Guest opinion: Caring about people means caring about climate change

"Here in Southwest Florida, we are ground zero for climate change and we need to recognize that if we care about our people, we need to care more about our environment," says Dr. Jennifer Jones, the director of the Center for the Environment and Society in The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University.
"Here in Southwest Florida, we are ground zero for climate change and we need to recognize that if we care about our people, we need to care more about our environment," says Dr. Jennifer Jones, the director of the Center for the Environment and Society in The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University.

If you care about people, then you care about climate change. Stop pretending otherwise.

The science of human-affected climate change is indisputable. Any resistance to acknowledging our role in creating and sustaining this ongoing catastrophe is driven by your entrenched political identity. And your politics will not protect you from impending harm. The storms will still come and your family, your job, your home will still be threatened. People will still drown in their cars on the New Jersey turnpike or die from excessive heat in New Orleans, as we recently witnessed with Hurricane Ida.

In an unprecedented move in September, 200 health and medical science journals across the world simultaneously published an editorial calling temperature increases and the continued destruction of nature the greatest threat to global public health.

In Florida, as elsewhere, the impacts of climate change disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including children, older populations, ethnic minorities, poorer communities and those with underlying health problems. Here in Southwest Florida, we are ground zero for climate change and we need to recognize that if we care about our people, we need to care more about our environment.

Dr. Jennifer Jones
Dr. Jennifer Jones

A new report by the Environmental Protection Agency (“Climate Change and Vulnerability in the United States,” September 2021) provides evidence for what has long been known — ZIP code is a predictor of health and welfare. In Southwest Florida those with no high school diploma are 31% more likely to live in an area predicted to lose the most land due to sea level rise. And throughout the Southeast of the U.S., minorities are 62% more likely to live in areas with the highest projected traffic delays from high-tide flooding.

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Those who work outside — the folks who build homes, do landscaping and pick crops —are especially threatened by an increase in extreme heat days from climate change. New research by the Union of Concerned Scientists found the average outdoor worker in Florida stands to lose $3,700 in wages per year as more days become unsafe to work due to extreme heat. Imagine having to choose between your personal health and your paycheck for a crisis that is not going away. Recognize the unfair hardship this puts on working families.

But all is not lost. The recent landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted how human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of the climate.

When you are at the beach and begin to get a sunburn, you don’t just give up and resign yourself to an even worse burn. You put on sunscreen, cover up or seek shade you take action to keep — the sunburn from getting worse. It's the same for climate change — it is not too late to make change.

We need to innovate our institutions in Florida — such as education, transportation and land management — to focus on protecting people, especially the most vulnerable. It is not ethical nor practical to push the responsibility for action onto individuals. It is naïve to think corporations can or will make decisions for the public good, especially the vulnerable. Technological innovation is not sufficient. We need new forms of governance and policy that proactively seek and respond to the voices of people, particularly the marginalized and vulnerable.

To be sure, the Covid-19 pandemic has allowed misguided anti-science voices to argue for ill-conceived notions of individual freedom at the expense of our collective welfare. But it is important to remind ourselves that caring about our neighbors and acting to protect our families and the most vulnerable among us is a righteous and necessary thing.

Make no mistake: For those of us with the wealth and privilege to outrun impending storms and to think we can turn our backs on others, we cannot insulate ourselves from climate change. When Covid-19 recently filled up hospital emergency rooms and ICUs, care was rationed and non-Covid patients died while waiting for help, despite their ZIP code.

Preserving the paradise of Southwest Florida means caring for all. It's time to innovate our economy and social systems as an act of necessity, but also as an act of compassion. Politics and squeaky wheels be damned.

Jennifer Jones is director of the Center for the Environment and Society in The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University.

CLIMATE & COMMUNITY

Do you have a question about climate change in Southwest Florida? Submit your questions to mbickel@gannett.com and we will work on getting your question or questions answered by our panel of local and regional experts.

And if you have an opposing viewpoint on climate change taking place, we are interested in hearing from you, including by submitting a letter to the editor or a guest opinion column.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Climate change impact already showing wide-ranging impacts