WAIMEA — It was another case of the usual suspects.
What Dr. Chip Fletcher, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology, set out to accomplish Tuesday afternoon in the Waimea School Cafeteria is encompassed by the same basic goal to which climate scientists have aspired for decades — to educate the public on the scientific truth of climate change.
But his efforts, as well as the demographics of the crowd of roughly 50 people to whom Fletcher spoke, highlighted the creeping redundancy of his message and the tangible difficulty of spreading it into larger segments of society.
In other words, Fletcher found himself preaching to the converted.
“You have got a high percentage of this area that will not show up to this kind of presentation and will not listen to this,” said Chantal Chung, who works for the UH Sea Grant College Program. “Even though Dr. Fletcher is brilliant in the way he presents the information, he is preaching to the choir in this room. And it’s not the people in this room that need to be accessed. It’s the people who will never step inside of this room.”
So why won’t more in the community come? Why won’t they engage?
Where could the message be more relevant than on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where, according to Fletcher, sea levels will rise at a 25 percent greater clip than in any other ecosystem on the planet, where intensified tropical storms can wreak economic and social devastation over night?
There are those who still question the science of climate change. Then there are those who acquiesce to the data, but question humanity’s role in the process. After all, climate change has occurred naturally throughout the planet’s history and will continue long after humans become extinct.
But Fletcher, Chung and her counterpart Caree Edens, who also attended Tuesday’s presentation, didn’t identify skepticism as the reason a cafeteria in Waimea filled up with so many familiar, already-converted faces instead of new, inquiring ones.
Instead, they explained the reason as denial manifesting from a combination of negativity and the inaccessibility of the abstract.
“When people are faced with too much negativity, they stop listening,” Fletcher said.
Chung took it a step further, calling the topic “overwhelming and depressing.” In her opinion, however, what’s more important is the somewhat intangible quality of overwhelming and depressing facts mixed with harsh economic realities.
“People are aware this is going on, but it hasn’t hit them personally yet,” she said. “Or they’re at a point where they are so focused on daily survival. When people are barely keeping their heads above water for their basic daily needs, how is it that we’re expecting them to think globally about something that doesn’t impact their everyday lives?”
“But what they don’t understand is what’s keeping them down,” Chung continued. “The economics keeping them under water — the price of food, the price of gas — it’s all related to (climate change). But that connection to their lives hasn’t been made yet.”
Fletcher illustrated the impact of climate change beyond mere weather events with an example of a drought in the Middle East, particularly Syria.
Of course, the civil war raging in that country has been the largest factor in its massive outflow of refugees, but climate change has contributed. And as phenomena like sea level rise and drought render life in certain areas of the world unlivable, an impact already observable in its early phases, shifts in human population are inevitable.
Drought leads to migration, which leads to refugees, which leads to political, economic and social tensions. All this, Fletcher contends, has led to the rise of populism in Western countries as immigrants can be made scapegoats for crime, increased unemployment and the general deterioration of quality of life.
But it’s not just people who don’t have the time or inclination to worry about and conceptualize all that information who avoid meetings like Tuesday’s, Edens said.
Fletcher’s presentation also touched on the idea that actions taken by those who care about climate change and hope to help reverse it are not always the most impactful choices they could make.
More important than recycling or using energy-saving light bulbs, he said, are the choices to eat a more plant-based diet, having smaller families, and avoiding car and air travel. These restrictions, in Edens’ mind, leave a sour taste in the mouths of those who don’t struggle daily to make ends meet.
“The higher classes, they don’t want to hear it because they don’t want that lifestyle change,” she said. “You’re asking them to stop flying, stop driving, stop having kids, and they just don’t want to hear it.”
More than just realism and pessimism were voiced Tuesday, however. And more than that lingered in the air after the presentation concluded.
Many in attendance were teachers, like Jessica Sobocinski, who runs the garden program at Hawaii Preparatory Academy. Beyond an opportunity for like-minded people to network and coordinate, she said Fletcher’s program helped the educators there with the “how” of incorporating dense and difficult information into their curriculum.
“How do we introduce this to children in a way that’s not overwhelming but empowering, and can inform their choices as adults?” she said. “Not all kids will be conservationists or farmers, but if they have this understanding they can take it into engineering or computer science. The way they do their work and make their designs is going to be affected by that.”
Chung added to that sentiment, saying climate change education can prove circular. But instead of moving from the community to parents and teachers to kids, it can move in the opposite direction. It can start with the children, who will discuss it with their parents, who can then spread the ideas throughout the community.
Perhaps that can prove the most effective mode of helping people of all economic statuses in all geographic regions of the world to accept and take seriously something that is unpleasant to consider and difficult to understand.
“You guys are here because you know this is a legitimate topic,” Fletcher said. “The problem is the people who are now making decisions in our country and worldwide who do not believe in climate change need to hear this message. But it’s not just scientists who are going to tell them that message. It’s going to be you guys who tell them that message as well.”