Damien LL 11

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 proveBullard 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 some were more dangerous, than others. 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 contributing to geographic vulnerability. What is it that makes a particular place geographically vulnerable? In the context of Hurricane Katrina, we saw that 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 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.

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 disposabilityGiroux, 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 Hurricane Katrina, shocking images of dead 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 disturbing pictures revealed a vulnerable and destitute segment of the nation's citizenry that conservatives not only refused to see as such, but had spent the better part of three decades demonizing. 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 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. 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 lower-middle and working-class people who would lose their jobs, homes, health care and their dignity. 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 case of historical amnesia and ethical indifference may lie in the emerging 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. These days Americans are quickly fatigued by natural catastrophe. Major natural disasters and their consequences are now relegated to the airborne vocabulary of either fate or the unyielding circumstance of personal 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. It gets worse. Catastrophes have not only been normalized, they have been reduced to the spectacle of titillating TV. Rather than analyzed within broader social categories such as power, politics, poverty, race and class, the violence produced by natural disasters is now highly individualized, limited to human interest stories about loss and individual 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. To read more articles by Henry Giroux and other authors in the Public Intellectual Project, click here. Lost in both the immediacy of the recovery efforts and the public discourse in most of the mainstream media were the abandoned fates and needless suffering of residents in public-housing apartments from Red Hook to the Lower East Side, to the poorest sections of the Rockaway Peninsula and other neglected areas along the east coast of New Jersey. These are populations ravaged by poverty, unemployment and debt. 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 and geography rarely informed the mainstream media's analysis of the massive destruction and suffering caused by Sandy. 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 the American dream is a myth. 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, neither its vulnerability nor the iniquitous treatment it was accorded was factored into post-Sandy media coverage.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 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 help to those most vulnerable and in need of aid. 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. 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 to what Etienne Balibar calls the "death zones of humanity," where they are rendered superfluous and subject to a mode of "production for elimination."9 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.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 you-name-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 African-American 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 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. This culture of cruelty and disposability was particularly visible as Mayor Michael Bloomberg initially 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, 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 control.17 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. 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 self-obligations. 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 governing structures necessary for a democracy to survive. At first glance, 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.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 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 worstEvans, 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)

(Reuters) - 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," 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 (0.05F) up on the average for 2001-2010. The WMO's Annual Statement on 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 bringing climate scientists together with officials from over 100 governments in Japan from March 25-29 to approve a report on the effects of future global warming and how these might be mitigated. A draft of this report, from 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 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.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 criticalPetes 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

We live on a blue planet. 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 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 up only 18% of the nations land area, but are home to more than 50% of US citizens4 . However, 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 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 information. 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 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 hamstring efforts to develop and implement climate adaptation policies and practices based on best-available science. 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 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 raised numerous times in recent decades13,14. 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 climate-related ocean change. Examples include the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, the Interagency Working Group on Ocean Acidification, the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, the National Ocean Policy and the Presidents Climate Action Plan (Table 1). In addition, 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 waters15. 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 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 impacts of climate change and acidification on oceans. Even in cases where considerable uncertainty exists, 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.Oceanic adaptation successfully protects the coasts against global warming-related disasters, especially for low-income minority communitiesConathan, 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.ORGAs 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 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, the more than 8-foot-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 by 2100.80 The problem is not going away any time soon. Scientists warn that 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. 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 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. 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 Economic Case for Restoring Coastal Ecosystems The researchers concluded that coastal wetlands function as valuable, self-maintaining horizontal levees for storm protection their restoration and preservation is an extremely cost-effective strategy for society to mitigate the damage from tropical storms.82 These studies found that the Gulf Coasts remaining coastal wetlands provide around $23.2 billion per year in storm protection services. 83 More recently, scientists have begun to account for future trends in sea-level rise and 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. A new body of research on social vulnerability, led by organization such as the University of South Carolinas Hazard Vulnerability Research Institute, combines data on physical risk with social and economic data sets.84 This robust literature explains how socioeconomic dynamics contribute to communities facing greater challenges in responding to, recovering from, and preparing for climate-related hazards.85 Researchers from Stanford University and The Nature Conservancy overlaid a map of coastal wetlands with data on the spatial distribution of individuals most likely to be harmed or killed during catastrophic storm events. Then, they modeled several scenarios in which sea-level rise and coastal ecosystem degradation continue at current rates. Relative to the most likely scenarios, the scientists reported in Nature Climate Change that: The likelihood and magnitude of losses may be reduced by intact reefs and coastal vegetation, especially when those habitats fringe vulnerable communities and infrastructure. 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 responsesCosgrove, 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, 12/3The US 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 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 couldnt return to their homes for weeks and thousands of people along the east coast lost their homes completely. 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 help protect their ocean resources and support their states ocean economy, they would not be able to coordinate with the U.S. Army Corps on any projects under the National Ocean Policy. 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, 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 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 use management, including economic development that will create jobs and support coastal economies. 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 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. Now the Congress needs to let states prepare for their own future by rejecting the irresponsible Flores Rider and enacting the National Endowment for the Oceans.Focusing on national structures is necessary to solve- otherwise 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 movement are coming to recognize that 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, 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 forcing weaker ones to trade on their terms. 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, 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 global politics, moreover, 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 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 the power of restraint. 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. 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 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 warming- incorrect information is running rampantRomm 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-doomsday-messages-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 global warming?). 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 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 about the threat posed by global warming (see recent study here). Youd think it would be pretty obvious that 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 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 popular culture and the media. It aint doomsday. Quite the reverse, 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 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 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 messages the American public is exposed to: The broad American public is exposed to virtually no doomsday messages, let alone constant ones, on climate change in popular culture (TV and the movies and even online). There is not one single TV show on any network devoted to this subject, which is, arguably, more consequential than any other preventable issue we face. 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. 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 Morning Joe mock clean energy sometime. 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 coverage there is aint doomsday messaging. Go to the front page of the (moderately trafficked) environmental websites. Where is the doomsday? 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. 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 widely read, quoted, and reposted climate science blog in the world. 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 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 actionMerchant 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. As the Guardian put it, "Americans care deeply about 'global warming'but not 'climate change'." 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 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 harm to the planet at large. 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 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 of these relatively quiet, off-screen ways. Maybe a silent spring really was just around the corner. 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 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 bungee jumpers attached to speeding rollercoasters. 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. 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 that the term downplayed the threat. 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 metaphorsand 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. Comment by Matthew Luevano:

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.