In my Jeep Liberty my mother, grandfather, and I journey across the 25.3 miles of farmland between his cabin and the nearest grocery store. From the back seat I watch the tall, swaying, brown-tinted grasses blend with the algae-stricken wooden fences of pasture. Clipping down Mud Pike the fields melt into one mossy-colored meadow reaching out to the horizon. Though it's late December we ride with the windows down. Most years, December in the Somerset region of Pennsylvania is a formidable season of below-zero temperatures and eight-to-10 inches of snow. At a crisp 48 degrees we enjoy the cold while we can, burrowing our hands and chins into the warmth of quilted ranch coats and thick cotton flannels. The breeze invades the car through the open windows and bites at the white of my eyes and the edges of my ears.
Over the ease of a hill the familiar sight of the Huckabee’s barn emerges, spotted with bare oak peeking out from behind chips of peeling red paint. I image their silo filled with thousands of cobs of corn crop before I remember they planted soybeans this year—acres upon acres of them. They were to promise the best dividend. The tree line beyond the barn finally reached the point in the season that it failed entirely to separate the farmland from the abandoned site of Corsa Coal just beyond. The mine and the farm comingled. Out the car window it was one continuous scene of grassy pastures, barn, barren, muddy fields, and tree line—bits of crawler loaders, skid steers, backhoe loaders, and excavators appearing amid heaps of coal scrap colored like the tips of number-two pencils.
My grandfather points from the front seat, “That’s a mine up there, been shut down this year.” He has said this the last six weeks, but my mom and I acknowledge it like new information. His form engulfs the space of the car—his head gracing the ceiling of the vehicle and his knees resting as high as the dashboard—he commands that amount of attention. “A lot of people are finding themselves out of work. A lot of people up here aren’t happy with the EPA.”
Six weeks taught me that this is where the speech ends. Having fulfilled my minimal part I sit back into the seat of the car and begin again to focus on the landscape and appreciate the cool of the air.
“I have a question for you, Katie.”
Oh, crap. I sit up again, my knees entering into the back of my mother’s seat. I see her eyes bulge in the rear view mirror. The back of my neck is suddenly hot.
“Do you…do your professors…what’s their take on climate change?”
Well, that’s a new one. My eyes squint as my brows furrow and my cheeks rise in a weak smile. My nostrils flare as I pull back my head and give myself a double chin. And before I know it my policy of even-toned, one-word answers blows out the window with the wind and I’m answering, in my most “what are you even talking about, what rock have you been living under?” judgmental tone. “Excuse me, what?”
“Do they believe in climate change?”
Do. They. Believe. In. Climate. Change.
“Yes, Grandpa. They believe in climate change.”
“Good,” he says, “I think that’s for the best.”
While I judged my grandfather on his question of “believing” in climate change, he is not alone. That lays the problem. In the United States, there still exists a rather staunch divide in those who believe in climate change and those who think it’s a hoax. Where the line of who truly considers climate change a hoax and those who falsely publicize that stance as a way of safeguarding big business industrial practices is blurred, the disparity is still shocking. One need not look any further than presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s recent discussions with NPR for an example of the American who does not believe in climate change.
While this divide is crippling to domestic policy, it is leaving an even larger footprint on international policy—almost as large as the United States carbon footprint, but not really. At the Paris UN Climate Change Conference earlier this month, President Obama made the statement, “Everybody else is taking climate change really seriously. They think it's a really big problem." This statement not only acknowledges the split in the stances of those living in the United States, but also the disparity between the United States and, essentially, the rest of the world.
"You travel around Europe, and you talk to leaders of governments and the opposition, and they're arguing about a whole bunch of things. One thing they're not arguing about is whether the science of climate change is real and whether we have to do something about it," he said, as President Obama noted in his speech at the Paris UN Climate Change Conference.
No country in the world produces more carbon emissions than the United States, one of the largest sources of climate change, yet the United States remains an outlier in the “belief” in climate change.
For proof of climate change I highly recommend Pennsylvanians go outside and enjoy the seventy-degree weather amid their Winter Holiday celebrations and, perhaps, looks towards the science of NASA. Climate Change is the issue large enough that over 200 countries sent representatives and officials to discuss how to go about repairing the damages, not an imaginative state that rests among the ranks of unicorns, elves, and various other holiday-themed creatures.
