Ever been unsure of how to talk to your friends or family about climate change? It can be tough. It’s a complicated topic even among people who understand it – and lots of people don’t understand it!
So we wanted to pass along this piece, from the Guardian newspaper in the U.K., because it offers a useful way of talking about one specific outcome of climate change: a rise in extreme weather.
Basically, the message is this. There have always been weird weather patterns around the world. What climate change does is increase the odds of those events.
What does this mean in practical terms? You can’t point to one event – even an event as devastating as the current flooding in Pakistan or the heat waves in Russia – and say, “Climate change caused this.”
But you can say that such events are part of a larger pattern.
Or as the author of the Guardian piece puts it:
It can still be problematic to blame a specific individual extreme weather event on climate change, because there have always been extremes of weather around the world. However, if the likelihood of a particular extreme weather event has changed it is possible to say something.
We’d add that it isn’t just possible to say something. It’s important to say something. Particularly with a bill to regulate carbon emissions now stalled in one of the world’s largest emitters, the U.S., it’s up to us to take action against climate change – for our economic prosperity, for our health, and for the planet.
Climate change is our challenge. But we have the opportunity to stop it. Our small actions can add up to major change in the world.
Will you join us?
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/deniscollette/ | via Creative Commons
