways to pull the pin out of the grenade with this assignment.

Or so I thought.

As it turns out, I actually found it rather difficult to find one person in my family who disagreed with the idea that climate change is a pressing issue which needs to be addressed. My uncle, a defense contractor from Colorado, claimed that he felt the United States should work to reduce carbon emissions by half within the next thirty years. My grandmother, a Jesus freak, claimed that we have spent nearly a century and a half destroying the planet that God gave us, and therefore only makes sense for us humans to right what we have done wrong. Another one of my uncles, a lifelong Republican and George W. Bush sympathizer, claims that climate change must be a real problem because "all that ice is melting in the Artic [sic]."

Both of my parents agreed with me that the issue was pressing. My father, a former Republican who recently registered as a Democrat, changed the topic from climate change to fuel economy, and spent fifteen minutes talking about a hydrogen car he saw on the Discovery Channel which he would someday like to own. My mother, who is politically apathetic, agreed with my uncle's claim that the Artic [sic] needs to be saved because she "really likes penguins and polar bears."

(take a few seconds to truly savor the humor of that last sentence)

Much to my surprise, none of my relatives disagreed that climate change was a pressing issue. What really surprised me, however, was that most of them were unaware of the true problems at hand in regards to the issue. My uncle, the defense contractor, was the only person who seemed to understand the real science behind climate change, and why it represents the greatest problem to our planet. Everyone else had ulterior motives behind their beliefs, whether it was aesthetic (penguins and polar bears), consumeristic (hydrogen cars), or ridiculo-- er, religious (we're destroying God's planet).

I guess this Thanksgiving, I was thankful for Simon's assignment. Because for the first time in six years, we managed to end the meal without arguing over alcoholism, marital problems, or whether this Thanksgiving will be grandma's last.