We know that holiday celebrations will be different this year because of COVID-19. We strongly encourage everyone to heed the advice of public health officials and not travel or be in large groups. But we do encourage folks to connect via video calls!
That said, while many families and friends try not to discuss politics or values during a holiday gathering (virtual or not), sometimes hot-button issues come up anyway.
The Sierra Club’s Holiday Discussion Guide is here to help. Below are some topics that may come up during your holiday chats. This list isn’t exhaustive, but we hope it’s at least a good start. Above all, we encourage you to approach conversations with openness, empathy, and patience to listen and to continue to educate yourself (and your family and friends) on these important issues.
Several good “holiday discussion” guides have come out in recent years, so we encourage you to check them out as well. Here’s one from ThriveGlobal and one from the American Psychological Association.
RACISM, SEXISM, XENOPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, AND TRANSPHOBIA
These are important conversations to have with friends and family. As the Sierra Club has stated before, and will continue to emphasize: “We believe that all people deserve a healthy planet with clean air and water, a stable climate, and safe communities. That means all people deserve equal protection under the law. We all have the right to a life free of discrimination, hatred, and violence.”No one should have to tolerate racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, or transphobia.
These are absolutely environmental issues, and environmentalists absolutely must speak out when they see injustices. For more information about environmental work and anti-racism, please see this brief slide series entitlted “Why Environmentalists Should Be Anti-Racist.”
We also encourage you to seek out resources from The Task Force and Showing Up For Racial Justice to help with these important topics if they come up during your holiday discussions.
CLIMATE DISRUPTION
The good news is that President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris ran on the strongest climate platform in presidential history -- so we don’t have to worry about having a climate-denying president anymore come January 20. But we still have a ton of work to do.
There’s an overwhelming consensus of scientists -- more than 97 percent agree that climate disruption is happening and is caused by humans -- and the impacts already being felt around the world. According to a Gallup poll, more than 62 percent of Americans don’t think the government is doing enough to protect the environment.
We’ve seen record-breaking wildfire and hurricane seasons this year -- again. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, atmospheric warming will reach 2.7°F around 2040 -- just 20 years from now. The famines, floods, heat waves, polar vortexes, wildfires, hurricanes, and tropical cyclones that have dominated the news recently would increase in number and ferocity.
To stop that from happening, we need to reduce emissions very quickly by transitioning from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources. That’s a tall order, but it’s also an opportunity to create millions of good-paying jobs.
Sitting across the table from a climate denier? Check out this FAQ from The Climate Reality Project.
THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION
As we said earlier, it’s exciting that Biden and Harris ran on a strong climate action platform. However, we will still need to hold them accountable for the serious amount of work to be done. We must all continue to organize and mobilize to restore our right to clean air, clean water, and a sustainable, healthy climate.
Together, we hold the power to restore the promise of our democracy and to create our future -- a liveable planet, safe communities, and a democracy “of the people, by the people and for the people,” in which every person and every vote counts.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
We have no shortage of challenges: growing unemployment, environmental injustices, the pandemic, and climate disasters like wildfires and stronger hurricanes. We need a road map to address all of these crises at once, because they’re all interconnected -- our success in addressing one crisis depends on our progress in tackling another. Recognizing that many people are living through multiple crises, our response must be intersectional. (“Intersectionality is simply a prism to see the interactive effects of various forms of discrimination and disempowerment. It looks at the way that racism, many times, interacts with patriarchy, heterosexism, classism, xenophobia — seeing that the overlapping vulnerabilities created by these systems actually create specific kinds of challenges.”)
That’s why people should read up on and support the THRIVE Agenda (Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy). The THRIVE Agenda focuses on specific economic renewal plans to meet the current moment. It outlines policies to build a more just society from the ashes of today’s crises -- one that enables dignified work, healthy communities, a stable climate, and racial, economic, gender, and environmental justice. By rallying behind THRIVE, we can build cross-movement unity and momentum for passage of a bold economic renewal plan in 2021.
COAL
Coal power continues to be on its way out of existence. A total of 26,082 megawatts have been proposed for retirement so far in 2020 -- the largest one-year total in US (and the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign) history and more than double the amount proposed for retirement in 2019. Local grassroots community action has helped retire more than 60 percent of the remaining coal plants in the United States. The decline of coal has resulted in healthier communities, fewer cases of deadly asthma, and less mercury poisoning in our food.
Meanwhile, clean energy use is growing rapidly because, in almost 75 percent of the country, it costs more to operate existing coal plants than to build new wind and solar facilities. The big new clean energy commitments utilities are making to replace coal power for tens of millions of homes promises to create thousands of new jobs and lots of exciting economic opportunities for communities.
DRILLING, FRACKING, AND PIPELINES
The fossil fuel industry’s insatiable drive for bigger profits is threatening our communities, coasts, waters, and public lands. They continue to push for more drilling, more fracking, and more pipelines -- and it doesn’t help that the outgoing Trump administration is doing all it can to support them. Just recently the Trump administration announced it would open the sacred Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling -- ignoring the Indigenous voices in the region and even altering government scientific data to support the move.
Meanwhile, fracked gas pipelines are becoming even more of a risky bet due to increased public opposition and because clean energy can be built much more quickly than pipelines. Just this summer the Atlantic Coast pipeline was canceled due to overwhelming opposition from communities along its planned path -- adding to the mountain of evidence that we do not require fracked gas to meet our energy needs
We the people want clean energy, not more fossil fuel drilling, fracking, and pipeline construction that virtually guarantees more spills, more poisoned waterways, more air pollution, and accelerated climate change. What our country needs is to reduce our dependence on dirty fuels and lead the transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy.
PARKS AND PUBLIC LAND
For many families and friends, the holidays will include some type of outdoor activity -- especially this year. We hope you’ll get outdoors at a local park or green space, and save the national parks for future years. Visiting them could easily spread COVID in rural areas with health care infrastructure that may already be stretched thin.
As you’re enjoying your local nature spots, remember that you’re actually walking through one of our most powerful climate solutions. Conserving public lands can help draw down carbon already emitted into the atmosphere and decarbonize our economy (by keeping all fossil fuels on public lands in the ground). By working with federal agencies on smart land conservation and management practices, we could offset 21 percent of our country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
BORDER WALL
It may be hard for some members of your family to not bring up Trump’s attempts to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. But why should you, as an environmentalist, jump into the fray?
Because the pro-militarization, anti-immigrant agenda is one that inflicts irreversible harm on communities, lands, water, and wildlife. Border walls block the natural flow of water and can cause catastrophic floods of the kind we’ve already seen kill people and protected wildlife.
Construction in the borderlands has damaged Native cultural sites and burial grounds, disrupted lives in border communities, blocked wildlife migration routes, and degraded our public lands. It’s also meant waiving bedrock environmental and health laws -- safeguards that protect people and the planet. These waivers include but aren’t limited to the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which protects Indigenous cultural sites.
CLIMATE MIGRATION
Catastrophic storms, heatwaves, flooding, drought, desertification, wildfires, sea level rise, and other climate-change-induced extreme weather events are increasingly forcing people to leave their homes. Because the number of extreme weather events is increasing exponentially, this number is likely to increase commensurately.
There’s a lot of fear and anxiety over climate migration, with some of it being expressed with barely disguised racial dog whistles. But climate migrants should not be objects of fear or criminalization. They are simply doing what human beings have done for thousands of years: migrating in search of a place where they can survive and build better lives. The people most likely to become climate refugees are usually from the communities that bear the least responsibility for climate change. If we want to solve the climate crisis crisis, we must hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its central role in perpetuating it -- not demonize those who have already lost a home to climate chaos.
People migrate for complex reasons. In many cases, climate disruption is just one part of the story, along with poverty and violence. As we celebrate the mythologized founding of our country, it’s important to remember that many climate refugees come from countries, like Guatemala and Honduras, that have been made poorer and more conflict-ridden because of US intervention.
NO POLITICS, JUST ACTION
When your cousin says they’re “just not really into politics,” you can steer them toward individual actions they can take to go green and make a difference. Sierra magazine’s lifestyle section features tips, advice on sustainable food and drink, and green crafts. They also have a great column, Ask Ms. Green, where people can submit tough questions about green living. If they like to cycle, run, dance, or hike, they can put their passions to use in fundraising: Check out Team Sierra to see some awesome ways they can raise money for the Sierra Club!
I AGREE, BUT WHAT CAN WE DO?
So, you’ve convinced your family that coal isn’t coming back, climate justice is racial justice, and all forms of oppression are interconnected. Great job on that meaningful discussion! But now that they know about all the problems in the world, what are they supposed to do about them? It’s pretty easy to start by taking online actions. They could also attend some virtual local environmental group meetings. They’ll meet other like-minded people who will inspire them to keep working for positive change!