(Convincing) Climate Change Communication: Actions Louder Than Words

Though I spend a lot of time talking about climate change and fire with students and the public, I have found that convincing farmers and other agriculturalists can be more challenging. Of course, this reticence is not uniform across the globe as many farmers in South and Southeast Asia are adapting agricultural practices now because climate change is no longer psychologically distant. But within the U.S., it can be challenging.

For many years, I tried to convince me father - a Jack-of-all-trades including a farmer, logger, and lumber grader - that climate change is real. I spent a lot of time trying to convince him that it was happening, basically since I really first learned about climate change around 18 years of age. It just so happens that I am from one of the few climate change refuges in the southeastern United States. This means, ‘global weirding’ was not observed by the local population until much later in my and my parents’ lives. So how did I do it? Not by talking to his ear off or arguing. But by showing.

Like many good stories, this one involves a peach.

Setting: On top of a mountain inside of a National Forest in eastern Kentucky is a small mixed crop-livestock farm. This farm is high enough to be the local 'snow line', i.e., when there is snow - which doesn't happen every winter - the precipitation is frozen even when it is rain in the valleys and bottomlands below. So, the micro-climate is a bit colder than its latitude.

How it started: My older sister brought my parents a peach tree from Georgia - St. Mary's, Georgia to be exact, literally the Florida-Georgia Line - to plant on the farm. Our father guffawed and 'ahh shucks' around for a bit, saying it wouldn't grow on top of the mountain. “Too cold,” he said.

Now, under normal climatic conditions, he would know. He has a lot of traditional ecological knowledge of the mixed mesophytic hardwoods of the Appalachian Mountains and Cumberland Plateau. He had led selective logging for decades (and drug us kids along with him). As a trained lumber grader, he can tell you how much lumber a single tree or a stand of trees will produce, exact board lengths, volume to ship, and price. Not bad for someone without formal education. Suffice to say, man knows his trees. And which crops will grow.

Climate teaching moment: Being the youngest, I asked if he would plant the tiny Georgia peach tree with me. He agreed.

How it’s going: Wouldn't you know it... The Georgia Peach prospered. I mean, like, REALLY prospered. A little too well. At an elevation, aspect, and microclimate that it shouldn't. Or at least wouldn’t if climate change wasn’t happening. Planting a tree convinced my father that climate change is real. Of course, this means that he has told others about this peculiar tree and how it must be climate change.

CODA: The peach tree, and its offspring, produced so much fruit that it fattened up the free range hens and chicks real nice. Too nice. Because fat chicks attract... foxes, coyotes, and copperheads. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

[Disclaimer: Images used in are from Unsplash. Thumbnail: photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash.]