HuffPo Article: The Antidote To Climate Dread

Interesting article with some good info and ideas (https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_61268ecde4b0f562f3d9f07b). Here are some highlights:

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the constant, dire news of record-breaking heat, fires and floods, here’s what you can do, according to climate scientists.

 “We are now in an all-hands-on-deck moment,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University’s program on climate change communication. “We need everybody doing everything they can, at the individual level, community level, national government and business level. This is all of society.”

Climate experts shared some ideas for simple steps you can take now to get more engaged:

Join a group. 

Conservation psychologist Susan Clayton suggested finding a group to join — or creating one of your own — whether its purpose is discussion, activism or community.

“Everyone thinks, what can an individual do? But think of a vote. Does a single vote make a difference in an election? Almost never. But I am committed to vote,” Clayton said. “My single action may not make a difference on climate change, but it’s a way of participating in a collective battle to deal with this crisis.”

Make your household greener. 

Leiserowitz noted that people’s individual decisions in their homes, when multiplied by millions of households, can make the difference in transitioning from an economy dependent on harmful fossil fuels to one that relies on much more eco-friendly renewable energy.

He suggested choosing electric cars over gas-run vehicles, replacing gas-burning stoves and furnaces with heat pumps, buying clean energy from your power company and putting solar panels on your roof. 

“To achieve the big change we need, you need to engage the decisions of billions of people,” he said.

Care for your local beaches and parks. 

In the communities in Puerto Rico that Rivera-Collazo works with, residents who’ve seen coastal erosion and the effects of storms on their beaches have been leading activities to stimulate biodiversity and reduce pollution, including reforesting an area damaged by Hurricane Maria and doing beach cleanups.

“Each time, we collect less and less trash, because of engagement with users of the beach,” she said. “One community member said for her it’s the most important. She feels she’s doing something.”

Rivera-Collazo noted that climate change is “larger than a single community on a three-mile stretch of coast,” but “once people feel ownership, they can push back on larger causes: governments, industry.”

Take action, even if you can’t see the effects of the climate crisis in your local community — yet. 

Robert Bullard, a longtime environmental justice researcher and professor of environmental policy at Texas Southern University in Houston, noted that “Black and brown, lower-income communities” are often the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and have the fewest resources to recover after disasters.

In Houston, the same communities that were still recovering from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 were hit again by devastating floods in subsequent years and a major winter storm this February. That unusual storm caused widespread power outages, leaving some people freezing in prisons without running water and other people with spikes in their energy bills. “It’s one after the other,” Bullard said.

Rivera-Collazo also noted that “many of these communities carrying the burden of climate change are suffering other things,” including poverty and gentrification.

“When we say ‘what can we do’ to invite people to do more, remember some people cannot do more,” she said. “Others have to do more.”  

Rivera-Collazo walks her students through an exercise to engage them on climate change, urging them to think of the basic things they consider necessary for “living well” in their daily lives.

“Start thinking about how those privileges you are currently enjoying, when they get impacted — not if, when — what are you going to do?” she said. She asks students to consider where their food, water and electricity come from.

“If you feel safe, if you feel distant, it means you’re not aware of your vulnerabilities,” she said. “Climate change is so big, everyone is being threatened.”

Don’t forget: There’s hope.

All of the scientists HuffPost spoke to said that the key to stopping dread and starting to take action on climate change is knowing there is hope. The worst can still be averted.

Leiserowitz noted that the U.S. is already “well into the transition” from fossil fuels to clean energy.

“Good news ― wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the world today,” he said. “This is where the future is going. The question is, will we make that transition fast enough?”

For Rivera-Collazo, hope comes from seeing front-line communities “not just sitting back and crying,” but taking it into their own hands to clean and replenish local coastlines. “They are doing things. That for me is a source of hope,” she said. “People are not sitting back and waiting for somebody to come save them.”

Bullard, who is 74, locates his hope in young people “beginning to flex their political muscle, voting and getting into policy positions,” and particularly youth who are “demanding transformative change rather than incremental baby steps.”

And Caldas, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, had a message for the not-so-young: “The youth fighting so hard ... At one moment or another, their parents’ generation is going to wake up to the fact that their kids are fighting for a mess they are making, and they should get engaged.”