This column is adapted from Chris Hatch's Zero Carbon Newsletter. Sign up here for columns — and a rundown of stories from CNO and elsewhere — every Sunday in your inbox.

“Why is no one talking about it anymore?” asked the guy cutting my hair a few weeks ago. He meant climate change, as you’ve probably guessed, and there was a sharp edge to his tone, uncharacteristic for the chatty barber. He was worked up because his parents have been struggling to get the ingredients they need for the stall they run in a local food court. They can’t get the right peppers anymore; other ingredients aren’t reliably available or priced for high-end restaurants. The pepper problem cuts a particularly deep cultural wound. And don’t get him started about coffee. 

It’s blindingly obvious to him and his parents that this is all happening because of droughts and floods around the world. Their suppliers tell them so. Their extended families are living through the heat waves and inundations. And, while they don’t have much time for abstractions like climate policy or energy transitions, they’re quietly exasperated that things seem to be spiraling out of control while people are talking about it less and less.

They have every reason to be worried about their livelihoods. And they’re not wrong about the blanket of silence muffling climate concern. But he said another thing that really stuck with me — he felt I was one of the only people he “can even talk to about any of this.”

I couldn’t muster much reassurance on the outlook for droughts and heat waves, but I could assure him that there’s no need to stifle his fears —........

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