Holidays often bring together family who see each other occasionally. And, many find, taking a walk’s a fine way to catch up on news and hear plans.

Walking side by side dials down the intensity of a conversation by affording it time, motion and only the occasional side-glance, so different from the direct pressure of the face-to-face. Thought develops at a strolling pace. Just so recently, when our nephews joined us for a few days, which featured also a mild and windless stretch of possible weathers. That sent us to the easy walking of Pennellville, where we set out from and returned to the point of public land called Simpson’s.

Along the lightly traveled route, I was walking and talking with Rolando, who will graduate from college in May, and so is full of the future — interviews, locations, horizons. Rolando has the pleasing and rare quality of asking lots of questions and listening carefully to return thoughts. Another rarity: he’s a centrist; he wants to find a place where people can agree.

“So,” he said, “what do you think about climate change?” I looked over to assess just how much he wanted in answer. I have a lot of thoughts, enough to wear the paint off someone’s attention span. True to his nature, he seemed ready to listen. Then, he added, “I’m curious because a lot of my friends think it’s just a natural change.” Where to begin?

As I mulled this, I was taken back to the Dec. 4 meeting of Brunswick’s town council. In the early evening, I tuned into our local cable channel, awaiting the advertised public discussion of our town’s Climate Change Task Force’s recommended targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That meeting, which ran deep into the evening, has been amply reported; it won’t fit into this column. But a few impressions from it can, and they made my conversation with Rolando more interesting.

Brunswick’s task force outlined its recommendation that the town adopt targets that are more aggressive than those set out by the state in 2019 under the banner of Maine Won’t Wait. That initiative aimed 45% reduction of emissions by 2030 and 80% reduction of emissions by 2050. The Task Force hopes for targets of 65% reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050. These targets speak to the urgency that task force members feel.

The meeting’s focus then shifted to the public, to us. What did we think? Anyone wanting to offer comment had three minutes to do so. As the three-minute blocks (many of which were tested for elasticity) crept on, it occurred to me that I was witness to a microcosm of our country’s current convictions and moods. The speakers brought to the microphone opinions about a problem so large as to be a full atmosphere. Did this huge question fit into three minutes? And the answer was, is, of course not.

But what did fit into this small envelope of time were the feelings about the Climate “Crisis,” or “crisis,” brought to the surface. “It’s a complete hoax,” said one early speaker, who was replaced by another who said, “The science is settled,” and that it is on us to respond and mitigate climate change.

Strung between those two poles was a wire of waypoints tending toward one pole or the other. A majority of speakers favored the aspirational targets recommended by the task force. Another smaller but vocal group, not so much. A few from that minority led with their chins, daring the governmental “them” to try to take away their freedoms, or diesel engines.

One climate change doubter offered a point that I think could have been be explored in an effort to find some sort of shared ground. “20,000 years ago,” he began, “this spot was covered by a mile of ice. So climate does change,” and he went on to argue that it is foolish to try to change the climate’s mind (my phrasing).

The speaker was, of course, right about the old ice. Any reading of the climate record over time points to recurrent, large changes — ice ages and meltings, with attendant sea-level decline and rise, e.g. But what spawned these climate changes and how each played forward asks deeper and deeper study.

I emerge from this memory tour and look over to my nephew. I allot myself 3 minutes and offer him this:

We agree that the ice age (most recent of many) was about as different and uninhabitable as one could imagine. No science can unsettle that. But here’s the next point: it is also indisputable that carbon dioxide levels are higher now than they have been in the years since we adopted our habit of burning large stores of fossil fuels, adding a large X-factor that has stimulated this rise.

Which leads to this question for us: Why would we want to add volatility to a climate that is already changeable? And further, why would we want to do this over a short time frame, which is likely to provoke a shift that will be abrupt? Then, life as it is formed and pursued now would have very little time to adapt.

That, to my mind, is an interesting framing that we can talk over; that, perhaps, Rolando can talk over with his friends. It begins with a point of acceptance on each side, a way to set out when so much is unsettled.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick, Maine resident, chair of the town’s Conservation Commission, and a member of Brunswick Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com