It’s something you see every day if you’re following the conversation about climate change. “The poor will suffer the most.”
“The poorest in developing countries” will be hardest and first hit by climate change.
How to “reduce the vulnerability of the poor” through adaptation.
I see tweet after tweet on Twitter about the horrific effects of climate change on the developing world, and on poor people. And it’s tragically true that poor people in developing nations will bear the brunt of climate change and feel the effects earlier than most Americans.
The problem is that talking about poor people in developing nations doesn’t seem to “grab” a lot of us here.
It grabs me, because I am a progressive. It probably grabs you, because you’re a probably a progressive. But it won’t grab a lot of folks in the center and on the right. Heck, there are progressives who will find it easy to ignore a warning about climate change if it challenges them to make personal sacrifices, or get out and vote in a particular way, because of what’s happening to someone in Tuvalu.
Poor people in developing nations are largely invisible to a broad swath of Americans. It’s easy to avoid seeing or thinking about them. Which doesn’t make people who don’t care about poor folks in Bangladesh bad – it just makes them normal.
We’ve all got our own fish to fry. A lot of us, left and right, care a great deal about our own fish, and less about other people’s.
What to do? Please head below the spicy snaggle for more.
If we’re going to do what needs to be done about climate change, which is going to involve collective, massive action before 2020 (according to a report I heard on NPR in 2014, the last year we can take action before it well and truly too late) we all must have our shoulders to the wheel. To that end, those of us who communicate about climate change need to work harder to get everyone to understand that climate change is not just urgent and abstract – it’s personal.
We need to refine our messaging so it’s powerful enough to move people to action. To get people riled up – ready to take to the streets – ready to get out en masse and VOTE for candidates who will get off their duffs, stop hiding behind lies and obfuscation, and take action. We need folks across the political spectrum to feel the same engagement that many progressives already feel about climate change – the same urgency and drive to DO something, and do it NOW.
There’s talk on the left – Bill Nye comes to mind – of the need for a new Greatest Generation. Americans during WWII, they say, pulled together and did things! We need that again!
Nye was addressing millennials (misguided, I think – we olds can’t just sit back and let them do the heavy lifting) about the need to come together and act with a single purpose on the most urgent issue of our day, as Americans came together to do what they could to defeat the Third Reich.
It’s not a bad analogy. But we need to talk about things that make people WANT to act in concert. We need to disseminate good information about climate change’s effects in the here and now.
During WWII it was easy to focus people’s attention on a huge land army crossing Europe and the London Blitz, among other horrors. Americans felt threatened and responded in concrete, collective ways, like holding scrap metal drives and paper drives and saving their kitchen fat for the war effort. (I won’t plunge here into the discussion of what value there was to any of that.)
It’s my “polar bears, penguins, and pie charts” argument all over again. What do we focus on that will resonate as a call to action? What fish are ALL of our fish?
We distance ourselves from climate change when we talk about what will “happen to your grandkids” and “the effects on wildlife in Madagascar” and “tropical islands sinking under the rising seas.” As communicators, it’s necessary to realize that those threats don’t seem real to everyone. We humans ARE NOT WIRED to respond to dangers in the future, or threats over the horizon. So many of us feel very comfortable not thinking about climate change at all.
We’re wired by our evolutionary history to respond to things like “SNAKE!” And “TIGER!” And “FIRE!” We’re wired to respond to immediate threats that pop up and need to be dealt with pronto. We aren’t wired to think “We’re eating a lot of berries and birds here… I wonder what will happen in five years? Will we have to move on if the food runs out?” That’s not our strong suit.
Climate change is already affecting us. We who communicate about it need to connect the dots for people. We need to change it from something remote and far off (whether temporally or geographically) and turn it into a SNAKE!
One hook is money. Talking about poor people in developing nations is talking about money, and how the lack of it can leave you stuck, or stranded, or more vulnerable. But we need to shine a light on how climate change is acting here, in relatively prosperous 21st century America, to make people more vulnerable.
Lots of people are just a paycheck away from financial ruin. Four in 10 of us are one bill away from disaster. That’s nearly half.
Most folks who lived through Hurricane Sandy (some of whom still aren’t back in their homes) probably didn’t think about the connection to climate change. Let’s make it.
Discussions of the current drought in California should ALWAYS include a reference to climate change. It may not be the proximate cause, but it’s a threat multiplier, making things worse.
Let’s talk about insurance. What happens when a heavy downpour – heavier than “normal” because in the new normal, there’s more, wilder weather – floods the basement, and you don’t have flood insurance? Huge bill – unexpected costly repairs – can’t make the car payment… that old familiar death spiral. Pocketbook issue.
What about heat waves? If you live in Seattle where I do, the heat this week is kicking your butt. So let’s connect the dots to income inequality! Someone with enough money to buy an air conditioner isn’t going to mind. They can chill at home, basking in their glorious BTUs of refreshing air con. Someone living paycheck to paycheck? Not so much. No money to buy an air conditioner? You’ll suffer.
Sea level rise? It’s taking out whole swathes of Louisiana and it’s poised to devastate the economy. Work in tourism or fishing? Watch out. You may lose your job.
Infrastructure lost to devastating weather – weather helped to be devastating by climate change – will need to be repaired or replaced. Who will pay? The tax payer, of course, which means… not rich people. Pocketbook issue? Check. Income inequality issue? Check.
Food security. You try hard to feed your family the right things. With produce prices escalating, good food moves further and further out of reach, and cheap, sugary, processed junk remains the only affordable food. Climate change will drive food insecurity, and not just in the developing world.
There’s more. You know what it is if you’ve read this far. Now it's time to get out and start shouting "SNAKE!" If you think you've been droning on too much about climate change, rest assured that on this issue, too much is not enough.
P.S. Vote Blue in 2016!