Serious question, how do you even start talking about climate action with someone who thinks it's all a hoax?

Ran into my neighbor Dave at the gas station last Tuesday and he spent 10 minutes ranting about how solar panels are a scam before I could even get a word in, has anyone else had luck getting through to someone like that without just walking away?

4 comments

4 Comments

river_thompson19d ago

Jumped in with my own Dave experience once, asked him to show me the one solar panel he thought was most crooked so I could google it. Turns out he had no real specific scam, just a vague grudge from a bad YouTube rabbit hole. Your mileage may vary, but pushing for that one tiny detail got him to admit he hadn't actually looked at any numbers.

charlie19820d ago

Man, the whole "solar panels are a scam" thing hits close to home. My uncle Bill went on a similar rant at Thanksgiving, so I know the struggle. What finally worked for me was just asking him straight up, "Okay, what SPECIFIC scam do you think is going on?" Like, asking one small question about a single detail. It got him to stop yelling and actually name a real concern, which then let me pull up a quick YouTube video on my phone showing someone's actual lower electric bill. You don't gotta win the WHOLE argument in one go. Just find that one tiny crack in their wall of certainty and poke at it.

abbyhall5d ago

My buddy Tim had the same thing happen with his neighbor Frank, who swore solar was a pyramid scheme. Tim just asked him straight up "Okay so who's the pyramid boss then, and how much did they personally take from you?" That stopped Frank cold because he realized he was repeating a buzzword without actually knowing what a pyramid scheme was compared to a normal company selling a product.

caleb_bell520d ago

Yeah that's a solid play. Poking at that one crack is way smarter than trying to bulldoze the whole wall. And once they give you that one specific thing, you can usually find a real simple counter. Like my buddy's dad was convinced solar companies are just trying to get your roof replaced on your dime. So my buddy found a video of some guy walking through his own install, showing the brackets and how they don't actually mess with the shingles. One video, not a whole debate. That one tiny piece of proof did more than an hour of arguing ever could. You just gotta find the one little lie they're holding onto and show them it doesn't hold up.