By Selen Ozturk. Ethnic Media Services
As climate change alters temperatures and weather patterns around the world, it also disrupts our lives socially, politically and spiritually, climate experts shared in a press conference organized by the agency Ethnic Media Services, EMS, which took place on Friday, September 15.
The social cost of climate change
Hannah Hess, associate director of the Climate Impact Lab, based in Denver, Colorado, noted that the financial impact of reducing emissions comes with a social cost, forcing policymakers to divert resources from others. objectives that are crucial, such as increasing access to affordable housing or investing in our educational systems?
The task, broadly speaking, he said, is to "estimate the benefit to society of new limits on policies such as vehicle exhaust emissions and evaluate them, for example, against the cost to the automobile industry and the investment required to enforce that new rule?
Climate Impact Lab projections of climate-related mortality relative to global GDP through 2099 show that the most serious costs are those affecting health.
For example, while mortality costs are projected to account for 1% of California's GDP through 2039, this figure is expected to reach at least 5% in some parts of the State if high emissions continue through 2099.
As another example, Hess discussed heat projections for Orlando, Florida: "From 1986 to 2005, the city experienced approximately three weeks of days with temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit," Hess said. ?By mid-century, there will be 55 days, that is, almost two months of extreme heat. These temperatures aggravate respiratory and cardiovascular conditions and can affect medications.?
The deadly impact of climate change
Climate change refers to long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns, caused primarily by human activities, especially the combustion of fossil fuels.
Consequently, he continued, rising temperatures in Orlando have led to an increase in the death rate of 19 per 100,000 people ?compared to a future world without climate change?to put into context?that is more lethal than accidents of cars, which currently have a rate ofe mortality of 14 per 100,000 in the US?.
Understanding climate change from a spiritual perspective
Jon Christensen, associate professor at the Institute for Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), said that just as climate change is altering our environment, we too are changing the way we view this change and how we perceive ourselves in relation to it.
"The way people think about natural disasters can change over time," he said, giving the Black Death as an example. (black death): When the bubonic plague killed 25 million people in Europe in the 14th century, many considered it a just punishment from an angry God? Climate change and its effects are also increasingly seen not as natural disasters, but as a just punishment from ?Mother Nature? for our sins?
Christensen stated that the concept of climate change "not only has to do with the physical processes that the phrase labels, but is also determined, like other concepts, by our own narratives and values, the stories we tell about the world and about ourselves." themselves and what constitute our identities?
He cited former California Governor Jerry Brown, who ?pointed to the prolonged drought as something people could see and feel in their communities and lives. Based on those stories, he asked people to act, to conserve urban water in 20%, and so they did. I like to call it the California style: Sunny with a chance of an apocalypse?.
Noting the uniquely American centrality of one's position on climate policy in relation to one's overall political identity, he said that much of the polarization between those who believe in climate change and those who don't is due to a doubt deliberately created by the rhetoric disseminated by the public relations campaigns of fossil fuel companies that have followed the methods used by the tobacco industry in order to continue supporting the industry.
Political polarization
Megan Mullin, Faculty Director of the Luskin Center for Innovation at UCLA, explains this polarization: ?Division is the most important feature of climate change policy in the United States. In a nation deeply polarized along partisan lines, no issue divides Democrats and Republicans more than climate change, and as the effects on the climate increase, so does this gap.
However, he said, the implications of this gap are changing: The partisan divide no longer translates into political gridlock, as it did for decades, when the possibility of a majority coalition was largely debatable and "the actions of Democratic presidents when were in power were later revoked by their Republican successors?
Climate change refers to long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns, caused primarily by human activities, especially the combustion of fossil fuels.
One reason for this shift is due to more consistent support for climate action among Democrats themselves, leading to bolder policies by blue states.
Current examples at the federal level are the Inflation Reduction Act and "historical levels of investment in mitigating the effects of climate change." in terms of extreme heat, sea level rise, droughts and floods,” Mullin said.
The future of clean energy expansion may lie in red states, he added, as 38% of US operational clean energy capacity is in Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
Meanwhile, Republicans themselves are more at risk than Democrats from the projected effects of climate change. Thus, even Republican leaders who vocally deny climate change, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, are making historic investments in wetlands and clean water to prevent flooding.
Furthermore, partisanship between support and disapproval of stronger climate policies — both across parties and within the Republican Party itself — is increasingly a matter of generational rather than political differences, Mullin said, with Americans being younger across the spectrum. politicians more likely than older generations to express interest in addressing climate change.
Talking about climate change
Anais Reyes, Head of Exhibitions at the Climate Museum in New York, shared her vision ?from the trenches? that there is support from Americans for climate policy that includes all social and racial classes.
Citing a 2020 study by Yale and George Mason universities, he noted that 66% of Americans are concerned about climate change, but only one in five hear about it regularly, creating what researchers They call it a "spiral of silence." And this creates a feedback loop that fuels inaction. Two-thirds of Americans say the government is doing too little about climate change, but don't we think there's a supermajority?
"This false social reality regarding climate change prevents us from talking about solutions at all scales," says Reyes. ? Do we use art as a starting point to stimulate dialogue, connect people to action, move them away from hopelessness and towards motivation and initiative for action?
He cited an interactive sticker wall in ?Someday, all this? (?Someday All This?) - an exhibition by visual artist David Opdyke that ran from October 2022 to April 2023 - as a recent example of how the Museum is confronting the spiral of silence: ?Each sticker carried a label with a different action, like voting or talking about climate action with friends, and people would write down the ones that resonated the most and stick them on the wall. In the end, we had thousands of stickers spilling over the wall into other parts of the museum, and you could see how each individual's commitment to climate action had a collective and multiplying impact.
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