Small Talk for Climate Emergency

SMALL TALK FOR CLIMATE EMERGENCY

A guide to the real conversation

1

Fox, Kate “Watching The English: the hidden rules of English behaviour”, 2004. London.

2

Wallace-Wells, David “The Unhabitable Earh: A Story about the Future ”, 2019. London.

The supporting research in this booklet is based on source 2

Weather is the most common conversation starter in the United Kingdom. According to Kate Fox’s book “Watching the English”, one third of the country are talking about the weather at any given time. And if that wasn’t enough, the Scots dialect 1 has over 100 different words for rain.

Humans used to watch the weather to prophesy the future; going forward, we will see in its wrath the vengeance of the past. In a four-degree warmer world, the earth’s ecosystem will boil with so many natural dissasters that we will just start calling them ‘weather’: out of control typhoons and tornadoes and floods and droughts, the planet assaulted regularly with climate events that not so long ago destroyed whole civilizations. 2 Which begs for the question, would the world benefit from people talking about climate change instead of the weather? There is only one way to find out - if we started doing so.

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instead of

“Raining Again?”

try adding

“You know, with all this rain and sea levels rising, London could actually drown in a few centuries if we don’t do anything on climate change.”

2

The greenland ice sheet could reach a tipping point at 1.2 degrees of global warming (right now it is at an alarming 1.1 degrees) melting that ice sheet alone would over centuries raise sea levels six meters, eventually drowning Miami, Manhattan, London, Shanghai, Bangkok, and Mumbai3

Sebastian H. Mernild, “Is ‘Tipping Point’ for the Greenland Ice Sheet approaching?” Aktuel Naturvidenskab, 2009, http://mernild.com/onewebmedia/2009.AN%20Mernild4.pdf.

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3

instead of

“Warm today, isn’t it?”

try adding

“Not bad though compared to the deadly heat waves that will kill thousands by 2050 if we don’t do anything on climate change.”

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By 2050, 255,000 are expected to die globally from direct heat effects. Already, as many as 1 billion are at risk for heat stress worldwide, and a third of the world’s population is subject to deadly heat waves, at least twenty days each year, by 2100, that third will grow to half, even if we manage to pull up short of two degrees. If we don’t, the number could climb to three-quarters.4

World Health Organization, “Quantitative Risk Asessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Selected Causes of Death, 2030s and 2050s”(Geneva, 2014), p.

21, http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/134014/9789241507691_ eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

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instead of

“Better make the most of the sun while it lasts, eh?”

try adding

“Extreme storms and hurricanes will be a common everyday thing if we don’t do anything on climate change.”

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Storms have doubled since 1980, according to the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council; and it is estimated that New York City will suffer “500-year” floods once every five years. But sea-levels rise is more dramatic elsewhere, which means that storm surges will be distributed unequally; in some places, storms on the scale will hit more frequently. The result is a radically accelerated experience of extreme weather – what was once centuries’ worth of natural disaster compressed into just a decade or two.5 Looking globally, researchers have found an increase of 25 to 30 percent in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes for just one degree Celcius of global warming.6

European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, “New Data Confirm Increased Frequency of Extreme Weather Events, European National Science Academies Urge Further Action on Climate Change Adaptation,” March 21, 2018, https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-increased-frequency-of-extreme-weather-events-european-national-sceienc-academies 5

Greg Holland and Cindy L. Bruyere, “Recent Intense Hurricane Response to Global Climate Change,” Climate Dynamics 42, no 3-4 (February 2014): pp. 614-27, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1713-0 6

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instead of

“It’s freezing outside”

try adding

“But apparently not freezing enough for the south and north poles. Tons of ice is melting as we speak. Causing more diseases to be released to this world. ”

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In 2018, scientists revived something a worm that has been frozen in permafrost for the last 42,000 years.7 The Arctic also stores terrifying diseases from more recent times. In Alaska, researchers have discovered remnants of the 1918 flu that infected as many as 500 million, and killed as many as 50 million. 8 Many of these frozen organisms won’t actually survive the thaw; those that have been brought back to life have been reanimated typically under fastidious lab conditions. But in 2016, a boy was killed and twnty others infected by anthrax released when retreating permafrost exposed the frozen carcass of a reindeer killed by the bacteria at least seventy-fice years earlier.

9

Jeffery K. Taubenberger et al., “Discovery and Characterization of the 1918 Pandemic Influenza Virus in Historical Context, “Antiviral Therapy 12 (2007): pp. 581 - 91.

7

Robinson Meyer, “The Zombie Diseases of Climate Change,” The Atlantic, November 6, 2017 8

Michaeleen Doucleff, “Anthrax Outbreak in Russia Tought to Be Result of Thawing Permafrost,” NPR, August 3, 2016, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/488400947/anthrax-outbreak-in-russia-thought-to-beresult-of-thawing-permafrost.

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9

instead of

“I knew I should’ve brought an umbrella with me”

try adding

“and perhaps a boat in 40 years when the roads become rivers.”

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Inland flooding - when rivers run over, swollen by the deluges of rain or storm surges channeled downstream from the sea. Between 1995 and 2015, this affected 2.3 billion and killed 157,000 around the world. 10 Without flood adaptation measures, large swaths of nothern Europe and the whole easern half of the United States will be affected by at least ten times as many floods. 11

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “The Human Coast of Weather Related Disasters 1995--2015” (Geneva, 2015), p.13 www.unisdr.org/2015/docs/climatechange/COP21_WeatherDisastersReport_2015_FINAL.pdf 10

Oliver E. J. Willner et al., “Adaptation Required to Preserve High-End River Flood Risk at Present Levels,” Science Advances 4, no. 1 (January 2018), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao1914.

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11

instead of

“It’s quite nice outside”

try adding

“although by 2090, people probably would rather stay inside if they plan to live long.”

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By the 2090s, as many as 2 billion globally will be breathing air above the WHO “safe” level.12 Already, more than 10,000 people die from air pollution daily.13 That is considerably more each day - each day than the total number of people who have ever been affected by the meltdowns of nuclear reactors.

A higher pollution level in the year a baby is born has also been shown to reduce earnings and labor force participation at age 30.14

Romm, Climate Change p.105

12

DARA, Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Cold Planet, 2nd ef. (Madrid, 2012), p. 17, https://daraint.org/wp-content/ uploads/2012/10/CVM2-Low.pdf 13

Adam Isen et al.,”Every Breath You Take - Every Dollar You’ll Make: The Long-Term Consequences of the Clean Air Act of 1970” (National Bureau of Economic Research working paper no. 19858, September 2015), https://doi.org/10.3386/w19858 14

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The world’s fate is determined by what human action is taken in just the next decade.

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Let’s start a small talk revolution.

3

Scan this QR code for a digital version of this booklet.

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