By Cara Pike via Climate Access

“Climate resiliency” is a new buzzword in environmental communications. Buzzwords are exciting because when successful, they convey important concepts in a compact and compelling way. At the same time, it is easy to assume audience understanding and for terms to be co-opted over time.

Back in March, I had the pleasure of co-facilitating the Climate, Cities and Behavior Symposium (CCB) at the Garrison Institute, a gathering of municipal and community leaders involved in climate and sustainability planning. The focus was on understanding the intersections between resiliency, sustainability and climate issues. It quickly became clear that while use of the term resiliency is rising, there are still a lot of issues to consider about what resiliency actually means and the pros and cons of using it to advance public understanding and engagement.

At CCB, Missy Stults from the University of Michigan proposed (“Fostering Resilience: From Theory to Operation”) that resiliency is a subset of the larger umbrella of sustainability – the foundation (or handle) that keeps the umbrella strong. There are different types of resiliency to consider such as economic, ecological, community, climate, and social so being clear on what you are building resiliency for is key.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, resiliency is defined as “the ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy,” This is appealing because “climate resiliency” conveys both an inherent recognition of a threat that needs to be responded to, as well as a sense of efficacy – that it is possible to respond to that threat.

On the other hand, the other meaning of “resiliency” is “the property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed; elasticity.” This is problematic because when used in the climate context, it can feed into the desire to return to the status quo as quickly as possible.

Mindy Fullilove, professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences and director of the Cities Research Group at Columbia University provided an example at CCB of how climate resiliency can mean very different things to different audiences. For those who have the resources to protect themselves from extreme weather events and other challenges, resiliency conveys a sense of strength. On the other hand, for communities already struggling due to economic and social injustice, resiliency can imply an expectation that people within those communities continue to withstand challenges, largely without the resources or support to adequately do so.

At the crux of this conflict is the idea that resiliency is about resuming an original form, a bouncing back to what was. This fails to recognize that the status quo wasn’t working in the first place as we were already on an unsustainable and inequitable path. The desire to return to normal in the wake of a disturbance is understandable,; however, what is needed is a “bouncing forward” to new approaches that tackle both the reality of a two-degree Celsius temperature increase as well as the systemic injustices that threaten the well-being of citizens who often also face some of the worst climate impacts.

My sense is just like with sustainability, using resiliency, as the new buzzword will not solve challenges engaging the public in these issues. Perhaps more important is to focus on conveying the characteristics that resilient systems and communities should reflect such as flexibility, diversity, and transparency; and to highlight strategies that enhance resilience in a range of areas, such as disaster risk-reduction and improving the quality of daily life.

A good example of an organization focusing on community-level solutions that illustrate both climate as well as social resiliency is IOBY – or “In Our Backyards.” Founded by Cassie Flynn (see her Garrison presentation), Erin Barnes and Brandon Whitney, IOBY emphasizes  what people want to see in their neighborhoods versus the typical “not in my backyard” environmental approach. By helping citizens organize and fund local projects, IOBY is fostering community buy-in for solutions, a network of long-term stewards, and visible benefits of taking action such as having access to green spaces and organic food.

What is perhaps most interesting about IOBY, however, is how it has become a network for organizing citizens around other local challenges. For example, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, IOBY participants helped organize neighborhood response efforts by using the lists of project volunteers in their area as well the  IOBY neighborhood gardens to gather and coordinate.

Social resiliency and connectivity are among the most important capacities to develop as we learn to prepare for local climate impacts. Amplifying local climate solutions that benefit and bring people together is critically needed so we can begin to close the climate efficacy gap and build hope for the future.

– Cara Pike is the director of Climate Access

Every climate scientist I’ve ever spoken to thinks we can still avert the worst impacts of climate change. It is an absurd myth that either the media or scientists constantly repeat the “it’s too late” message — a myth debunked here and here.

And so we have the spectacle of the NY Times publishing an essay by a novelist (!) asserting “We already know it’s too late” to stop catastrophe — and then following that up with a piece by its climate blogger attacking this uncommon and incorrect view in order to make an erroneous (if not utterly counterproductive) larger point about how “the Biggest Climate Threat” is “Fear.”

You read that right. The headline of the second NYT piece is “An Earth Scientist Explores the Biggest Climate Threat: Fear.”

So the biggest climate threat isn’t 10°F warming, dust-Bowlification of a third of the planet’s arable land, sea level rise that doesn’t end until we have an ice free planet, ocean acidification, ever-worsening extreme weather — or all of those things happening at the same time making it all but impossible to feed 9 billion people post-2050.

No, we are to believe the biggest threat is fear. #FAIL.

Seriously, if we had too much “fear” about the very real, ever-worsening, compound threats posed by our current dawdling, well then we wouldn’t be dawdling, would we? If we were fear driven, we would be doing too much carbon pollution reduction rather than virtually none at all.

Heck, if we had even the right amount of worry — say, the amount of worry that most climate scientists have — we’d be like Lonnie Thompson, who explained in December 2010 why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.” But I digress.

Let’s begin with the first NY Times whopper, the Sunday Book Review article about dystopian fiction, “Writing the End,” by novelist Nathaniel Rich. It contains these dubious assertions:

Dystopian novels about environmental apocalypses tend to contain a warning: this is the hell we will inherit if we don’t change our behavior, quickly.

But that view is obsolete. We already know it’s too late to reverse the planet’s transformation, and we know what is going to happen next — namely more of the same, just worse: superstorms, super-droughts, super-pandemics, massive population displacement, water scarcity, desertification and all the rest. The grim details can be found in any of the hundreds of nonfiction polemics published on the subject every year, books with titles like “Overheated” and “Hot.”

Let’s be clear what the science says — or, more specifically, what those nonfiction polemics say. You can read online most of Overheated (here) and Hot (here) — Amazon has conveniently (?!) posted most of their pages online.

Rich does a sleight of hand here. Yes, both those books make quite clear that because we have dawdled for so long — and because the climate and energy system both have large, intrinsic delays — we are almost certainly stuck with considerably worse superstorms, super-droughts, massive population displacement, water scarcity, and desertification than we have already seen.

Whether the “transformation” we are stuck with is “hell” is a matter of semantics, I suppose, but if hell is a metaphor for the worst place imaginable, then, no, not even close. What we are stuck with is more like “planetary purgatory” — a desperate, all-consuming effort lasting decades to keep us out of hell (and high water).

Indeed, contrary to Rich’s implications, both books he cites have the rather clear message that things could get considerably worse “if we don’t change our behavior, quickly.” Yes, 3°F to 5°F warming is going to be brutal — but it beats the hell (figuratively and, perhaps, even literally) out of 7°F warming, let alone 9°F warming or, heaven forbid, 11+°F warming.

And that matches what the best science says, as in this MIT analysis:

Humanity’s Choice (via M.I.T.): Inaction (“No Policy”) eliminates most of the uncertainty about whether future warming will be catastrophic. Aggressive emissions reductions greatly improves humanity’s chances.

Now some may say that, given our political system, we’re simply not going to act fast enough or effectively enough to stop at 3°F to 5°F. But that is a political judgment, not a scientific one.

If we were all as alarmed as the science warrants, then I believe we would make a WWII-scale effort and take the world to near zero net emissions in a couple of decades and then start sucking CO2 out of the air and go back to 350 ppm this century and perhaps even lower next century. No, that wouldn’t give us a 100% certainty of avoiding serious consequences, but it would give us a near-certainty of avoiding hell and high water.

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James Hansen was awarded the Ridenhour Courage Prize today. The Prize is “presented to an individual in recognition of his or her courageous and life-long defense of the public interest and passionate commitment to social justice.”

I was given the great privilege of introducing Hansen. This is what I prepared:

Dr. James Hansen is being honored today in part because he told Congress: “The global warming now is large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.”

The courageous part isn’t what he said, it’s when he said it — 25 years ago, during the sweltering summer of 1988. It was the first high-profile public statement by a US government scientist alerting the country to this grave threat.

Jim embodies the Ridenhour Courage Prize. When he was still NASA’s top climate scientist, he blew the whistle on government efforts to silence him — and others — on climate change.

Jim is a modern day Paul Revere … if Paul Revere’s midnight ride had taken place in 1750 and the message was, “The British are coming, The British are coming — in 25 years.”

Yes, climate change is a challenging story to tell. And Jim has actually been telling it publicly since 1981, when he published his first warning that led to a major New York Times story, headlined, “Study Finds Warming Trend That Could Raise Sea Levels.”

And yet carbon pollution has kept rising. We live in a spineless world, where being scientifically right for over 30 years gives you no more credit with the national media than being a professional disinformer funded by the fossil fuel industry.

How spineless is this world? If a doctor used the best science to diagnose a smoker as having early-stage emphysema and the doctor did NOT urge the patient to start quitting cigarettes, he’d be charged with malpractice.

But if a climatologist uses the best science to diagnose an entire planet as having early-stage climate change, and he urges the world to start quitting fossil fuels, well, then he is labeled an alarmist by industry-backed groups.

The truth is we all should be alarmed by the great moral crisis of our time. By destroying a livable climate we are stealing the future from our children and grandchildren and countless future generations.

To save this spineless world from itself, supplying the truth isn’t enough. You need to supply the spine, too. You need to be courageous. And so Jim has been forced by the times — and by his moral convictions — to become an activist.

There is a saying that applies to Jim, “One man with courage is a majority.”

How many scientists have spawned an entire movement?

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This is a piece I did for CAREEREALISM, which is an excellent website for anyone looking for a job or thinking of changing careers.

Few skills are more important for success at work and life than the ability to be persuasive and memorable. And yet the tricks for effective speaking and writing, which have been known for twenty-five centuries and verified by modern social science research, are hardly taught today.

As I explain in my book Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga, those tricks are the figures of speech, originally developed by the ancient bards like Homer to help them remember their epic poems and to make sure audiences would remember them.

Systematic use of the figures is the best way to be both pithy and profound. In this world of information overload, you have to capture people’s attention. In this media menagerie, you have to stand out like a peacock. Mastering the figures will help you grab people with the most eye-popping headlines, the catchiest catch-phrases, and the sweetest tweets.

Modern corporations have spent billions trying to hone in on which words will persuade people to remember and purchase their products. Their expensive studies have shown that the use of the figures “leads to more liking for the ad, a more positive brand attitude, and better recall of ad headlines.”

Advertising research finds that for certain figures, such as puns or metaphors, the act of decoding the figure, of figuring it out, “is necessary to produce its positive incremental effects on attitudes and memory.” The subtext is as important as the text.

Studies reveal that “virtually all of our abstract conceptualization and reasoning is structured by metaphor.” A single, well-crafted metaphor, like a well-crafted building, can endure for ages, as when Churchill said in 1946, “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

Lady Gaga, the first musician in history to reach one billion views on YouTube. Half of those views were from two songs, “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance,” which, not coincidentally, are both extended metaphors.

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I would not have thought that mocking a very large pool of your potential customers was a winning ad strategy. But Clorox seems to think it makes sense:

I haven’t found anybody yet who isn’t offended by that in some way, including, as it does, various offensive stereotypes of “housewives.”

And if that isn’t enough mockery for you, play the shorter videos below that one on Clorox’s “Green Works” website, where they make light of “conflict diamonds,” An Inconvenient Truth, “gluten-free” food and BPA.

Oh, and they never actually mention their products! I can’t say that I ever thought of Clorox as a producer of green products — and these videos make it rather unlikely I’ll be trying any of them any time soon.

Satire is a risky business, especially if you yourself don’t belong to the group being satirized and your satire can easily be taken instead as offensive. Seth MacFarlane found that out at the Academy’s awards with his tasteless “We Saw Your Boobs” musical number. As Andrew O’Hehir put it in his Salon piece, “I’ll tell you what’s funny“:

[MacFarlane] stumbled into a well-known problem with irony, which is inherently unstable. Anytime you say something you supposedly don’t mean, people are likely to take you at your word – and then you no longer control “what you meant” in the first place. Whether MacFarlane intended his shtick as absurdist or satirical humor is now irrelevant, because it came out as a more hurtful variety.

The great English satirist Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was, of course, not thinking of climate science deniers when he wrote:

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

This is of a kind with the Upton Sinclair quote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

And this is not entirely dissimilar to the quote widely attributed to Mark Twain (as Al Gore does in An Inconvenient Truth): ”It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” But there appears to be no actual evidence Twain ever said it or something close to it. Who actually said it first remains something of a mystery.

Finally, and only partially unrelated, we have my favorite Swift quote, which I use to begin the discussion of the figure of speech “Enigma” in my book Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga:

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either of wit or sublime.

I do hope you will hold me to that same standard!

The UK Guardian has put me in a gallery of “climate change abolitionists, those engaging in an uphill battle to challenge the broken systems that threaten our survival.” They also want your suggestions for who else to add (click here).

Climate change abolitionists: who is fighting for a more sustainable world? It took Abraham Lincoln and others many years of campaigning to abolish slavery — but who are the contemporary figures fighting to abolish dangerous climate change?

Well, I don’t really think I should be mentioned in the same breath as Lincoln — unless you are talking about our mutual love of the figures of speech and my book Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga.

The Guardian has a good piece by Andrew Winston accompanying the gallery,”The campaign to abolish slavery has many parallels with the work of today’s climate change activists: it takes bravery and determination to try and make the world a better place.”

I agree that there are many parallels, many of which are spelled out in that article — and in an even longer piece in the Boston Phoenix, by Wen Stephenson, “The New Abolitionists: Global warming is the great moral crisis of our time,” which argues ”the climate-justice movement must embrace its radicalism to fight it.”

And readers of my books know I think metaphors are important — and that our inaction on climate change is a great moral crisis, the greatest moral crisis of our time. But it is also useful to spell out the differences.

Obviously slavery was not merely a great moral wrong, but cruel and inhumane to millions from the very start and for as long as it was occurring.

Unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions became immoral only when we learned that they would destroy a livable climate — and while we certainly need to go to zero this century, ideally by mid-century, we don’t have to go to zero tomorrow whereas, of course, slavery needed to be ended completely and instantly.

Winston writes:

So what are we “abolishing”? Climate abolitionists are not fighting to eliminate growth. Eradicating slavery did not rid the world of cotton or tobacco, and moving away from carbon will not mean abandoning human and economic development – in fact, it will help ensure it. What we want to abolish is our outmoded, broken economic and energy systems that threaten our survival, in part because they put no value on human and ecosystem inputs and impacts. We’re seeking a new way of powering our world that will save vast sums of money (variable costs of near zero), avoid the significant health impacts of burning dirty fossil fuels, and conserve our planet’s ability to support not only our entire $70tn economy, but our very existence.

I do think that is where we need to start. Development will continue, but it will have to continue as CO2 is pulled out of the economy ASAP. I’ll have more to say about “growth” soon.

Stephenson’s piece focuses on Tim DeChristopher. Here are two excerpts:

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I routinely repost climate de-crocks from Peter Sinclair. But last week, the uber-videographer turned the camera on me:

It is amazing how much more persuasive anyone sounds when they get professionally edited with graphs and clips thrown in. Which coincidentally segues me into my book Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga, which is available on Kindle and print-on-demand paperback and audio book.

Obama went all climate hawk on America in his second inaugural address (full text here).

These are, I believe, his longest and strongest remarks on the subject in any major national speech, let alone one of this import:

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.  We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.  Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.  That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

We will soon see if these words have any meaning whatsoever — since approving the Keystone XL pipeline would utterly vitiate them.

Related Post:

• Obama Wins Reelection, Now Must Become A Climate Hawk To Avoid Dust-Bin Of History, Dust Bowl For America

The White House continues its fatally counterproductive strategy of promoting climate silence.

Reuters reports this remarkable story:

The White House asked that a discussion about climate change at the mayors’ meeting on Thursday take place behind closed doors, frustrating some participants, even as hot button topics from immigration to gun control got public airings.

“This should be discussed openly,” said Jim Brainard, the Republican mayor of Carmel, Indiana, who co-chaired the climate panel.

White House liaison for climate change Heather Zichal led the discussion, but declined to comment on why the meeting was closed.

While one academic political scientist seems to think Obama’s climate silence is not significant, real-world politicians know the President is the only person who can single-handedly change the media coverage and public conversation — and the national agenda:

“We are looking for leadership from the president in detailing to the American people the magnitude of this issue,” [Seattle Mayor Michael] McGinn said after the meeting with about two dozen peers….

“There is a lot of call for the president to use his ‘bully pulpit’ and explain the consequences here,” said Brainard.

Hear! Hear! Or, rather, Speak! Speak! and Act! Act!

Related Post:

• Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent