In our divisive modern era, many people are losing family and friends over politics and the so-called culture war. Less common is ending relationships over climate change — but it does happen. Areej Shaikh is estranged from her first cousin, a man who stubbornly denies that humans are causing climate change — even as his livelihood collapses from global heating.
A 33-year-old head of content strategy and team lead at a digital marketing agency, Shaikh lives in Pakistan, one of the countries most severely impacted by climate change. Like the rest of that nation’s roughly 250 million inhabitants, Shaikh is enduring the unprecedented heat waves and extraordinarily destructive rains fueled by rising temperatures, but her climate change-related suffering is known as great as that of the 50 percent of Pakistanis who work in agriculture. The farming industry is being hit especially hard by fluctuating weather systems, but this has not swayed Shaikh’s denialist cousin, who lives in the countryside and owns his own farms and irrigation lands.
