Could you be with a partner who doesn't believe in climate change?

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DH doesn't really think it's all that bad. He thinks we should be recyling more and caring for the planet as makes sense and is just the right thing to do - but that climate change as a disaster is an exaggeration and not based in science. And that people are utilising it for their own agenda, woke brigade & so on.

We have young kids.

AIBU to find this position increasingly problematic?

People are going to say people are allowed different opinions but he seems geniunely unconcerned about future of planet for our kids - and I find that hard to swallow.

The 97% (which is outdated these days, more like 99 or 100%) refers to climate scientists, tbf, and I don’t think anyone has claimed their DH is one of those.

Would people really end an otherwise happy life and marriage over this?! Insanity! How often do you sit and discuss it?! As long as he does the right things e.g. recycle and limit car journeys, how on earth can it be such a massive issue? My husband is more concerned with climate change than I am, I am more concerned over other issues. Neither of us act like assholes and we manage to stay married.

woke brigade

I don't think I could be in a relationship with someone who used this phrase in a non-ironic way. IME people who bang on about everything being too "woke" nowadays are usually trying to justify some pretty abhorrent views...climate change denialism being just one of them. It's not unreasonable to want to share your life with someone who also shares your values.

Yes, easily, because he's right ! Its all propaganda and alarmist nonsense.

"Overpopulation" isn't the problem people think it is.

Hear Hear. At last someone who doesn’t believe the scare tactics were being fed constantly.

The climate has been in constant flux for 4.6 billion years. I'm sure he doesn't deny that, you mean he's not impressed by the hysteria that we're causing it. Give it a few years, this nonsense will pass - the coming ice age, hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, global warming - all these terrors were quietly abandoned. Climate change is a good one, I'll give them credit for that, because it covers any weather event they want to use. Give it time, though, nothing will have changed on Earth by the time you die, the cycles are way too long.

One who isn’t brainwashed you mean.

Exactly, got loads on the leash, disturbingly though youngsters who are impressionable. Hook line and sinker

Most of the earths history humans couldn't live

I mean if you want that for you and your family fine but you'll have to work hard to convince me that you are happy to boil

Yes because I'm tolerant enough to know that people can have different opinions and still be friends.

This is the typical arrogance of humans that the climate change anxiety is really about - its all about saving humans

It wont matter one jot to the 'planet' if humans die out. The only issue is that the problems with climate may cause a lot of other species to die out

There have been lots of species who have come and gone and species in the future who will come and go. The human centric view, particularly confined to around a couple of thousand years of our inhabitation of earth but also of earths history is so blind. The earth is millions and millions of years old, it will continue again for millions and millions again, with or without us.

Speak for yourself but I'd quite like myself and my family to be able to live our lives happily

I think it’s pretty daft to say “all the predictions have been proved wrong”.

’Predictions’ are projections of what will likely happen if current trends continue, and no action is taken.

While there’s much to be done, the world HAS taken significant steps to mitigate the severity of climate change. When active steps are taken to avoid the worst case scenario predictions, obviously it’s much less likely that the worst case will come to pass.

This is precisely why current predictions are not, in fact, as dire as they were 20 years ago.

They’re still pretty bad of course.

You sound unhinged. What difference are you going to make? I don’t believe in it either. Just seems like another guise to transfer wealth but everyone is entitled to their own opinion

Simple answer is no & I would question their general grasp of reality 🙄
Climate change is a natural process BUT the issue here is that what should take 1000’s of years is being sped up by human activity.
The science is not wrong & if they are so blinkered we clearly don’t have the same values about the world & realistic view of the future of our planet. My child 11 & I fear for what her life will be like in 10, 20 & 30yrs time!

Er, no. It really isn't.

Personally NO
just can’t be doing with ignorance

Well, he's right about several things. The green agenda of the climate emergency makes money for capitalism (and it looks woke) and also keeps the majority of the population in check - less travel, less mobility, less ability to live as we do now (doubt any Just Stop Oil idiots have ever tried washing double sheets in the bath and getting them dry over a parafin fire). The main problem is not climate change - which is a natural process and has happened for millions of years - but pollution, which the elite are a lot less happy about dealing with as it costs money rather than making it.

Most green agenda ideas, e.g. windmills, electric cars, rely on using far more problematic materials and methods than oil or gas or coal. They need cobalt and lythium which are mined by slave labour in e.g. the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and used by China, a country with poor human rights which is expanding its capitalism across the continent of Africa and through India - with predictable reductions in human rights and safety in places where those are not great anyway.
If we want to save the planet and humanity (and other life-forms) then we must tackle pollution, move away from neo-liberal individualism (the 'me first' culture) and capitalism. These ideas are not popular with capitalist elites. I'd stick with your DH and listen to what he is suggesting and also read round the subject e.g. on woke capitalism, the effects of pollution (e.g. where are all the insects, the sea creatures - when did you last see a multitude of razor shells on a beach after a storm?) and also the effects of identity politics and social justice warriors (suggest Katie Roche 'IDiot' for one, but a trawl of left wing thinking, dealing with real problems like poverty, health care etc. will also lead to useful reading).

NB - I note some posters think that lack of intelligence leads to climate change denial and also voting for Brexit. I voted for Brexit and am by no means lacking in intelligence. I have no idea why so many mumsnetters like the EU, a neo-liberal capitalist cartel with policies that erode wages for those outside the professional classes (and later, those too) nor why they lack understanding of the problem of giving away the sovereignty of the UK parliament without asking the people first. I do not deny climate change, note, I point out it's natural. Also we do not know how the earth or the sun 'works'. Fiddling with what we do not understand properly is dangerous - you do all know we are carbon life-forms, reliant on CO2 to make the planet habitable btw?

What do you want him to do about it? Is he superman?

I'm with DH.

No one has explained why climate change must be solved by the little people and not corporations/importers/exporters/airlines and so on.

The little people are being put in their box, meanwhile the participants of the UN COP summits travel the world to the latest destination where they will tell us what we have to do, not what they actually do.

There is sone back to front thinking here

Climate change people are not out for profit and aren't looking to use climate change to screw people

Exactly the opposite
The reason we still have rising emissions and limited investment in solutions is because it doesn't favor the rich

The rich have much more lifestyle changes to make than the average person

It reduces business profits because you can't keep selling people more and more stuff, things need to last

The investment required has long term benefits only and businesses and governments want short term returns

And the rich assume that if anyone survives it will be them

It's also why messaging is so hard - because it's the rich that own the press and they are not interested in motivating you to make changes

That's why so many think it's not real or not as bad or impossible for you to solve - because that suits the rich and powerful

I had to break up a long term relationship over this. She believed in it, whereas all the science says it's just a normal temperature cycle which will reverse in due course, anything else is a religious view.

"Little people" need to come together because by coming together those who control things get scared -

If they knew they would lose the election unless they had believable environmental policies then they would have them

If businesses knew you and everyone else were always choosing ethical products they would change their tune

We have the power but only if United

My husband isn’t as bright as I thought he was when I got together with him. He reads silly things on the internet and believes them till we talk them over, and he still says things like “stupid woman” if he is criticising another driver (who is sometimes actually a man). He does understand climate change and the disaster we’re heading for, and we agree the earth will be healthier once we humans are gone and forgotten. I try to ignore the more stupid things he says because I do love him but if he stuck to and kept arguing about racist or mysogynist views we’d probably have to live apart.