{"id":82868,"date":"2015-02-19T16:17:21","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T21:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=82868"},"modified":"2015-02-19T16:17:21","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T21:17:21","slug":"climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/19\/climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_82878\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/whitehope.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-82878\" class=\"wp-image-82878\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/whitehope.jpg\" alt=\"WhiteHope\" width=\"600\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/whitehope.jpg 1092w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/whitehope-300x159.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/whitehope-1024x544.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-82878\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the cover of <i>Cartoons Magazine<\/i>, January 1916.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Like everyone else, I am weary of talking about the weather. But it\u2019s not the banality of the talk that bothers me. Talking about weather is as endlessly fascinating as weather itself\u2014even if, nowadays, conversations about the weather are no longer guaranteed to offer refuge from discussions of religion or politics. I\u2019m just sick of how babyish everyone\u2019s being.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, much of the country is experiencing a cold snap. It\u2019s been very chilly for the past few weeks. <em>Because it\u2019s winter<\/em>. People react with indignant surprise to learn that they\u2019ve somehow woken up in a temperate climate that gets cold every year, and that they, personally, are being forced to deal with it. It\u2019s not just that everyone is displaying an unbecoming lack of stoicism\u2014I am <em>not<\/em> referring here to the denizens of <em>The <em>Paris\u00a0Review<\/em><\/em> office, who closed the Spring issue without heat or hot water, <a href=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/p\/zP0Fhjv_8j\/?modal=true\">in their coats<\/a>.) Rather, I hate that it leaves us open to the inevitable taunts of people in sunny climates, or the tiresome\u00a0one-upmanship of those in Canada and Minnesota, who just love an excuse love to show off their thermometers and scoff at our softness.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>When people try to commiserate about the cold, I am noncommittal.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan you believe this cold?\u201d a very nice lady in my building said to me. I wanted to say, Yes, easily, it\u2019s February. But that would have broken the social contract, so instead I said, \u201cI haven\u2019t seen a barefoot dog in over two weeks.\u201d Which was an exaggeration, actually.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Other times, puritanical judgment creeps into my tone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis winter!\u201d someone said on the subway platform. And it was true that it was sleeting outside. But: \u201cIt\u2019s much better than last year,\u201d I said unhelpfully. \u201cAnd it\u2019s worse in Boston.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And every day I grow more openly defiant.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just hate this weather,\u201d said a family friend I ran into at the supermarket. \u201cDon\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like it,\u201d I declared. \u201cI like to feel like we\u2019ve <em>earned<\/em> our spring. Or something,\u201d I added to soften it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>An LA friend of mine has a theory that people who experience year-round sun have no way to really measure the passage of time, which is why they are panicked by aging. Whether or not this is true, I can attest to the fact that vicissitudes do nothing to improve the temper, and any spiritual benefits are outweighed by peevishness\u2014be it at the weather or at other people. But I do think spring will be extra welcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review<em>\u00a0and the <\/em>Daily<em>\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like everyone else, I am weary of talking about the weather. But it\u2019s not the banality of the talk that bothers me. Talking about weather is as endlessly fascinating as weather itself\u2014even if, nowadays, conversations about the weather are no longer guaranteed to offer refuge from discussions of religion or politics. I\u2019m just sick of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[14668,17108,12838,125,17109,791,10033],"class_list":["post-82868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-cliches","tag-climate","tag-conversations","tag-new-york-city","tag-temperature","tag-weather","tag-winter"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>We\u2019re All Sick of Talking About the Weather. And Yet...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on mid-February\u2019s inevitable, and inevitably frustrating, topic of conversation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/19\/climate-change\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Climate Change by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 19, 2015 \u2013 Like everyone else, I am weary of talking about the weather. But it\u2019s not the banality of the talk that bothers me. 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