As communities around the world step up with actions to limit global warming and accelerate the global transition to clean energy, questions abound about how to build public and political support for a 21st Century clean energy economy and other climate solutions. Many members of the public and policy makers—perhaps especially Americans—erroneously think of climate change as an environmental problem whose effects are largely distant from us—in time (i.e., not yet), in space (i.e., not here), and in species (i.e., not us). In reality, human-caused climate change is causing harm now (i.e., today), here (i.e., in communities across the U.S. and worldwide), to us (i.e., to people as well as to plants, penguins and polar bears).
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| Americans, as is ther case here in Australia, are not well versed in the threats to their health arising from climate change. |
Although the public is not well versed in any of the vexing ways that climate change is harming us and our world—including making our weather more dangerous, threatening our food and fresh water supplies, and damaging our infrastructure and coastal communities—we contend that the most important public education opportunities may be found in communicating the myriad ways that climate change is harming our health, and the truly profound health benefits associated with clean energy. Similarly, we contend that educating the public and policy makers about the many vexing harms associated with air pollution—which like climate change is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels—creates important opportunities to build public and political will for public health and climate solutions.
Read the story from the Global Climate Action Summit - “It’s time for a focused climate change public engagement strategy: “It’s about health, stupid”.
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