Although I do not live in BC, the recent flooding has felt tremendously close to home. I wonder if it has for others as well, if yet another severe weather event and the images flashing across news cycles garner more attention to climate change adaptation. Climate change is commonly viewed as a faraway issue, mostly for polar bears and small islands. Melting ice caps, tropical hurricanes and coral bleaching may easily be recognized as indicators of global warming- but have the BC floods, wildfires and heat domes all experienced in the last year been seen as local warming?

In a study conducted to analyze local and global framing and place attachment through visualizations of climate change, the findings did not reveal that local framing encouraged more action (Altinay, 2017). This result, although not academically comparable due to many parameters, contradicts several conversations I’ve had this week. As someone who is engaged in the study of climate change, and has been in the environmental realm for several years I have had more conversations with friends and family than ever before. Usually I am trying to make connections and share with my peers, but since the flooding it has felt quite the opposite with many asking me: Why the floods happened? Could they happen in Alberta? And what do we do to prepare for something like this? As I am no expert in hydrology my answers were probably vague at best, but it did open up a few conversations about adaptation closer to home and it suddenly felt like there was more of a connection that climate change isn’t just happening to polar bears, it is happening to us. Though these accounts there were a few mentions of the imagery on the news that hit home- people going down major roads in kayaks, collapsed infrastructure and animals being rescued. It feels like a small shift is occurring, maybe as this is one of several in a series of devastating natural disaster events this year, and it occupied familiar spaces, and even to friends of friends.  Not to mention the global climate summit COP26 was going on in the background. 

It makes me think of how important engaging all of our senses in climate communication can be, through audio, visual, storytelling, factual, data and even specific diction along with emotional and spiritual ties, different information will connect with different people. “It” is no longer just happening on the other side of the world, and being impeccable with how we talk about what is happening may be integral to eliciting climate action (Kimmerer, 2017). I am hopeful that in light of the hardship occurring as a result of the flooding that more attention will be diverted to proactive adaptation, and more conversations regarding local risks will be had among neighbours.

 I am particularly fond of this quote from Mary Annaise Heglar and her pragmatic approach to coping with climate change.

“We don’t have to be pollyannish, or fatalistic. We can just be human. We can be messy, imperfect, contradictory, broken. We can recognize that “hopelessness” does not mean “helplessness.”” -Heglar (2019)

References

Altinay, Z. (2017). Visual Communication of Climate Change: Local Framing and Place Attachment. Coastal Management, 45(4), 293–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2017.1327344

Heglar, M.A. (2019). Home is always worth it. Medium Environment. https://medium.com/@maryheglar/home-is-always-worth-it-d2821634dcd9

Kimmerer, R. W. (2017). Speaking of nature: Finding language that affirms our kinship with the natural world. Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/article/speaking-of-nature/