After a painfully long time during which shortsightedness with respect to global warming ruled the public domain, changes are afoot. This is a fun topic to write about. Start with two quotes from the November 5, 2019 issue of the Policy Alert of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS):“State legislators in Florida are starting to evaluate the state’s exposure to climate risks for the first time since former Gov. Rick Scott ® reportedly forbade the use of the phrase “climate change” in state publications in 2011. In a recent hearing of the Florida Legislature’s Committee on Infrastructure and Security, State Sen. Tom Lee (R) acknowledged that lengthy delays in evaluating climate risks and exposures have amounted to a “lost decade” of time within which opportunities to craft solutions had been squandered.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has issued an order requiring the state to begin evaluating climate risks and planning for resiliency measures. The order calls for a multi-agency effort, led by the Department of Environmental Protection, to evaluate and report on climate risks to the state. An initial report to address opportunities for New Jersey to avert the consequences of rising and warming seas, as well as more frequent and intense extreme weather, is due by September 1, 2020.
Many such announcements are to be found on the web these days, but should we be cheered by them? They don’t as yet amount to more than assessing and planning for a worrisome future. The bank of Norway, which is heavily invested in fossil fuel enterprises, is worried but doesn’t have any good ideas about how to cope with the coming demise of fossil fuel enterprises. To Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist all this awakening seems pitifully slow. The time for action is now!
Many writers have commented on our human propensity for shortsightedness. It’s wired into our brains! There’s a lot of gloomy stuff in this literature, but Bina Venkataraman, an experienced and highly respected former climate change advisor in the Obama White House and currently Director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has a more balanced view. As she writes in her new book, The Optimist’s Telescope, “The future is an idea we have to conjure in our minds, not something that we perceive with our senses. What we want today, by contrast, we can often feel in our guts as a craving."
She goes on to talk about behavioral contagion, a concept born at the turn of the 19th century to account for undesirable behaviors of people in crowds. Venkataraman argues that there is a positive side to this; cases in which individual courses of action have collectively brought about substantial changes. Small actions may in themselves seem insignificant, but through the influence of behavioral contagion, they can lead to sweeping changes: My neighbor installed solar panels, and hey, so did that guy down the block. I should check it out. My friend Alice sent me a link yesterday to a new website, Protecting Florida Together, put up by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, that looks good. It could be a place where I’m reminded of what’s going on, and maybe express my concerns. I should let my friends and neighbors know of this site.
Many public expressions and actions of individuals ripple out into a community. An apparently oddball idea becomes a meme; a municipal election turns out to be a harbinger of larger-scale shifts. The governor of Maine vows that her state will work to meet the Paris Accords in spite of the perverse actions of the Trump administration in pulling out. And the Democratic sweep in Virginia promises aggressive actions to address climate change.
I’ve often written in earlier blogs about how little time we humans have to take actions that could head off climate disasters in the decades ahead. When I reread some of those entries I see that shifts in public perceptions are underway, but progress is so damned slow! Now that there seems to be some movement, and global warming has risen to be a more visible topic in public discourse, how do we go from talking about it to acting? Remember Andrew Marvel, the English poet who pleaded with his coy mistress about the fleeting nature of time?
Here are a few ideas on what each of us can do, depending on our capacities for acting for those of us who can’t get out much, but probably have cell phones, tablets or laptop computers, all of which have a search engine of some sort. If you don’t have one, sign up with Google, and you’ll be all set. If you can’t manage that, ask one of your friends to lend you one of their grandkids when they’re visiting. You’d be surprised how eager your friends are to show off their grandkids’ amazing abilities. Ask your search engine, or Alexa or Siri, whatever you have: Who are my representatives in the state legislature? When I did that, my search led me to the names of my two representatives, one each in the Florida upper and lower house. When I click on Kathleen Passidomo I find her email address and the names of her committee assignments. I notice that she represents big chunks of Hendry, Collier, and part of Lee counties. That means that her constituents cover a lot of agricultural interests in all three counties here in southwest Florida. Collier county includes the city of Naples, which by some measures has the highest per capita income in the state. She’s the majority leader and has a very safe seat in the Florida Senate, after serving for several terms in the lower house.
I can check on how Passidomo voted in recent bills. She’s a Repubican, representing a wealthy district. I need to let her know of my opposition to the excessive development occurring in her district, of my support for legislation reforming Florida agriculture in areas she represents. And when opportunities arise, I should mention my actions to my friends. And for good measure, if I call her office or write her, I can tweet on my account that I did so, with a few words on what message I was delivering. And for good measure, on my Facebook page. These actions are pretty easy to do, and they don’t take a lot of time. They could count for something, especially if I let others know what I've done. My behavior could be contagious. Isn’t it great to think of contagion as a good thing?! I keep in mind that that though I don’t have the wealth and clout of some of her constituents, I have just as many votes on a per capita basis, possibly many more if I spread my view and actions contagiously.
The same approach should apply to contacting your US House and Senate representatives. And by the way, I asked Cortana about State Senator Tom Lee of Florida, whom I quoted in the opening paragraph, got his office phone number and called to tell him that I admired his remarks about the squandered opportunities of the past decades. His staff person seemed glad to hear from me. So easy, a little nudge in the right direction. Maybe you can help me make this blog contagious.
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