The spring is birthday season. Most of my close friends have birthdays between March and June, meaning each week I am scrambling to get gifts together and attending birthday parties in crowded restaurants. This year I am particularly unprepared – where did time go? It’s a Thursday afternoon and I am running to buy a few last things. I am already late and forgot to get birthday candles – thankfully Toronto corner stores are notoriously well-stocked. I go to enter the store and I see a sign, “Must be wearing a mask”. I sigh and roll my eyes with frustration, there is no way we are going to be affected by COVID-19 here! It’s so far away…surely things will be under control soon?

I grumble and cross the street into another store. Making my way through the narrow aisles, a quiet TV plays in the corner. I am half-listening – scanning the shelves for what I need. My inner monologue keeps getting disrupted: “Cake batter… playing cards… ‘Health officials are increasingly becoming concerned’ … cat food…kraft dinner… ‘The first cases of community transmission have been confirmed in British Columbia’….”

Birthday Candles! They look like they’ve been here a long time, but they will do.

As I approach the counter I glance up at the TV, digging out money from my pocket I shake my head – surely this will all blow over.

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Go back with me.

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Can you remember it? Can you think back to before? Could you have believed what would come to be? 

Go back to that time – where were you? What was your life like before it all changed?

When the warnings came in, what did you think? When they told us how bad it would become, could you imagine a global emergency? Could you imagine a crisis in your own community? Could you imagine a pandemic affecting your family?

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Go forward with me.

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Can you imagine what will happen? On average Canadian communities will face rates of warming which are double the magnitude of global warming (Bush et al, 2019 p. 5). Can you believe what is in store for us?

Go forward to that time. Extreme hot temperatures will become more frequent and more intense, heatwaves will become more severe (contributing to increased drought and wildfire risks), and intense rainfalls will increase urban flood risks (Bush et al, 2019 p.9). What will your life be like?

As the warnings continue to come in, what are you thinking? As they tell us how bad it will become, can you imagine a global emergency? Can you imagine a crisis in your own community? Can you imagine the climate catastrophe affecting your family?

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Come to the present with me. Come back to the time just before the unbelievable happened. Just before the irreversible has taken place. Before it was a “new normal” and before it was too late. 

The pandemic has allowed us to time travel, to see a glimpse of what a crisis on a global scale looks like and all that we can do when we are proactive, innovative and adaptive. So what will you do now, knowing all that we have to save and how imperative action is?

Addendum:

For this post, I drew on the work of Armstrong et al., in “Establishing trust. Communicating climate change: A guide for educators”. The framing used is both altruistic (focused on the welfare of other people) and egoistic (focused on oneself) (Armstrong et al, p.66). While the piece references loss, it is also meant to demonstrate the tangible opportunities for action. As stressed by Armstrong et al., providing audiences with a sense of hope is imperative, as “Feelings of hope, along with self-efficacy, are related to willingness to engage with climate change information” (Armstrong et al, p.64). By reminding my audience of all that they have experienced and survived throughout the pandemic, my intention is to present climate action as something readers are able to imagine integrating into their everyday lives. I also drew heavily on Maibach et al, 2011, striving to emphasize the locality of the climate crisis.

Works Cited

Armstrong, A. K., Schuldt, J. P., & Krasny, M. E. (2018). Using metaphor and analogy in climate change communication. In Communicating climate change: A guide for educators. Cornell University Press. 

Bush, E., Gillett, N., Bonsal, B., Cohen, S., Derksen, C., Flato, G., Greenan, B., Shepherd, M., & Zhang, X. (2019). Executive summary. Government of Canada. 

Maibach E, Nisbet M, & Weathers M. (2011) Conveying the Human Implications of Climate Change: A Climate Change Communication Primer for Public Health Professionals. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.