Solving Climate Change County By County
The idea of climate change is so vague and daunting that many people tend to avoid it altogether. The problem is that avoiding the issues only makes them more difficult to tackle. Scientists and psychologists have long been analyzing ways to get the public more involved in understanding the risks of climate change and helping to combat them.
Why aren’t people more interested in learning about climate change?
Despite the clear environmental threats, many people still believe that climate change is something “far away in time and space,” according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Even though surveys show that 61 percent of Americans say climate change poses a risk for Americans, only 43 percent actually believe that it will affect them personally.
The problem is the natural human tendency to put up psychological barriers that justify inaction, otherwise known as denial. If a problem seems too formidable, our brain simply shuts it out so that we can focus on other more manageable things.
Besides preventing us from working towards the larger picture of climate change, denial can also make us unprepared for immediate threats to our safety. For instance, in August, Cameron Parish, a community of just 7,000 people in western Louisiana, was ravaged when Hurricane Laura tore through their town. But, they shouldn’t have been surprised. The community is in the highest risk level for hurricanes. Unfortunately, only 29 percent of its residents thought climate change would affect them personally, according to the Yale Program.
How can we help people understand the urgency of climate change?
The magnitude of climate change makes it difficult for the average person to internalize. But what if we change the perspective? Instead of considering how to tackle events that occur across the country or world, what if we made things smaller? More local?
Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist and lecturer at Yale explained that, “There is a lot of evidence behind the idea that personalizing climate change and helping people understand the local impacts are more important than talking about how it’s influencing melting glaciers or talking about wildfires when you live in Ohio.”
That’s exactly what Pulitzer Prize winning author, Stuart Thompson and data journalist, Yaryna Serkez have sought out to do.
Combining data from Four Twenty Seven, a company that assesses climate risk for financial markets, along with a map of the United States, they were able to create an interactive map of the climate risks each county faces.
What did the researchers discover?
One of the most useful insights from the interactive map is how much the issues overlap. For instance, the data showed that in much of California, water stress was the biggest risk, which of course, leads to droughts and wildfires. But those very same regions can also face extreme rainfall, which feeds the vegetation that causes worsening wildfires.
They also discovered that across the country:
169 million people have a high risk of water stress
104 million people have a high risk of hurricanes
94 million people have a high risk of extreme rainfall
92 million people have a high risk of heat stress
22 million people have a high risk of sea level rise
7 million people have a high risk of wildfires
Understanding the climate risks your particular region of the country faces can help you know what legislation to support and what actions to take to move from denial to action.