More Than Scientists: Making Climate Change Personal
April 16, 2015
One of the barriers to effective climate communication is getting people to understand what’s at stake for them if planetary changes are not mitigated.
I’ve posted before on the “More than Scientists” campaign that is working in video media to humanize the science and scientists behind climate change. Here are a couple that present scientists in informal settings simply talking about how climate change has already impacted them personally, and how it concerns them about those impacts multiplied in the lives of billions of other human beings.
Americans need to make the connection. By a long way, they are not seeing a personal impact from climate change.
Residents of more than half of U.S. counties aren’t worried about climate change (1,951 of 3,143, or about 62 percent, including Santa Rosa, Florida, and Ashland County, Wisconsin). Worse: There wasn’t even one county in which a majority of respondents believe global warming will harm them personally. In sharp contrast, majorities in 3,122 of 3,143 counties (more than 99 percent) do agree that future generations are at risk, with those responding in the affirmative hailing from places like Sheridan County, Wyoming—in the heart of coal country.
I’ll continue to post these from time to time.
April 16, 2015 at 8:41 am
Alan Rusbridger wrote a column in the science magazine Nature yesterday: Scientists must speak up on fossil-fuel divestment
April 16, 2015 at 3:11 pm
What the public needs is to have their noses rubbed in it. This all became personal for me when we got a huge amount of snow this winter, and it was still in our yard until two weeks ago. I could also mention that temperatures were regularly 10 to 15 degrees below normal for almost everyday during the winter. I live in coastal Connecticut, not Alberta, and I’ve never seen anything even close to this.
Actually, the public may be getting their noses rubbed in it. The Southwest is turning into a desert as well as California. How many more floods does Florida need to see that something’s wrong? Tornados in March? Killer heat waves? Etc. This is not going to happen. It’s already here.