A Local Perspective on Climate Action

by Bob Buddemeier

[Material in italics are editorial comments inserted into the report.]

On Nov 14, RVM resident Steve Harris interviewed Alan Journet and Kathy Conway, founders and Board members of SOCAN (Southern Oregon Climate Action Network, https://socan.eco). This presentation to an RVM audience was part of the “Discussions With…” program series organized by Father Joel, Steve Harris and Laura Monczynski. The series is intended to promote educational engagement with community leaders to bring attention to the controversial issues that are drawing attention in our community. Topics so far have included issues related to homelessness, marijuana, and climate change, with additional sessions planned for the future.

This article is therefore a serendipitous companion piece to the “Green goes to Portland…” article, which describes an RVM Green Team trip to a meeting to build connections with a consortium of Green Teams from six Portland-area CCRCs, all focused on Climate Resilience.  The events were independent, but both oriented to the same issues (Climate Change) in similar settings (CCRCs in Oregon).

In response to Steve’s opening question, Alan outlined his progression from college biology and ecology teacher to community climate organizer. In the process, he raised the point that the science of climate change is diverse and complex. Alan said that he had spent a long time studying the various subjects (e.g. marine and atmospheric sciences, geology, biogeochemistry, etc.), had decided that the science was credible, and that his responsibility was to educate people beyond the college classroom.

Later in the program he returned to the question of the multiple disciplines involved in Climate Change science. Alan remarked that there are many different kinds of evidence for climate change, and all point the same conclusion — that humans have been affecting the carbon cycle and the chemical composition of the atmosphere at least since the industrial revolution.

Steve initiated discussion of the effects of climate change with his personal observation that the number of “hot spell” days (>100^oF) had increased. Alan answered that he had worked with data from the local NOAA office, and found that over the past 20 years the average annual number of 100^o days had increased from 7 to 12, although the annual count is variable, with some years >20. He said that the trend is upward, and will remain so, and he wished that temperature variations were reported relative to the past trend rather than the past average.

Turning to the relationship between severe weather and climate, Alan observed  that elevated temperatures provided the energy that fueled the rapid formation of high-intensity hurricanes, the increased atmospheric moisture that created floods, and the severe droughts that set the stage for wildfires. As long as warming trends persist, we can expect that the frequency and intensity of extreme events will continue to increase.

In response to Steve’s question about a scientific consensus that we are headed for 2.1^oC, Alan replied that we need to hold the global temperature increase to 1.5^oC (2.7^oF) to limit damage, but we are clearly headed for much higher values, and for ecosystem destruction. He interjected that in the early days of climate projection, the scenario of fastest temperature increase was called the Worst Case, but after it was recognized that this was actually the path that temperature increase was following, it was renamed the Business As Usual (BAU) scenario.

Discussion turned to convincing people that carbon budget accounting needed to be done.  Alan said that “money in – money out” was no longer the only accounting that needed to be done; “carbon in — carbon out” is also a critical balance to assess for business, industrial and agricultural activities.

Dealing with climate deniers or disbelievers received a good deal of attention.  Alan cited the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication as having found that the most effective persuasion is by friends and relatives – but these people are relatively unlikely to talk about climate change.  Finding some kind of common ground is important for discussion – perhaps a desire to leave a habitable planet for our children.

Alan related some tragicomic anecdotes about attempts to inform recalcitrant deniers, ending with a brief story about James Inhof (former OK senator), who thought the climate change hypothesis was correct on first reading of the scientific basis, but changed his mind after discovering how expensive it was going to be to cope with it. Alan also told of being asked if climate change was just a natural process, to which he had replied “I hope not; if humans caused it, they may be able to control it.”

[Comments: (1)  The emphasis on dealing with denial in the RVM presentation stands in contrast to the experience at the Portland meeting.  In my Portland breakout group I asked how the other Green Teams dealt with opposition to climate related action, and it turned out that nobody else considered it an issue—their institutions were accepting/supportive of the activities.  (2)  The question of cost vs climate seems to me a major issue; as climate change has become better understood and documented, opposition to action is more often based on expense or uncertainty than on claimed inadequacies in the science.]

The question of what individuals can do, now and in the future, was addressed by Kathy Conway.  In addition to monitoring lifestyle and purchases to minimize transportation costs, plastic usage, and environmentally exploitive products, she stressed the central role of beef as a particularly climate-unfriendly food product because it is a major source of methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) from the ruminant digestive processes. Reducing beef consumption is a practical and economical option available to most meat-eaters.

[Closing observations:

Marketing: one lesson that can be inferred from the success of the ongoing broad and well supported actions of the Portland Consortium is that the climate-related environmental commitment represents an opportunity to do well by doing good – that the presence of these activities is a positive marketing factor, potentially attracting not those who agree, but also those who are generally inclined toward community service.

Extended Community building: Our experience in Portland was that the Consortium members were reaching out to establish links both with other retirement communities and with like-minded community organizations.  RVM is at a different stage in the processes, but the Discussion presentations represent encouragement for outreach and cooperation, and the Green Team’s growing connection with the Climate Resilience theme of the Consortium sets the stage for further outreach and collaboration.]