This is a battle we can't lose

Recently, Chris Wedding pointed out that “If we only talk about climate change in terms of protecting ecosystems and future generations, we have already lost the battle.” He points out that we need to change the approach to the tremendous impact climate change is already inflicting on us. Now!

This makes sense. The human brain was essentially designed (or, more precisely, has evolved) to solve immediate, urgent dangers – we automatically prioritize those, even if we desire to tackle the longer term challenges. So, bringing forward the huge health, living conditions and economical costs that we are already experiencing from climate change is an imperative – from a communication standpoint. You want to win the climate change battle? Change the perspective from “future” to “now”!

P.S- If you want figures, let me just point out the 820 Billion usd the US population spends annually on health costs (+ lost wages) because of pollution and climate change (this comes from a Morgan Stanley study). In Europe, the tally sums 140000 preventable deaths from climate change over the past 40 years (over 9000 of which in Portugal – that also lost €13.5Bs in the same period) – these figures coming from the European Environment Agency).