CNN Opinion Series: The Case for Changing the Global Environmental Impact of Swimmers and Paramedics (with an Appendix by Katherine Keel)

Editor’s Note: This essay is part of the CNN Opinion series “America’s Future Starts Now,” in which people share how they have been affected by the biggest issues facing the nation and experts offer their proposed solutions. After graduating from the University of North Carolina with a journalism degree, Katherine Keel moved to Colorado and became a former Division 1 swimmer. She is currently training to be a paramedic. The views expressed in this commentary are not those of the person writing them. CNN has more opinion.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/opinions/climate-change-impact-colorado-keel/index.html

The First Time a Truck Came Through the Road: How the Smoke Inhalation of an Orange Flare Can Make Your Day Extraordinary

The summer of 2018 was the first time I had been evacuated. I looked across the street after putting my stuff in the back of the truck. The fire licked the sky and was threatening to descend on the community below. Cars were pulled over on the side of the road to watch the frightening scene as strong gusts of wind rattled my blinds. It was the 4th of July, but that year no one was celebrating.

Climate change has played a significant role in my daily life since moving to the mountain town of Basalt, Colorado, five years ago. Our town has to rely on major roads being shut down due to floods and mudslides. Most summers, smoke inhalation is an unavoidable part of recreating outdoors, and so it is not uncommon to check the air quality index daily to see if it is safe.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife advise people not to fish in our rivers when the water temperature hits 67 degrees as it puts high stress on the fish. Tourism is down when the snow totals are low, which has a major effect on the income of my rural community.

I remember my eyes were glued to the rearview mirror as I drove away from my house on July 4, 2018. Eerie orange flames seemed to grow taller and taller on the hillside behind me. The smoke was hard to breathe and stinging my eyes the next morning as I entered the grocery store, even with a mask. There was a somber tone and a pervasive fear in everyone’s eyes.

While my home was spared, there have been wildfires in the area nearly every summer since 2018 that remind me just how treacherous climate change can be.

Scientists and experts have warned about the dangers of a warming world. As far back as I can recall, I was taught to recycle, pick up trash and conserve water. From the Earth Day parades in elementary school, to the “reuse, reduce, recycle” trends of recent years, I’ve always been a big proponent of protecting the planet. It didn’t really hit home until recently.

“What I was quite surprised by is that a lot of these climate risks are not yet affecting people’s decision about where to move,” Mahalia Clark, lead author of the study and graduate fellow at the University of Vermont Gund Institute for Environment, told CNN. Disasters may not have had much time to affect people in terms of choices.

That changed pretty soon after I moved to the mountains and had to evacuate from the Lake Christine Fire. While the fire was started by incendiary ammunition, my town, like much of the state, was experiencing severe drought conditions that propelled the fire across 12,000 acres with dried grass, brush and trees as kindling.

We came together as a community. We supported the firefighters and first responders day in and day out, from making sandwiches to providing housing and everything in between. I was surprised to find out that I was deeply connected to my community after living in the valley for a year. Tragedy will create bonds, regardless of background, ethnicity or political affiliation. The question is how much more we can take before we speak up, take action and demand more from our elected officials.

Climate Change in Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico and the Middle East – An Overview of Recent Progress and Goals of the U.S. Climate Assessment

“Many extremes, including heatwaves, heavy precipitation, drought, flooding, wildfire, and tropical cyclones/hurricanes, are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change,” the report’s authors write.

Hurricane Fiona ravaged Puerto Rico before it made landfall in Canada as a severe tropical storm. 33 million people were affected by the historic floods in Pakistan. In terms of structures lost, the Marshall Fire in Boulder was the most destructive in Colorado history.

The dramatic effects of a changing world have come to my attention after moving to a small town. And there are lasting reminders – more than four years later, the burn scar from the Lake Christine Fire is still visible on the landscape whenever I drive down Highway 82.

The economic impact of climate change can be seen. The mountains couldn’t open all the ski runs because of low snow levels, so many people had to take a two week “mandatory vacation.”

The Livingston Award, IRE Award, and others were won by John D. Sutter, who is a CNN contributor and climate journalist. The Ted Turner Professor of Environmental Media is at The George Washington University.

The federal government every five years releases the National Climate Assessment, which summarizes all the latest scientific research on climate change in the United States. The new draft, which will go through a long period of public review before it is officially published next year, provides vital context about the very real pain the climate crisis is causing in the United States today, and how far we are from creating a world safe for future generations.

The federal report paints a dire picture of what life will be like in America in the future because of the climate crisis. And it outlines some painful truths about global warming we must confront, but so far have not.

The goal of the Paris Agreement — which is being discussed this week in Egypt — is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or at most to 2 degrees Celsius. To get to net- zero carbon emissions by about 2050, you’d need a total clean energy transformation and technology to suck planet-warming emissions back out of the atmosphere.

“The effects of climate change are felt most strongly by communities that are already overburdened, including Indigenous peoples, people of color, and low-income communities,” the report says.

The rampant burning of fossil fuels is contributing to a worsening US water crisis. The report explains how the droughts of the Southwest will continue to get more intense and frequent.

The report says the country is vulnerable to over-pumping because it has massive storages of underground water built up over thousands of years.

Climate Change is Always Wrong: Key Issues for Protecting the Public, Responding to Extreme-Event Risks and Hurricanes

Factors leading to future migration within the US include wildfires in California, rising seas in Florida and more frequent flooding in the South, according to the report.

“It’s really important to realize that 1.5 (degrees of warming) was never safe and 2.2 (degrees) is not the end of the world,” Schrag said. “What I mean by that is there is no point where you throw up your hands and say, ‘Oh, we lost!’ … It’s never time to give up.”

Climate context is difficult to include in real-time weather warnings, says Sarah Kapnick, the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Kapnick has a background as a research scientist, and has worked on extreme-event attribution studies.

Similarly, official updates on drought conditions might mention how global warming contributes to longer, more severe droughts. Or heat wave warnings from the National Weather Service could include information about the strong, well-established connection between a hotter Earth and dangerously hot days.

The public and local officials grappling with harsher weather are interested in how the NRC is communicating about climate change, so it’s reviewing how it talks to the public.

A large body of research shows that warmer oceans can make hurricanes worse by causing storms to dump more rain. Sea level rise in Florida makes storm surge more destructive. Climate change has been linked to storms to rapidly intensify which happened to Ian. Such storms are dangerous because they get extremely destructive right before hitting land, giving people little time to evacuate.

Asked about Rhome’s comments, Rick Spinrad, administrator of NOAA , which oversees the National Hurricane Center, said it is clear that climate change is affecting hurricanes and tropical storms.

That’s why the time during and immediately after a weather disaster is so important. People who experience a severe heat wave or hurricane, and who understand that it is connected to climate change, are more likely to take action to protect themselves from future disasters, and to support climate policies, according to research by Gabrielle Wong-Parodi of Stanford University.

It also includes an interest in doing things like flood-proofing your home, as well as more support for electric vehicles.

Why People Aren’t Moving to the West: Factoring in Climate Risks and Environmental Factors Into Their Decisions to Move

“I think it’s important that we keep an eye out for that and how we communicate about these types of events in the future,” says Wong-Parodi.

But Americans aren’t factoring those risks into their decision to move, researchers showed. The study highlighted other aspects such as mountains, beautiful scenery, lakes or ocean and outdoor recreation as key influences in the decision to move to the West.

“Decisions about migration is this very complex personal decision, where people weigh factors about job opportunities, where the family lives, and potentially also some environmental factors like a pleasant climate, nice weather, beautiful scenery, or potentially some risk factors,” Clark said.

People moving away from areas across the Great Plains, the Midwest along the Mississippi River, as well as large portions of New York State and West Virginia are due to flooding.

The coast of Florida and Texas are at the highest risk to be struck by hurricanes, and so they’re still popular with Americans as a migration hot spot.

The warm climate, beaches and other quality-of-life factors outweigh the risks of life threatening hurricanes for many people in Florida.

Still, she said, when people choose between counties with similar population density and features within the state, they’re likely to opt for the county with lower hurricane risk.

The findings are based on a report that found Americans are moving to places with high climate risks such as fire and floods. And in some of these places, home prices are even increasing as demand surges.

Thursday’s study “suggests that many people may be in for an unpleasant surprise when they move to a new part of the country and don’t realize that the hazards in their environment have also changed dramatically,” Jennifer Marlon, a climate scientist at the Yale School of Environment, who is not involved with the study, told CNN.

“I’m not surprised that wildfires and smoke don’t weigh heavily in people’s decisions to move because these events are often localized and are still relatively infrequent, even if they are becoming more common and more dangerous,” she added.

But Marlon points to existing gaps in some of this data that might impact the linkage the authors are trying to make. The researchers use data from FEMA to show large parts of the country with missing heat ratings.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/us/americans-moving-to-areas-with-high-climate-risk/index.html

Who is going to pay for the damages if we move in high-risk areas? A lecture by J. D. Marlon, Phys. Lett. A102, 389-45 (1999)

“Moving more folks into high-risk areas is going to prove exceedingly costly,” Marlon said. Who will cover the damages is a question that must be asked.