When I brought up global warming, he’d often try to comfort me: to wrap me in a hug, cue up an old episode of “Seinfeld,” offer a CBD gummy. I struggled to tell him that I didn’t need anesthesia or answers, I just wanted a relationship where we shared more of the same inquiries. If relationships depend on a shared fantasy of the future, then global warming does more than unsettle our environment — it creates uncertainty in our interpersonal ones. This time, I’m swallowing my fear of sounding too anxious and am talking about climate change early on. But I’ve found that talking about how global warming affects our lives, however casually, becomes a sort of canary in the coal mine for learning about a person’s broader beliefs and behaviors.

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