Damien LL 1

Low-income minorities are condemned to the most

geographically vulnerable areas of the coast, ensuring that
they suffer the worst consequences of climate-based disasters
empirics prove
Bullard and Wright, 9 Ware Professor of Sociology and Director, Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark
Atlanta University AND Executive Director, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Dillard University (Robert D. and Beverly,
RACE, PLACE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA: STRUGGLES TO RECLAIM, REBUILD, AND REVITALIZE NEW
ORLEANS AND THE GULF COAST, 50-51

Place did receive some attention in the context of Hurricane Katrina, because place
mattered during Katrina and its aftermath. Place is more than an interchangeable
location. Only particular places felt any impact from the hurricane-so the Gulf Coast region as the focus. In addition, only certain places within the
Gulf Coast region suffered serious devastation. There was a geography of vulnerability-place was not irrelevant, because some places were safer, and

Who ends up in the places that carry more risk - that are less
safe - and why? We know know the answer: The people who are more economically and socially
vulnerable are the ones shunted into the places that are more
geographically vulnerable - including those who are less educated, who are low
income, who are elderly, or who are minorities. In New Orleans, the more geographically vulnerable places
specifically included the properties most at risk for flooding (Seidenberg 2006). Race, place, and class all overlapped in
the city of New Orleans in Katrinas aftermath when the citys poor, largely black,
residents could not escape from the water that flooded the lower-lying residential
areas. But another sense of place did not receive the same media attention, and to get to that place. I want to discuss some additional factors
some were more dangerous, than others.

contributing to geographic vulnerability. What is it that makes a particular place geographically vulnerable? In the context of Hurricane Katrina, we saw

geographic vulnerability can include a number of considerations . An initial

consideration, of course, is living in a location that is warm, humid, and near a warm sea,
such as the Gulf of Mexico, and therefore in a location that is susceptible to hurricanes (or, in other
contexts, in areas susceptible to earthquakes, tornadoes, or other natural disasters). Another
consideration is living in a location with a low elevation or drainage issues, such that if flooding occurs,
the location is at additional risk. Other considerations include season and climate. Katrina hit
in August in the Deep South, which meant that the residents were vulnerable to an
oppressive combination of heat and humidity from which there was no respite due
to the lack of electricity to run the air-conditioning systems. These considerations
are the most obvious sources of geographic vulnerability with respect to hurricanes.
But still other factors also contribute to geographic vulnerability. When a location
lacks access to technology, communication, and transportation, and when
the residents of that location lack the financial means to overcome these
issues, this also renders the location geographically vulnerable. A successful
that

evacuation of New Orleans, for example, required access to information and access to transportation. There were residents of New Orleans who never
heard the order to evacuate (hanson and Hanson 2006), and even among the majority who did, we saw the consequences of a lack of available and
affordable transportation for thousands of residents who had no means to get out of the city.

Damien LL 2

Status quo inattention to climate adaptation renders these

vulnerable populations superfluous by leaving them to suffer
in sacrifice zones of political exclusion the plan is a shift
away from this ethics of disposability
Giroux, 13
Global Television Network Chair, Communication Studies, McMaster University (Henry A., Age of Disposability: Hurricane Sandy,

unwanted populations, and climate change, Arena Magazine, No. 122, February/March, 30-33

In the aftermath of
Katrina
images of bodies floating in the flood waters of
New Orleans appeared on national TV against a sound track of desperate cries for
help by thousands of poor, black, brown, elderly and sick people These
pictures
revealed a
destitute segment of the nation
that conservatives not only
refused to see
but had spent
three decades demonizing
the existence of
those populations excluded from the American dream and abandoned to their
own limited resources in the midst of a major natural disaster
Hurricane

, shocking

dead

vulnerable and

disturbing

's citizenry

as such,

the better part of

. But the haunting images of the abandoned, desperate

and vulnerable would not go away and for a moment imposed themselves on the collective conscience of Americans, demanding answers to questions that were never asked about

. But that moment soon passed as the United States faced

another disaster: The country plunged into an economic turmoil ushered in by finance capital and the apostles of Wall Street in 2008.1 Consequently, an additional instance of widespread hardship and suffering soon bore down on

Hurricane Sandy not only failed to arouse a

heightened sense of moral outrage and call for justice, it has quickly, if not
seamlessly, been woven into a narrative that denied those larger economic and
political forces, mechanisms and technologies by which certain populations when
exposed to a natural catastrophe are rendered human waste One reason for this
may lie in the
vicissitudes of an era eager to accommodate
rather than challenge global warming an era in which freakish weather events
have become such commonplace occurrences that they encourage the denial of
planetary destruction.
natural disasters
are
relegated to the airborne vocabulary of either fate or
tragedy
conveniently allowing an ethically cleansed American public to ignore the
sordid violence and suffering they produce for those populations caught in
the grip of poverty, deprivation and hardship
Catastrophes have not
only been normalized, they have been reduced to the spectacle of
titillating TV.
the violence produced by
natural disasters is now highly individualized limited to human
stories about
suffering. Questions concerning how the violence of Hurricane Sandy impacted
differently those groups marginalized by race, age, sickness and class, particularly
among poor minorities, were either downplayed or ignored
Lost in both the immediacy of the recovery efforts and the
discourse in most of the
media
the poorest sections of
populations ravaged by
poverty, unemployment and debt
and geography rarely informed the
media's analysis of th
suffering caused by Sandy
the American dream is a myth.
lower-middle and working-class people who would lose their jobs, homes, health care and their dignity.

historical amnesia and ethical indifference

case of

emerging

These days Americans are quickly fatigued by natural catastrophe. Major

and their consequences

the unyielding circumstance of personal

now

. It gets worse.

Rather than analyzed within broader social categories such as power, politics, poverty, race and class,
,

interest

loss and

individual

To read more articles by Henry Giroux and other authors in the

Public Intellectual Project, click here.

public

mainstream

were the abandoned fates and needless suffering of residents in public-housing apartments from Red Hook to the Lower East Side, to

the Rockaway Peninsula and other neglected areas along the east coast of New Jersey. These are

. Even though inequality has become one of the most significant factors making certain groups vulnerable to storms and other types of

disasters, matters of power and inequality in income, wealth

massive destruction and

mainstream

. 2 And yet, out of 150 countries, the United States has the fourth highest wealth disparity.3 As Joseph Stiglitz points out, "Nowadays,

these numbers show that

There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe - or, indeed, in any

advanced industrial country for which there are data."4 Inequality and social disparity are not simply about the concentration of wealth and income into fewer hands, they are also about the unequal use of power, the shaping of
policies and the privileging of a conservative wealthy minority who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth. America is paying a high price for its shameful levels of inequality and this became particularly clear when certain
populations in Manhattan received aid more quickly than others in the post-Hurricane Sandy reconstruction efforts. Not surprising, given that Manhattan, one of the epicenters of the storm's savagery, has a level of inequality that not
only stands out but rivals parts of sub-Saharan Africa.5 Within this geography of massive income and wealth inequality, 20 percent of Manhattan residents made $392,022 a year on average [and] the poorest made $9,681. Yet,

even though lower Manhattan was a low priority for receiving government and
private relief efforts
its vulnerability nor the iniquitous treatment it was accorded
was factored into post-Sandy media coverage
, neither

.6 Sandy lay bare what many people did not want to see: a throwaway society that not only endlessly

created material waste, but one all too willing to produce and dispose of what it interprets as human waste. What is clear in this case is that while some attention was focused on the first responders who lost their homes in Breezy

Damien LL 3
Point and the poor elderly trapped for days in housing projects, "facing cold temperatures, food shortages," electrical failures and lack of proper medical care, these are populations whose lives are for the most part considered
"unreal," occupying a space of invisibility where hardships are rarely seen or heard.7 But more was revealed in this disaster than the painful registers of exclusion, mass suffering and the inability of government to provide timely

Hurricane Sandy also revealed the gaping and dystopian

fault lines of those disasters exacerbated by human actions in a society
wracked by vast differences in power, income, wealth, resources and
opportunities
help to those most vulnerable and in need of aid.

. In this instance a natural catastrophe merged with forms of sustained moral/social neglect and a discourse of symbolic violence to reveal a set of underlying determinants, a grammar of

human suffering. The fundamental lesson of Hurricane Sandy is not to be found in the lack of disaster preparedness on the part of many cities, the race and class divisions at work in urban areas, the crisis of global warming or in
the ways in which the rich and powerful used the destruction produced by superstorm Sandy to call for neoliberal reforms, though these demand our considered attention. Rather, it is in the coming dystopia, fashioned by natural
disasters as much as political catastrophes, which reveals the spiraling violence of what can be called a neoliberal spectacle of humiliation and misery waged against those populations now viewed as expendable and disposable.8
Within this regime of neoliberal violence, the politics of disposability is shored up by the assumption that some lives and social relationships are not worthy of a meaningful social existence, empathy and social protections.

Lacking social protections, such populations increasingly are addressed within the
growing reach of the punishing state, as a source of entertainment, or are relegated
death zones of humanity where they are rendered superfluous
and subject to a mode of "production for elimination In a culture defined by
excessive inequality, suffering and cruelty, the protective covering of the state,
along with the public values and the formative culture necessary for a democracy is
corrupted
to what Etienne Balibar calls the "

,"

."9

.10 And the disposable are not merely those populations caught in extreme poverty. Increasingly, they are individuals and groups now ravaged by bad mortgages, poor credit and huge debt. They are the

growing army of the unemployed forced to abandon their houses, credit cards and ability to consume - a liability that pushes them to the margins of a market society. These are the groups whose homes will not be covered by
insurance, who have no place to live, no resources to fall back on, no way to imagine that the problems they will be facing are not just personal, but deeply structural, built into a system that views the social contract and the welfare
state as a lethal disease. A callous indifference to the plight of the poor was made clear in the remarks of former presidential candidate Mitt Romney in his derogatory reference to the 47 percent of adult Americans who don't pay
income taxes for one reason or another as "people who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to youname-it."11In a post-election comment, Romney reproduced this logic when telling a group of his financial backers that Obama won the election because he gave policy gifts to specific interest groups, "especially the AfricanAmerican community, the Hispanic community and young people."12 In this instance, Romney simply affirmed Newt Gingrich's more overtly racist claim that President Obama was a "food stamp president ... who was comfortable
sending a lot of people checks for doing nothing."13 Right-wing pundits such as Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Sean Hannity, offered up additional examples of the discourse of disposability and culture of cruelty by
claiming that 47 percent "want things" and are welfare moochers and "wards of the state."14 In this economic Darwinist measure of value, those marginalized by race and class, who might detract from, rather than enlarge another's
wealth are not only demonized, but are also viewed as problematic in that they become burdens to be disposed of, rather a valuable and treasured human resource in which to invest. But the discourse of disposability is not limited

This culture
of cruelty and disposability was particularly visible as
Bloomberg
was willing
to divert scarce resources for storm relief such as food, power generators, police
and fire personnel and public services to the New York Marathon rather than to the
hardest hit victims of the killer hurricane
to right-wing politicians, pundits, conservative media apparatuses or a Republican Party that is now in the hands of extremists; it is also built into the vocabulary of liberal governmental policy.
Mayor Michael

initially

, especially those residents in Staten Island. In the face of a public anger, Bloomberg eventually cancelled the event but

not before he had made obvious the message that, as Chris Hedges points out, those who are poor and voiceless are expendable, "a drain on efficiency and progress. They are viewed as refuse. And as refuse ... have no voice and no
freedom .... This is a world where only corporate power and profit are sacred. It is a world of barbarism."15 The ideology of hardness and cruelty unleashed by neoliberal policy formulations was further highlighted as a number of
right-wing policy advocates who argued in various mainstream news sources that the destruction wreaked by Sandy provided an excellent opportunity for privatizing the Natural Flood Insurance Program and eliminating labor
protections and other regulations that hampered the superrich from using the disaster to rake in big profits. In one brazen, if not ruthless, suggestion written by right-wing economist Russell S. Sobel in a New York Times online forum,
he argued that in the most devastated areas caused by Hurricane Sandy, "FEMA should create 'free trade zones - in which all normal regulations, licensing and taxes [are] suspended.' This corporate free-for-all would, apparently,
'better provide the goods and services victims need.'"16 This was somewhat at odds with an earlier suggestion by Mitt Romney that FEMA should actually be abolished in order to allow the private sector to take over disaster

The lessons of Hurricane Sandy not only raise serious questions about the class
and racial divides that characterize the United States and the seriousness of the
ecological dangers that are reshaping weather patterns and destroying the globe,
but also about forms of neoliberal power that escape any sense of moral
responsibility and are answerable only to those who have power and seek profit at
any cost
control.17

. As neoliberalism spreads across the globe, there seems to be little that governments can do in fulfilling a broad central commitment to their citizens. This suggests that the American public become all the

more attentive to what populations are dehumanized and considered excess, who is on the chopping block, who is being protected and who is being ignored. Zones of terminal exclusion, social death and what Hedges calls "sacrifice
zones" are proliferating at a rapid pace in the United States.18 These are the forgotten zones of interminable exclusion and social abandonment where Americans are trapped in never ending cycles of poverty, powerlessness, and
hopelessness as a direct result of neoliberal policies that embrace capitalistic greed, while producing "areas that have been destroyed for quarterly profit. We're talking about environmentally destroyed, communities destroyed,
human beings destroyed, families destroyed."19 The growing legions of disposable populations cannot be separated from the ongoing attack by the apostles of neoliberalism on workers' freedoms, women's civil rights, public
schools, the welfare state and other groups and institutions that get in the way of the extremely wealthy bankers, hedge fund managers and corporate CEOs who want to reshape America in the image of casino capitalism. America is
awash in neoliberal culture of violence, which becomes all the more dangerous as the notion of moral conscience, like the notion of social agency, seems all but forgotten as moral obligations are reduced to the realm of selfobligations. Trapped in an unwillingness to translate private troubles into broader social considerations, the discourse of social protections is reduced to the vocabulary of charity and individual giving. In the aftermath of Hurricane
Sandy, the overly washed elite have been discovering poverty while exoticizing the poor. Sarah Maslin Nir points critically to the elites' immersion into poverty porn by noting their "voyeuristic interest in the plight of the poor,
treating [their trip into disaster areas] as an exotic weekend outing."20 She also notes the complaint of a female resident of a Rockaway project who stood by "as volunteers snapped iPhone photos of her as she waited in line for
donated food and clothing."21 The message was not lost on her as revealed by her comment that she and her friends felt as if they were "in a zoo."22 Privatized discourses and a war-against-all ethos increase the likelihood of the
disappearance of those considered disposable and are reinforced by a stripped-down notion of responsibility, which alleviates the weight of moral conscience and social obligations. It undermines and destroys, when possible, those
modes of social agency, collective structures and bonds of sociality capable of holding power accountable, resisting the anti-democratic pressures of neoliberalism and imagining visions that prioritize an investment in the public good
over visions of happiness characterized by an endless search for immediate gratification. In a society in which "markets are detached from morals" and a market economy is transformed into a market society, market values
increasingly shape areas of everyday life where they do not belong.23 As markets provide the only template by which to address all of society's needs, money and expanding profit margins become the ultimate measure of one's
worth, and consuming the ultimate index of what it means to invest in one's identity, relations with others and the larger society. Social rights and nonmarket values no longer matter and consequently an increasing number of
individuals and groups are removed from any kind of ethical grammar that would acknowledge those economic, political and social forces that produce their suffering and marginalization. Such groups are increasingly punished if
they are homeless, poor, unemployed or in debt. Institutions once meant to abolish human suffering now produce it.24 Three strikes sentencing laws have "created a cruel, Kafkaesque criminal justice system that lost all sense of
proportion, doling out life sentences disproportionately to back defendants."25 We are living through what psychologist Robert Jay Lifton rightly calls a "death-saturated age" in which matters of violence, survival and trauma
inescapably saturate everyday life.26 Such anti-democratic forces are not new, but they have been intensified and deepened under expanding neoliberal policies. They have also been reconfigured in more powerful and lethal ways
through a frontal assault on the social contract, the welfare state and social protections.27 Positive visions of the good society and the importance of public values and civic life are being destroyed under the dominance of regressive
and reactionary neoliberal institutions, ideologies, values and social relations. Market fundamentalism is the driving force of our times and it has destroyed the formative culture, rules of law, economic institutions, public spheres and

America seems to be inured to the ongoing threat of

ecological disasters, and indifferent to the plight of those disposable populations
who suffer most from the increasing catastrophes - natural and human that range
from massive inequality and poverty, to droughts and floods that threaten the
planet, but new visions are arising among young people across the United States
and the globe who refuse to equate capitalism with democracy and accept a future
shaped by the nightmarish imperatives of a neoliberal society
governing structures necessary for a democracy to survive. At first glance,

.28 America needs a new language for politics, justice,

compassion and the obligations of citizenship. The individual citizen cannot be reduced to the individual consumer, a democratic society cannot collapse into the image of the market, and human beings cannot be dehumanized and
reduced to human waste, excess and disposability. Teddy Cruz is right in arguing that, "Democracy is not simply the right to be left alone. Rather it is defined by the co-existence with others in space, a collective ethos, regardless of
social media, that unconditionally stands for [economic, political, and] social rights."29 Democracy can only approach its promise when it protects all members of society. As Bauman argues, "Society can only be raised to the level of
community as long as it effectively protects its members against the horrors of misery and indignity; that is, against the terrors of being excluded [and] being condemned to 'social redundancy' and otherwise consigned to [being]
'human waste.'"30In such dark times, the American public cannot trap itself in a crisis of negation, one that rules out the historical possibility of struggle, resistance and emancipatory change.31 This suggests the need to challenge

Damien LL 4
the corrupt and moribund version of democracy that now dominates the United States, but also to imagine what kind of institutions, culture, power relations and modes of governance would be possible in a radical democracy. At
stake here is not just the need for developing an enlightened civic imagination that embraces the moral concepts of conscience, decency, self-respect and human dignity, but also a notion of collective struggle that fights for the
social foundations that make these concepts and progressive public policy meaningful

Humans have emitted enough greenhouse gases to make

global warming and resulting disasters inevitable for centuries
the oceans are affected worst
Evans, 3/25
Journalist, Reuters citing Secretary-General, UN World Meteorological Organisation (Robert, Global warming not stopped, will go

on for centuries WMO, Reuters, 3/25/14, http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/25/climatechange-temperature-idINDEEA2O00620140325)

There has been no reverse in the trend of global warming and there is still
consistent evidence for man-made climate change, the head of the U.N. World Meteorological
Organisation (WMO) said on Monday. A slow-down in the average pace of warming at the planet's surface this century
has been cited by "climate sceptics" as evidence that climate change is not happening at
the potentially catastrophic rate predicted by a U.N. panel of scientists. But U.N.
weather agency chief Michel Jarraud said ocean temperatures, in particular, were rising fast,
and extreme weather events, forecast by climate scientists, showed climate change was
inevitable for the coming centuries. "There is no standstill in global warming,"
(Reuters) -

Jarraud said as he presented the WMO's annual review of the world's climate which concluded that 2013 tied with 2007 as the sixth
hottest year since 1850 when recording of annual figures began. "The warming of our oceans has accelerated, and at lower depths.

More than 90 percent of the excess energy trapped by greenhouse gases

is stored in the oceans. "Levels of these greenhouse gases are at a record, meaning that
our atmosphere and oceans will continue to warm for centuries to come. The
laws of physics are non-negotiable," Jarraud told a news conference. The 21-page survey said the global land and sea surface
temperature in 2013 was 14.5 degrees Celsius (58.1 Fahrenheit), or 0.50C (0.90F) above the 1961-90 average. It was also 0.03C

the Status of the Climate, pointed

to droughts, heatwaves, rising seas, floods and tropical cyclones around the globe last year as
evidence of what the future might hold. FLUCTUATIONS It was issued on the eve of a conference
(0.05F) up on the average for 2001-2010. The WMO's Annual Statement on

bringing climate scientists together with officials from over 100 governments in Japan from March 25-29 to approve a report on the

the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says global warming will disrupt food supplies , slow
world economic growth and may already be causing irreversible damage to
nature. The chair of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, told Reuters last week that the report made even more compelling the
effects of future global warming and how these might be mitigated. A draft of this report, from

scientific arguments for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Some 200 countries have agreed to try to limit global warming to
less than 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, largely by cutting emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
Sceptics argue that changes in global weather are the product of natural fluctuations or other natural causes. But such arguments
were rejected by Jarraud. Natural phenomena like volcanoes or the El Nino/La Nina weather patterns originating in Pacific Ocean
temperature changes had always framed the planet's climate, affecting heat levels and disasters like drought and floods, he said.
"But many of the extreme events of 2013 were consistent with what we would expect as a result of human-induced climate change,"
declared the WMO chief, pointing to the destruction wreaked by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Another example was the record
hot summer of 2012-13 in Australia which brought huge bush fires and destruction of property. Computer simulations showed the
heat wave was 5 times as likely under human influence on climate, Jarraud said. Among other extreme events of 2013 probably
due to climate change were winter freezes in the U.S. south-east and Europe, heavy rains and floods in north-east China and eastern
Russia, snow across the Middle East and drought in south-east Africa.

Damien LL 5

Adaptation policies have already been implemented on land,

but the oceans are left vulnerable to inevitable warming only
applying climate science to ocean policy action avoids the
worst forms of destruction- political motivation exist but
removing barriers is critical
Petes et al., 7/30
Senior Policy Advisor, Climate Adaptation and Ecosystems, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and

Ecosystem Science Advisor, NOAA (Laura E., Jennifer F. Howard, Brian S. Helmuth, and Elizabeth K. Fly Science integration into US climate and ocean policy,
Nature Climate Change, Vol. 4, 7/30/14, 671-673, http://www.northeastern.edu/cos/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Petesetal2014.pdf

The oceans cover 71% of Earths surface and contain 97% of the
planets water. Oceans provide many critical services on which people depend, including jobs in fishing and tourism,
places for recreation and enjoyment, opportunities for commerce and
transportation, global climate regulation, and carbon sequestration1 . Globally, seafood provides
We live on a blue planet.

nearly two billion people with almost 20% of their intake of animal protein2 . Oceans are inherently linked to economic productivity and to the vibrancy of coastal communities. The
ocean and coastal economy contributed 2.8 million jobs and over $282 billion to the US gross domestic product in 20113 . In the United States, coastal watershed counties make

oceans are threatened by the

impacts of climate change and acidification, which have already affected ocean
health5,6. These changes are compromising the ability of oceans to provide valuable ecosystem services, with ecological and socio-economic consequences7 . Now
and in the coming decades, the impacts of climate change on global oceans will
lead to numerous challenges for sectors such as natural resource management,
energy production, human health, transportation and national security810. These changes could
drastically impact ocean services, as well as the societies that depend on them. Science is playing an increasingly important
role in informing policy and management of the worlds oceans . The realization that oceans are rapidly
up only 18% of the nations land area, but are home to more than 50% of US citizens4 . However,

changing11,12 has prompted calls for better international collaboration, integration across scientific disciplines and strengthened partnerships across ocean science, management
and policy communities. Nevertheless, despite increasing political interest in the expanding body of knowledge on the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification, scientific
understanding is often not reflected in policy and management decisions, and misperceptions among both scientists and decision makers impede the twoway exchange of

In many instances, decision makers and managers lack access to scientific

information that meets their specific needs, or they may expect information with
higher certainty or resolution (for example, local-scale projections of climate and sea-level
rise) than is feasible or necessary for addressing their planning needs. Conversely, scientists often view the
information.

pathway from basic research to enactment of policy as opaque and frustrating, and academic researchers, in particular, frequently are not encouraged, and do not always understand
if and how, to engage in the policy dialogue. There is often a misperception that details and caveats inherent in scientific studies and models render such information useless in the
policy-making process, a factor that, ironically, may have resulted from the lack of effective dialogue between scientists and decision makers in the first place. Such disconnects can

Ocean management needs

to become more climate-smart; in other words, it needs to reflect and integrate
current and projected impacts of climate change. This depends on multiple forms of scientific information that are spatially
hamstring efforts to develop and implement climate adaptation policies and practices based on best-available science.

and temporally relevant and easily accessible, consistent methodologies that allow for cross-study comparisons, policies that reflect scientific understanding and are sufficiently
flexible to accommodate uncertainty, and meaningful engagement across multiple sectors of society. The need for improved partnerships between scientists and society has been

Innovative partnerships have been put into place to address

this need and to enhance coordination and inform decision making. As a result,
policies and practices are beginning to more accurately reflect scientific
understanding. This provides an unprecedented chance for action, as the scientific
understanding of climate impacts on oceans has improved, policies that depend on
best-available science are being developed and early efforts to integrate
climate information into ocean management provide transferable lessons
learned. Here, we discuss emerging US science and policy initiatives associated with enhancing ocean resilience to climate change. In addition, we describe several
examples where climate information has successfully been incorporated into ocean policy and planning efforts. Finally, we articulate
opportunities for advancing partnerships between scientists, policy makers and
society to address ocean and climate issues. Policy initiatives In the United States,
an increasing spotlight on the importance of marine resources and ocean
ecosystem services has led to a number of recent national-level initiatives with relevance to
raised numerous times in recent decades13,14.

Damien LL 6
climate-related ocean change. Examples include the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, the Interagency Working Group on Ocean Acidification, the

existing US federal
laws, such as the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Ocean
Acidification Research and Monitoring Act, and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery
Conservation and Management Act, are being applied to manage the impacts of
climate change and acidification on ocean waters 15. New climate-smart policies and practices that reflect the need for
sustainable ocean management in a changing climate are being developed and implemented. Collectively, these initiatives provide a
framework for planning and action, with the goal of enhancing climate resilience.
Ocean adaptation (that is, preparedness and resilience) efforts may include
integration of climate information into stewardship and management
practices, reduction of non-climatic stressors (for example, nutrient pollution, destructive fishing processes) to
Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, the National Ocean Policy and the Presidents Climate Action Plan (Table 1). In addition,

enhance ecosystem resilience, and working with natural resource dependent communities to raise awareness and address current and future climate impacts, among other
approaches16. Relatively few climate adaptation actions have been developed for marine systems, when compared with terrestrial systems17, so land-based efforts can provide
transferable methods and valuable insight. Opportunities currently exist where there is sufficient scientific information to develop management actions that reduce current and future

flexible policies and practices

can be developed that include guard rails to encompass variability and the
potential for different futures; these policies can evolve as new scientific
understanding emerges.
impacts of climate change and acidification on oceans. Even in cases where considerable uncertainty exists,

Oceanic adaptation successfully protects the coasts against

global warming-related disasters, especially for low-income
minority communities
Conathan, et al 14,

The Economic Case for Restoring Coastal Ecosystems, By Michael Conathan, Jeffrey Buchanan, and Shiva Polefka,

Center for American Progress, April 2014, WWW.AMERICANPROGRESS.ORG

As then NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco put it,

Storms today are different. Because of sea-level rise

, [Sandys] storm surge was

much more intense, much higher than it would have been in a non-climate changed world.78 Sea-level rise is also driving an increase in the frequency and intensity of destructive coastal floods. According to a September 2013

the more than 8foot-high storm surge caused by Sandy in New Jersey would have been considered
a once-in-435-years event. But given the accelerating rate of sea-level rise,
scientists now predict that Sandy-scale flooding will occur there every 20 years

global greenhouse gas emissions have already locked in a

significantly greater risk from coastal hazards such as storms and flooding Even if
we cease emitting fossil-fuel-based greenhouse gases today, sea levels
will continue to rise for the next several centuries.

Our increasing economic dependence on our coasts and

the greater risks they face from climate change and sea-level rise mean that any
discussion of coastal land use must address the question of how we reconcile these
conflicting trends

report from the American Meteorological Society, sea-level rise caused by global warming is significantly reducing the time between major coastal flood events.79 In 1950,

by 2100.80

The problem is not going away any time soon. Scientists warn that

According to the geologic record, the last time the atmosphere was as

carbon

rich as we have made it today, seas were 20 meters higher.81

In other words, how do we affordably adapt our coasts so that our coastal communities,

assets, and infrastructure become safer and more secure, while also

continuing to invest

in the coastal ecosystem restoration needed to ensure that our coasts are ecologically healthy? Research, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has revealed that healthy coastal ecosystems play a vital role in
reducing risks from coastal hazards. First, as mentioned in the previous section, coastal wetlands with healthy plant communities, such as salt marshes, mangroves, and estuaries, serve as highly effective buffers against storm
surge. These ecosystems soak up and hold floodwaters similar to a sponge and shield landward areas from inundation. Estimates of the hurricane protection value of existing coastal wetlands in the Gulf and eastern seaboard
have shown that the absence of healthy coastal ecosystems explains as much as 60 percent of the damage suffered by communities along the Gulf Coast that are struck by hurricanes.

25 Center for American Progress | The

coastal wetlands function as valuable, selfmaintaining horizontal levees for storm protection their restoration and
preservation is an extremely cost-effective strategy for society to mitigate
the damage from storms

scientists have begun to account for

socioeconomic data in their

examination of the relationship between healthy coastal ecosystems and the most
vulnerable members of societyprimarily the poor, communities of color,
and the elderly

This
literature explains how socioeconomic dynamics contribute to
Economic Case for Restoring Coastal Ecosystems The researchers concluded that

tropical

.82 These studies found that the Gulf Coasts remaining coastal wetlands provide

recently,

future trends in sea-level rise

. A new body of research on social vulnerability,

with social and

economic data sets.84

robust

around $23.2 billion per year in storm protection services. 83

More

and

led by organization such as the University of South Carolinas Hazard

Vulnerability Research Institute, combines data on physical risk

Damien LL 7
communities facing greater challenges in responding to, recovering from, and
preparing for climate-related hazards

they modeled several scenarios in which

sea-level rise and coastal ecosystem degradation continue at current rates
The likelihood and magnitude of losses may be reduced
by intact reefs and coastal vegetation, especially when those habitats fringe
vulnerable communities and infrastructure

.85 Researchers from Stanford University and The

spatial

distribution of individuals most likely to be harmed or killed during catastrophic

Nature Conservancy overlaid a map of coastal wetlands with data on the

storm events. Then,

. Relative to the most

likely scenarios, the scientists reported in Nature Climate Change that:

. The number of people, poor families, elderly and total value

of residential property that are most exposed to

hazards can be reduced by half if existing coastal habitats remain fully intact.86

However, Congress currently prohibits coordination to

implement coastal adaptation strategies through the Water
Resources Reform and Development Act, ensuring that state
action fails the plan is key to successful oceanic resilience on
a national scale through grass roots and local responses
Cosgrove,
13 BS in Environmental Science, Western Washington University and Director of Campaigns, Conservation Law Foundation (Sean,

Congress Can Let New England States Plan for Future Storms, or Not, Conservation Law Foundation, 12/3

Army Corps of Engineers works on many coastal projects in Texas. Will Congress let them
coordinate with states in New England? A little over a year ago Superstorm Sandy barreled up
the east coast and wreaked havoc on coastal communities and in many states inland. The impacts
The US

were notably fierce in New Jersey and areas in and around New York City, but Rhode Island and other states also suffered serious
impacts. Homes, businesses and the local infrastructure which creates communities phone and electrical lines, roads and
highways, drinking water and sewage systems, and TV and mass communication systems were knocked out for days. Some folks

Its
estimated that 285 people were killed. The significant challenges that coastal states
face with increasingly large storms in the era of climate change are clear . Luckily, we
have excellent policy tools designed specifically to help address the uncertainties of
climate change in the National Ocean Policy, and ocean user groups across our region support its use.
The National Ocean Policy uses regional ocean planning , improved science and
data, requires better agency coordination and relies on deep involvement by
stakeholders all of which are needed to tackle these types of management
challenges now. As one state official said, We can either plan now or we can let nature plan for us. This is especially true
when the anticipated future increase in the number and severity of storms will make these challenges larger and more difficult. We
have the tools of the National Ocean Policy at hand , but if some in Congress get
their way the New England states could be barred from working with the
federal agencies necessary to plan for coastal storm impacts. The House of
Representatives has recently passed the Water Resources Reform and Development Act ,
also known as WRRDA. The House bill contains a harmful additional provision, known as a rider,
which would prohibit the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from coordinating
with coastal states to implement any ecosystem-based management or regional ocean planning program. This
provision, led by a Congressman from land-locked Waco, Texas, seeks to prohibit the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a key coastal and ocean management agency, from
coordinating with coastal states. This means that even though many states are conducting planning efforts to
couldnt return to their homes for weeks and thousands of people along the east coast lost their homes completely.

help protect their ocean resources and support their states ocean economy, they would not be able to coordinate with the U.S.

While driven by an anti-federal sentiment,

the Flores rider actually weakens the ability of states to carry out ocean planning
and coastal management for the welfare and health of its own citizens. On the bright side,
Army Corps on any projects under the National Ocean Policy.

the Senate passed a version of the WRRDA bill containing the National Endowment for the Oceans (NEO), which would establish a
beneficial fund for improving coastal management and resilience. Championed by energetic Rhode Island Senator Sheldon

Damien LL 8
Whitehouse, NEO will help set up an endowment supporting work by state, regional, tribal and federal entities, as well as nonprofit
organizations and academic institutions to fund the baseline science, monitoring, and observation data needed to improve ocean

We need ocean
planning and we need all federal agencies including the US Army Corps of
Engineers to be closely engaged with states and other federal agencies . We cant
be held hostage to the whims of a nonsensical political agenda when we have real work to get
use management, including economic development that will create jobs and support coastal economies.

done; the difference could be destroyed communities and lost lives. Thankfully, large numbers of Senators and Representatives from
New England and other states have spoken out in support of the National Ocean Policy and a National Endowment for the Oceans.

Congress needs to let states prepare for their own future by rejecting the
irresponsible Flores Rider and enacting the National Endowment for the Oceans.
Now the

Focusing on national structures is necessary to solveotherwise local environmental movements get undermined
Monbiot 4 (George Monbiot, journalist, academic, and political and
environmental activist, 2004, Manifesto for a New World Order, p. 11-13)
The quest for global solutions is difficult and divisive. Some members of this movement are deeply suspicious of all
institutional power at the global level, fearing that it could never be held to account by the worlds people. Others
are concerned that a single set of universal prescriptions would threaten the diversity of dissent. A smaller faction
has argued that all political programmes are oppressive: our task should not be to replace one form of power with
another, but to replace all power with a magical essence called anti-power. But most of the members of this

if we propose solutions which can be effected only at

the local or the national level, we remove ourselves from any meaningful role in
solving precisely those problems which most concern us. Issues such as climate
change, international debt, nuclear proliferation, war, peace and the balance of trade between nations can
be addressed only globally or internationally. Without global measures and global
institutions, it is impossible to see how we might distribute wealth from rich nations to poor ones,
movement are coming to recognize that

tax the mobile rich and their even more mobile money, control the shipment of toxic waste, sustain the ban on
landmines, prevent the use of nuclear weapons, broker peace between nations or prevent powerful states from

If we were to work only at the local level, we

would leave these, the most critical of issues, for other people to tackle.
Global governance will take place whether we participate in it or not. Indeed,
forcing weaker ones to trade on their terms.

it must take place if the issues which concern us are not to be resolved by the brute force of the powerful. That the
international institutions have been designed or captured by the dictatorship of vested interests is not an argument
against the existence of international institutions, but a reason for overthrowing them and replacing them with our
own. It is an argument for a global political system which holds power to account. In the absence of an effective

local solutions will always be undermined by communities

of interest which do not share our vision. We might, for example, manage
to persuade the people of the street in which we live to give up their cars
in the hope of preventing climate change, but unless everyone, in all
communities, either shares our politics or is bound by the same rules, we
simply open new road space into which the neighbouring communities can
expand. We might declare our neighbourhood nuclear-free, but unless we are simultaneously working, at the
global politics, moreover,

international level, for the abandonment of nuclear weapons, we can do nothing to prevent ourselves and everyone
else from being threatened by people who are not as nice as we are. We would deprive ourselves, in other words, of

By first rebuilding the global politics, we establish the political

space in which our local alternatives can flourish . If, by contrast, we were to leave
the governance of the necessary global institutions to others, then those
institutions will pick off our local, even our national, solutions one by one.
the power of restraint.

There is little point in devising an alternative economic policy for your nation, as Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, now
president of Brazil, once advocated, if the International Monetary Fund and the financial speculators have not first
been overthrown.

There is little point in fighting to protect a coral reef from local

Damien LL 9
pollution, if nothing has been done to prevent climate change from
destroying the conditions it requires for its survival.

This debate space is key- repeated messages in the public

sphere are necessary the status quo de-emphasizes warmingincorrect information is running rampant
Romm 12

(Joe Romm is a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, which New York
Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named one of the 25 Best Blogs
of 2010. In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of 100 people who are reinventing America. Time
named him a Hero of the Environment and The Webs most influential climate-change blogger. Romm was
acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1
billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress
and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT., 2/26/2012, Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The Myth of
Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages on Climate,
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/26/432546/apocalypse-not-oscars-media-myth-of-repetition-of-doomsdaymessages-on-climate/#more-432546)

The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant
repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that
strategy doesnt work and indeed is actually counterproductive ! These myths are so deeply
ingrained in the environmental and progressive political community that when we finally had a serious shot at a
climate bill, the powers that be decided not to focus on the threat posed by climate change in any serious fashion in
their $200 million communications effort (see my 6/10 post Can you solve global warming without talking about

These myths are so deeply ingrained in the mainstream media that

such messaging, when it is tried, is routinely attacked and denounced and the
flimsiest studies are interpreted exactly backwards to drive the erroneous message
home (see Dire straits: Media blows the story of UC Berkeley study on climate messaging) The only time
global warming?).

anything approximating this kind of messaging not doomsday but what Id call blunt, science-based messaging
that also makes clear the problem is solvable was in 2006 and 2007 with the release of An Inconvenient Truth
(and the 4 assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and media coverage like the April
2006 cover of Time). The data suggest that strategy measurably moved the public to become more concerned

the
public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains why they
should be concerned about an issue. And the social science literature, including the vast
literature on advertising and marketing, could not be clearer that only repeated
messages have any chance of sinking in and moving the needle . Because I
doubt any serious movement of public opinion or mobilization of political action
could possibly occur until these myths are shattered, Ill do a multipart series on this
about the threat posed by global warming (see recent study here). Youd think it would be pretty obvious that

subject, featuring public opinion analysis, quotes by leading experts, and the latest social science research. Since
this is Oscar night, though, it seems appropriate to start by looking at what messages the public are exposed to in

climate change has been mostly

an invisible issue for several years and the message of conspicuous consumption
and business-as-usual reigns supreme. The motivation for this post actually came up because I
popular culture and the media. It aint doomsday. Quite the reverse,

received an e-mail from a journalist commenting that the constant repetition of doomsday messages doesnt work
as a messaging strategy. I had to demur, for the reasons noted above. But it did get me thinking about what
messages the public are exposed to, especially as Ive been rushing to see the movies nominated for Best Picture
this year. I am a huge movie buff, but as parents of 5-year-olds know, it isnt easy to stay up with the latest movies.
That said, good luck finding a popular movie in recent years that even touches on climate change, let alone one a
popular one that would pass for doomsday messaging. Best Picture nominee The Tree of Life has been billed as an
environmental movie and even shown at environmental film festivals but while it is certainly depressing,
climate-related it aint. In fact, if that is truly someones idea of environmental movie, count me out. The closest to
a genuine popular climate movie was the dreadfully unscientific The Day After Tomorrow, which is from 2004 (and
arguably set back the messaging effort by putting the absurd global cooling notion in peoples heads! Even
Avatar, the most successful movie of all time and the most epic piece of environmental advocacy ever captured on

Damien LL 10
celluloid, as one producer put it, omits the climate doomsday message. One of my favorite eco-movies, Wall-E, is
an eco-dystopian gem and an anti-consumption movie, but it isnt a climate movie. I will be interested to see The
Hunger Games, but Ive read all 3 of the bestselling post-apocalyptic young adult novels hey, thats my job!
and they dont qualify as climate change doomsday messaging (more on that later). So, no, the movies certainly
dont expose the public to constant doomsday messages on climate. Here are the key points about what repeated

The broad American public is exposed to

virtually no doomsday messages, let alone constant ones, on climate change in popular
messages the American public is exposed to:

culture (TV and the movies and even online). There is not one single TV show on any network devoted to this

The same goes

for the news media, whose coverage of climate change has collapsed (see Network
News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011). When the media do cover climate change
in recent years, the overwhelming majority of coverage is devoid of any doomsday
messages and many outlets still feature hard-core deniers. Just imagine what the
publics view of climate would be if it got the same coverage as, say,
unemployment, the housing crisis or even the deficit? When was the last time you saw an
employment denier quoted on TV or in a newspaper?
The public is exposed to constant
messages promoting business as usual and indeed idolizing conspicuous
consumption. See, for instance, Breaking: The earth is breaking but how about that Royal Wedding? Our
political elite and intelligentsia, including MSM pundits and the supposedly liberal media like, say,
MSNBC, hardly even talk about climate change and when they do, it isnt
doomsday. Indeed, there isnt even a single national columnist for a major media
outlet who writes primarily on climate. Most liberal columnists rarely mention it.
subject, which is, arguably, more consequential than any other preventable issue we face.

At least a quarter of the public chooses media that devote a vast amount of time to the notion that global warming
is a hoax and that environmentalists are extremists and that clean energy is a joke. In the MSM, conservative
pundits routinely trash climate science and mock clean energy. Just listen to, say, Joe Scarborough on MSNBCs

The major energy companies bombard the

airwaves with millions and millions of dollars of repetitious pro-fossil-fuel ads. The
environmentalists spend far, far less money. As noted above, the one time they did run a
major campaign to push a climate bill, they and their political allies including the
president explicitly did NOT talk much about climate change, particularly
doomsday messaging Environmentalists when they do appear in popular culture, especially TV,
are routinely mocked. There is very little mass communication of doomsday
messages online. Check out the most popular websites. General silence on the subject, and again, what
Morning Joe mock clean energy sometime.

coverage there is aint doomsday messaging. Go to the front page of the (moderately trafficked) environmental

If you want to find anything approximating even modest,

blunt, science-based messaging built around the scientific literature, interviews with
actual climate scientists and a clear statement that we can solve this problem well,
youve all found it, of course, but the only people who see it are those who go looking for it .
websites. Where is the doomsday?

Of course, this blog is not even aimed at the general public. Probably 99% of Americans havent even seen one of
my headlines and 99.7% havent read one of my climate science posts. And Climate Progress is probably the most

Anyone dropping into America

from another country or another planet who started following popular culture and
the news the way the overwhelming majority of Americans do would get the distinct
impression that nobody who matters is terribly worried about climate
change. And, of course, theyd be right see The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2. It is total
BS that somehow the American public has been scared and overwhelmed by
repeated doomsday messaging into some sort of climate fatigue. If the publics
concern has dropped and public opinion analysis suggests it has dropped
several percent (though is bouncing back a tad) that is primarily due to the
conservative medias disinformation campaign impact on Tea Party
widely read, quoted, and reposted climate science blog in the world.

Damien LL 11
conservatives and to the treatment of this as a nonissue by most of the rest of the
media, intelligentsia and popular culture.

Images of warming catastrophe motivates action- inaction is

due to a lack of fear- metaphors like silent sprint and the
ozone being a shield, population bomb, empirically
galvanize political action
Merchant 14 (Brian Merchant, Senior Editor @ Vice, Apocalypse Talk: How Our
Best Metaphors for Collapse Help Us Prevent It,
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/finding-the-right-metaphor-for-apocalypse, May
30, 2014)
There's a big difference between 'climate change' and 'global warming', at
least, semantically speaking. In a recent study, Yale researchers found that
people were much more likely to be worried about 'global warming'. One
reason for that may be that it invites stronger, more resonantand more
apocalypticmetaphors. We humanfolk tend to need good, culturally resonant
metaphors to effectively grasp, engage, and cope with vast ecological
threats. Behind many crises that have successfully been addressed, from the
ozone hole to pesticide overuse to rampant overpopulation, there's lurked a
pervasive metaphorthink 'silent spring'that captured our imagination and
spurred us to act. Clearly, the words we use to describe global climate change
color our understanding of the phenomenon , as is true with just about
anything. The Yale researchers found that 'global warming' conjured images of
catastropherising seas, sweaty brows, Hurricane Sandy-esque scenes of
destruction, and so onwhile 'climate change' led people to "disengage." On a
whole, respondents were 13 percent more likely to say global warming was a bad thing as opposed to climate
change. "We found that the term 'global warming' is associated with greater public understanding, emotional
engagement, and support for personal and national action than the term 'climate change,'" the scholars concluded.

Global
warming is evocativeit's something we can easily imagine happening in a
cohesive context: The world is getting hotter, which means glaciers are melting and
sea levels rising, and an age of sweltering unpleasantness is nigh. Climate change is
too broad and dull-sounding, and even if it's slightly, technically more accurate, it
doesn't connect with the latent storyteller in each of our brains. That's important,
because telling stories is central to how we've collectively understood and
overcome past catastrophes. And our foremost storytelling device is, yep, the
metaphor. The sociologist Sheldon Ungar has argued that " easy-to-understand
bridging metaphors," derived from pop culture , are essential to
understanding major existential threats to civilization. In a 2000 paper,
Ungar claimed that the public rallied around the threat to the ozone layer because
the problem was readily graspable with the help of such metaphors. Specifically, the
ozone layer was routinely presented as a sort of "shield" that functioned
suspiciously like the ones that surround spaceships like Star Trek's Enterpriseand
it was breaking down. And we all know what happens when the shields go down:
Whoever they once protected is left vulnerable to a final coup de grce. In this case,
the hostile bombardment of the sun's UV rays. Certainly, other factors were at play,
but the global community did seem to rapidly internalize that metaphorthe
As the Guardian put it, "Americans care deeply about 'global warming'but not 'climate change'."

Damien LL 12
international effort to reduce the refrigerants, foams, and other chlorine gas
pollution tearing at the ozone hole was one of the most successful environmental
victories in history. Before that, the modern environmental movement was
practically born on a metaphorthe famous "silent spring." The name of Rachel
Carson's revolutionary book comes from a thought experiment that considers the impact of DDT and other
pesticides on the environment, if their use were to be left unchecked: A silent spring, deathly stillness in the season
where we'd expect abundance. Silent Spring is now aif not thecanonical environmental text. It was the first to
popularize the notion that fast-advancing technologies may be doing largely invisible, but potentially irreparable

In a 2003 paper, Brigitte Nerlich a professor of science,

language, and society at the University of Nottingham, traces the influence of the
silent spring metaphor from the 60s through the 90s. She finds that its influence is
lasting and powerful. The construction of the 'silent spring,' she argues, draws on
knowledge of literary traditions and political events so as to achieve its main
rhetorical effect: to signal a deep threat to the environment . In association with spring the
harm to the planet at large.

word silent evokes death, the end of nature, the unnatural and artificial, emptiness and sterility, whereas spring is
usually associated in western culture with birds singing, new beginnings, life, unspoiled nature, and wilderness.
Silence in western culture has mainly negative, even menacing connotations. The two words silent and spring also
establish links to western literary traditions, which either romanticise nature or project dystopian visions of nature
destroyed, and to scientific and political events, which were different but at the same time similar for the 1960s and
the 1990s. Nerlich, 2003 After its publication in 1962, Silent Spring, helped galvanize a then-nascent environmental
movement. When a polluted river in Ohio caught fire and oil spilled off the coast of Santa Barbara, the metaphor
may have suddenly seemed very obviously true. We had been polluting, contaminating, and ruining the planet in all

It's a
resonant metaphorone that we're still seeing manifested in reportage, fiction,
even Google doodles. Another highly successful, if currently less-celebrated,
metaphorical rendering of an ecological End was Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich's
Population Bombhis book presented the neo-Malthusian idea that if people
continued procreating apace, famine and disaster was on the way . The book was a
runaway bestseller in the US, but its biggest influence may have been felt in China,
where it's thought to have helped inspire the infamous one-child policy. It's not hard
to see why. The image of humans proliferating with the ferocity of an exploding
bomband razing their surroundings to rubble after it goes offwas an urgent and
sinister one. It's no wonder one of the most-discussed films of the time was Soylent Green, which took place in
an overcrowded, near-future dystopia. Climate change, meanwhilethe single greatest
existential threat to human civilization of our timeis still in search of its
killer allegory. In fact, as the Yale study demonstrates, scientists,
reporters, and citizens can't quite decide what to name it in the first
place, making it all the more difficult to develop useful and enduring
metaphors. The term 'Global warming' was first used by Wallace Broecker, a professor at Columbia, who
of these relatively quiet, off-screen ways. Maybe a silent spring really was just around the corner.

published the seminal paper "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" in 1975.
Since then, climatologists, reporters, and writers have been sparring over what language to use to best represent
the science. NASA, for its part, has said that "global climate change" is the most accurate term, scientifically. But
that makes for a lousy allegory-generator. Thus far, no home run "bridging metaphor" has emerged for global
warmingAl Gore compared the planet to a frog in boiling water in An Inconvenient Truth, the physicist Joe Romm
has called the climate an "ornery beast," and NASA's Dr. James Hanson has said that global warming is "loading the
dice" for disaster. Communications researcher Chris Russill tallies even more: "There are hothouses and
greenhouses, atmospheric blankets and holes, sinks and drains, flipped and flickering switches, conveyer belts and
bathtub effects, tipping points and time bombs, ornery and angry beasts, rolled dice, sleeping drunks, and even

None have enjoyed profound cultural

influence, except, perhaps, the greenhouse effect, but that's inextricably tied to
elementary physics. Still, when placed against the backdrop of 'global warming', all
of those metaphors become foreboding, alarmingthose switches and speeding
coasters are heading us towards a definite goal: a hotter, more unstable world.
bungee jumpers attached to speeding rollercoasters.

Damien LL 13
Meanwhile, it's easy to see why the concept of 'climate change' doesn't inspire the imagination. It sounds routine,
normal. There's no culprit; it suggests nothing inherently unnatural is taking placeand, because it's so broad, it
provides little meaningful context for any metaphors or storytelling devices to resonate widely. As such, it's no
surprise that the term 'climate change' has been embraced by oppositional political strategists who felt early on

A famous memo authored by GOP communications

expert Frank Luntz advised Republicans that the "phrase 'global warming'
should be abandoned in favor of 'climate change'" to blunt the public's
perception of a looming disaster. The less the public connected with the
problem, Luntz reasoned, the less they would feel an imperative to
address it. Sure enough, doubt and apathy were sowed, and "the climate
is always changing" is one of the most popular refrains we continue to
hear from those who've been conditioned to disregard climate science. To
this day, there's a huge gulf between how the scientific community and the general
public understands global climate change. In fact, that gulf is still widening; more
Americans than ever deny that it's real at all. Partdefinitely not allof the
problem could be that we've been talking about it all wrong. Not only does the
interchanging use of both terms offer naysayers an opportunity to snidely intone,
'well, which is it?', but it shatters the frame, the stage on which stories about the
threat need to be told. 'Global warming' conveys the nature of that threat.
It's the term we need to use when we're telling the true story of the dire
straits we're in. Environmentalists catch a lot of flack for being 'alarmist',
but in the past, they've turned to some downright apocalyptic metaphors
and they've worked. Now, it seems we're still waiting for someonean author,
scientist, poet, whoeverto take elevate the rhetoric to the next level, to find a new
metaphor that captures the essence of all that we stand to lose.
that the term downplayed the threat.

Thus the plan: Resolved: The United States federal

government should repudiated the Water Resources Reform
and Development Act that prevent climate resiliency
development of the Earths oceans.