Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

18 May 2015 Photo courtesy of NADCA MoreNews Continued from previous page Climate Change Has an Outrage Problem vides programs, products, and services to its nearly 10,000 members. Nearly one-half of AIHA members hold a professional certification, most notably the Certified Industrial Hygiene (CIH) certification. AIHA members focus on protection of the health and safety of employees, as well as the broader commu- nity and your home. By Eric Holthaus Originally published on August 29, 2014 In the years to come, it's not a stretch to imagine millions of people flooding the streets to protest— flooding in the streets. What will it take to turn climate change into a social movement? The struggles surrounding women's suffrage, civil rights, the Vietnam War, South African Apartheid, the Arab Spring, and gay marriage were pervasive. They changed history. These movements had very visible leaders. They also had a role in shaping popular culture, with iconic music and movies. In hindsight, they look inevitable. Beyond a certain former vice president and his (in) famous PowerPoint slideshow, global warming has none of that. That's probably because we've never faced an issue like this before: High stakes, yet abstract. Immediate action necessary to dislodge a (seemingly) distant threat. What's worse, the solutions to global warming, while technically possible, are extremely complex. With a world economy so deeply intertwined with energy derived from fossil fuels, almost every daily action we take contributes to our collective carbon foot- prints. Still, for an issue so pervasive, when you leave your home for work every morning, it's almost impossible to physically "see" climate change. That takes away from the immediacy, and decreases the perceived threat. There's a paradox here, and it's not working in our favor. Talkin' 'bout a…? So, what's it going to take? The math of global warming is compelling enough to spark a revolution. But statistics seldom drive people to the streets. Society-altering disasters like Hurricane Katrina, Su- perstorm Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan and the California drought have generated loads of attention, but in the end, they're regional and (thankfully) still rare. Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Bill McKibben and former NASA climate scientist James Hansen have all done their best to kickstart outrage and inform their followers. None have yet reached a status so iconic that their legacy is forever entwined with cli- mate change, like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Nelson Mandela. So far, American politicians have only contributed half-measures and very little talk. But movements like these are rarely led from above. Instead, main- stream media and elected leaders will be respond- ing to whatever moves Americans to outrage. Yet, there are signs things are shifting. In an inter- view with Slate earlier this year, retired Navy rear admiral David Titley said "people working on climate change should prepare for catastrophic success." The language has ratcheted up a notch in recent weeks. Last Sunday, the New York Times published an op- ed by a climate-concerned psychiatrist who's identi- fied "a major historical change in consciousness that is neither predictable nor orderly". This week, the Washington Post ran a series of editorials in which they called US action on climate change 'inevitable'. A leaked draft of a years-long reporting effort by the world's top climate scientists

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