(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) For the necessary chemistry that goes into a forming a long-term relationship, key factors typically include a background in common, shared values, physical attractiveness, personality and social and economic status.
For a Portland, Oregon, writer, climate-change alarmism, or as she puts it, “climate compatibility,” however, could be a first-date dealmaker or breaker.
That writer, Erica Berry, indicated that she is back on the dating scene after breaking up with her boyfriend, a seemingly well-meaning companion who apparently was too chill, as it were, about her apparent obsession with global warming.
In an guest essay for the New York Times, Berry further explained that addressing a looming environmental apocalypse is now an important part of her screening process for a potential mate.
“This time, I’m swallowing my fear of sounding too anxious and am talking about climate change early on,” she asserted.
“After all, it is hard to fall in love with a person if we are not also falling in love with the future we want to create together.”
Berry went to clarify that “I don’t approach these conversations with an agenda or as a quiz. 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. How black-and-white they see the world, how they view their role in the community, how they engage with science and systemic inequality.”
First dates can be awkward under the best of circumstances and even when people are on their best behavior, which usually includes politely avoiding controversial or depressing topics.
Yet in the scenario Berry outlined, climate, coronavirus and identity politics are all fair game for discussion.
“The hydra of Covid-19 and climate disaster has given us a collective experience of loss. Though effects are magnified by social and racial inequity, nobody has been immune,” she wrote.
“Every first date I’ve been on has included a conversation about the pandemic, because we all have a story about how we made it through,” she maintained about the topics up for discussion.
Berry claimed that singles using the OkCupid dating app last year supposedly listed climate change in their profiles as their number-one concern.
“I don’t think those daters just want a partner who believes in global warming: We want someone willing to grapple with it, to do the inconvenient work of reimagining our own lives in the face of it.”
Reacting to the guest Times article, Washington Free Beacon senior writer Andrew Stiles quipped that “At least one woman in Portland won’t date you unless you enjoy deep conversations about our planet’s future and share her crippling climate anxiety. Conduct yourselves accordingly.”
Stiles also pointed out that, in general, very few liberals who virtue signal about climate change on social media and vote for that agenda “would ever be willing to make the sort of meaningful personal sacrifices environmental extremists want to impose on the general public.”
