My father loved to play poker. When I was a small boy, I would sit on his lap and watch him play with his friends on Friday nights. He often won, and my job was to count and stack his new chips. I loved my job, especially the part at night’s end when he would give me 25 cents for my piggy bank. Only later did I find out that my father loved playing not so much for the money but for statistics. After each card was dealt––the flop, the turn, the river––he knew his odds of winning the hand and bet accordingly.
A few years ago, I was working on a novel and I was stuck on a scene in which the female protagonist, Samantha, enters into a long conversation with the male protagonist, Ben, and his friends about polarization in America. Writing about polarization is not easy in a novel, but it was critical given the story’s overall arc. In the scene, Samantha, Ben, and Ben’s friends discuss multiple aspects of polarization, but I was stuck on one particular part of the conversation, the one about the climate crisis.
As I often do when stuck, I slept on it. That night I dreamed about my father, poker, and statistics. I won’t get into the details of the dream here, but the gist of it was pretty simple and transformative––focus more of the climate conversation on statistics and less on facts. The next day I deleted the climate crisis portion of the scene and started again. Here’s the short version of what I came up with, as told from Samantha’s point of view:
“Do you all believe in climate change?” I asked. Ben and Scott did, but the others expressed some skepticism, with Matt an outright climate denier. “So, I could give you all kinds of data supporting climate change, but Matt, you probably would say it isn’t settled science and would point to a scientist or two who doesn’t believe in it. Am I right?”
“Yep. There are plenty who don’t believe.”
“That’s why I like to talk about grandchildren and percentages. You all have grandchildren?” I asked. They all did, and some took out their wallets and showed me pictures. I hadn’t seen all of Ben’s grandchildren before and was surprised to find he had twelve of them. For each of the men, there was joy in the showing and, in Ben’s case, so many grandchildren that I couldn’t avoid a pang of loss. “So, when I think about climate change, I think about the probability of leaving a healthy planet to our grandchildren. On our current course, ninety-seven percent of the world’s climate scientists say we won’t leave our grandchildren a healthy planet, and only three say we will.”
“That’s not true,” Matt said.
“No, it is,” Ben said. “I’ve done the research.”
“So, hear me out,” I said. “You guys have probably placed a bet or two in the past. Am I right? I bet some of you would have even placed a long-shot bet. But the question is, would you do that if the lives of your grandchildren were at stake and ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists were betting against you?”
“I still don’t believe your numbers,” Brian said.
“Well, they’re not mine, but okay. What numbers do you believe?”
“Fifty-fifty.”
“Okay, let’s go with that. Would you place a fifty-fifty bet against your grandchildren? On the current path, the human race is on track to go extinct in a hundred years. And for what? To maintain your current lifestyle? To let rich guys get richer?”
The conversation went quiet, and I could sense I’d gotten to them, at least a little.
A year later I published the novel but kept coming back to this climate scene. To bring about the change I believed in, millions of conversations were needed, preferably with fewer absolutes and more percentages. That’s when I decided to write a whole novel about the climate crisis. I spent three years writing and researching the book, and I’ve learned a great deal, most of which I plan to share in this column over the next year. I hope some of my learnings will resonate with each of you and even invoke a conversation or two. Next time, I’m going to write about the basics of the climate crisis. Throughout the course of the year, I hope to hear from many of you. All feedback is welcome.
Rich Marcello is a novelist and a member of the Climate Initiative Committee. In writing his latest novel, he spent several years researching the climate crisis.
