Climate Change and Communities

This curation of articles focuses on the way people in communities are experiencing climate change.

Temperature rising

Brian Kennedy, a research associate focusing on science and society at Pew Research Center writes that, in a new survey, the Center asked people who said climate change is affecting their local community to describe those effects in an open-ended format.

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Roughly six-in-ten Americans (59%) say climate change is currently affecting their local community either a great deal or some, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Some 31% of Americans say the effects of climate change are affecting them personally, while 28% say climate change is affecting their local community but its effects are not impacting them in a personal way.

Patrick Barkham reports on the concerns of Mayer Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist, who says accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it. Mayer Hillman is amazed that our thinking rarely stretches beyond 2100.

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“This is what I find so extraordinary when scientists warn that the temperature could rise to 5C or 8C. What, and stop there? What legacies are we leaving for future generations? In the early 21st century, we did as good as nothing in response to climate change. Our children and grandchildren are going to be extraordinarily critical.”

Our society’s failure to comprehend the true cost of cars has informed Hillman’s view on the difficulty of combating climate change. But he insists that I must not present his thinking on climate change as “an opinion”. The data is clear; the climate is warming exponentially. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the world on its current course will warm by 3C by 2100. Recent revised climate modelling suggested a best estimate of 2.8C but scientists struggle to predict the full impact of the feedbacks from future events such as methane being released by the melting of the permafrost.

On a more hopeful note, Bruce Mohl writes that Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington said putting a price on carbon “is the single most effective thing a state government can do to fight” climate change. He said the vote on carbon pricing makes the Senate of Massachusetts the first legislative body in the country to approve revenue-neutral fees as a carbon pricing option.

Putting a price on carbon got a big boost when National Grid, one of New England’s largest utilities, called for  putting an economy-wide price on carbon and rapid electrification of the transportation sector. The utility said both initiatives, as well as a host of others, are needed if the region is going to have a chance of meeting its carbon emission goals for 2030 and 2050.

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People in American communities, a long serving social scientist and environmental activist, and the Government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts present experiences that underline our need to act now because there is no Planet B.

References

(2018, May 16). Most Americans say climate change affects their local community. Retrieved August 9, 2018, from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/16/most-americans-say-climate-change-affects-their-local-community-including-two-thirds-living-near-coast/

(2018, April 26). 'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will .... Retrieved August 9, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention

(2018, June 15). Putting a price on carbon gains momentum in Mass. - CommonWealth .... Retrieved August 9, 2018, from https://commonwealthmagazine.org/energy/putting-a-price-on-carbon-gains-momentum-in-mass/

Climate Change and Communities http://tinyurl.com/ycjz9h2u