Renaming Climate Change

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Thursday November 29, 2007 · 1:01 PM PST

2007/11/29 · 13:01

When it comes to the public's reaction to an issue, we all know the term for an issue is critical. Bush showed us that with his policies of "Healthy Forests" and "Clear Skies." From the moment either of those pieces of legislation got their name, people's reactions to them were a foregone conclusion. How many people would be willing to vote or demonstrate against bills with names like those?

So let's face it. Tthe term for what we're doing to the planet's climate really needs a makeover. It used to be called the "Greenhouse Effect" but that name went out of favor when it became obvious through market research that laypeople weren't really sure what it meant. It gave no vivid image aside from that of healthy growing plants and a lot of glass. Not exactly accurate or good at motivating people to try to stop it.

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Which term do you prefer?

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Which term do you prefer?

Climate Disruption

9 votes

Climate Instability

4 votes

Climate Change

11 votes

Greenhouse Effect

2 votes

Global Warming

12 votes

Damn We've Screwed Up

29 votes

Building Incentives for Building Green

AudreySchulman

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Thursday November 01, 2007 · 12:20 PM PDT

2007/11/01 · 12:20

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When it comes to climate disruption, most people worry about the effect of their driving. They assume that's where they're doing the most damage. However if you're an average American, your home emits as much as your car. If you add in your portion of the office building you work in, the store you shop at, etc. you can understand that badly designed and maintained buildings are where 48% of this country's carbon emissions come from.

Compounding the damaging amount of energy that buildings use is the fact that they last so long. Any bad decisions we make in construction today will probably still be standing 50 years from now, leaking carbon. If we want to have any chance at all of decreasing our emissions 80% by 2050 (as the scientists say we have to do to avoid the worst parts of climate disruption), we have to start pushing now to make buildings more efficient. We all have to start building and renovating to waste less energy.

AudreySchulman

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Saturday October 13, 2007 · 8:29 AM PDT

2007/10/13 · 08:29

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From the day my first child was born, I began to take global warming personally.

Before that, climate change had seemed a horrible but distant cataclysm, so difficult to imagine. However with the birth of Corey, this future became mine to hold. It snuggled into my arms, fragrant and vulnerable. Every fiber of my being demanded I do all I could to protect it.

Because Corey was born in 2000, all the scientific assessments (droughts, disease, forest fires, etc.) were all too easy to translate into how old he'd be. 2020 would be when he was in college. 2040 might be when he was trying to raise children. Etc. I tried to imagine him attempting to live out a normal life, finding a job and love, while (in the words of James Hansen, this country's pre-eminent climate scientist) the world started its process of becoming essentially "a different planet."

AudreySchulman

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Sunday March 11, 2007 · 8:24 AM PDT

2007/03/11 · 08:24

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On a beach along the Hudson Bay, I once snuck up too close to a polar bear and only realized my danger when she rose to her feet and looked at me, 30 feet away. Polar bears are the largest land carnivore, weighing three times more than the average lion. If she charged me, there was little chance I'd make it to my truck. An animal like this could run down a galloping horse.

For several years before this trip I'd been writing a novel about polar bears and the research had culminating in my taking a trip up to the arctic to stand here openmouthed, facing a carnivore who on four feet stood almost as tall as I did on two. From my research, I knew during the summer and fall, there wasn't enough sea ice for the bears to walk cross the ocean to get to the ringed seals they eat. With a creature as large as these bears, there aren't a lot of other animals around that could satisfy their hunger. During the ice-free months, the bears lost on average a third of their weight. At this moment, it was October and the animal standing in front of me was bony with starvation.

AudreySchulman

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Thursday February 15, 2007 · 10:06 AM PST

2007/02/15 · 10:06

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Last time I went in for a check-up, the nurse got angry. She said she'd kill for my blood pressure. She was breathing a little heavy, weighed a lot more than I did and, personally, I didn't take her threat lightly.

"Hey," I said. "It's not like I was born with freaky great genetics. Three of my grandparents died of heart-related problems."

Her eyes narrowed at me and she started flipping back through my chart and said, "Damn it, you also haven't gained any weight in 20 years." Now her face got a little red. "What's your secret?" She asked. "No fats? No carbs?"

"No car," I said. I held up my bike helmet. "No money."

AudreySchulman

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Wednesday December 20, 2006 · 12:44 PM PST

2006/12/20 · 12:44

Undoing Global Warming (Part II)

When I went to high school in the seventies, cigarettes were the most heavily advertised consumer product in the country. Then everyone smoked: in restaurants, bars, parties, in pediatrician’s offices. For hours after you hung out with other people, you could press your nose against your skin and there was the stale stink of human interaction. Now, hardly anyone smokes. What happened and what successful strategies from that fight can we use to help us fight climate disruption?

The change with smoking first started when the Surgeon General began publishing reports about the dangers of this addiction. Following this deluge of scientific information came the lawsuits. During these cases, the tobacco executives were shamed as all the strategies and lies they’d used were revealed in court. Memos were shown with the executives’ names on them. The memos explained how to muddy the public’s understanding of nicotine addiction and lung cancer, and how to attract new users, especially children.

AudreySchulman

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Thursday December 07, 2006 · 7:46 AM PST

2006/12/07 · 07:46

(Undoing Climate Change - Part I)

It's finally happened. According to a 2006 Pew Research poll, most Americans are convinced global warming is something to be worried about. And how much they're worried is increasing rapidly. An MIT report found that climate change is now the most important environmental issue for Americans, dramatically up from its sixth place position three years ago. Even if you hadn't observed any opinion change in talking to neighbors, you might have noted a few other facts: that two climate-change movies came out this year ("An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Great Warming"), and that newspaper articles on the subject no longer automatically interview the climate skeptics, and that even the Bush Whitehouse and MobilExxon have finally admitted that humans are warming the planet. Perhaps it was Hurricane Katrina that blew away much of America's remaining doubt.

AudreySchulman

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Monday November 13, 2006 · 7:12 AM PST

2006/11/13 · 07:12

The scientists, the experts on climate, they are doing their best to explain.

Over and over they call news conferences, stand in front of the cameras and speak into the microphones. They state with all the clarity and import they can muster that in the next century the global temperature will increase by at least 6 degrees Fahrenheit (when reading science papers, don't forget it's all metric). Then they survey the reporters, expecting to see shock and fear.

Instead the reporters wait, pencils in hand, for the newsworthy part.

AudreySchulman

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Sunday August 20, 2006 · 6:30 PM PDT

2006/08/20 · 18:30

It was a hot July day in 1944. The Barnum and Bailey circus was in Hartford, Connecticut. Filling the world's biggest tent were over 8,000 people, mostly children with their mothers, watching the Flying Wallendas step out on the high wire.

Then the southwest tent wall caught fire.

Psychologists who study people's reactions to disasters talk about the difficulty of breaking out of normal behavior patterns. Although we all know we're supposed to run from a fire, in an actual emergency we simply don't believe this is real. We don't want to embarrass ourselves by running screaming from a hoax or misperception. Dulled from a lifetime of safety, we glance out of the corners of our eyes to see how others are reacting. Of course, they're struggling to look calm too. Read More

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