Earthquakes

Do people care about earthquakes?  In Oregon, we know earthquakes are real.  Earthquakes happen all the time but we can’t feel them.  We know death, destruction and refugees happen after earthquakes.  Few prepare for an earthquake.

Cities and States tell us to prepare for an earthquake. Pros are trained and equipped to deal with what happens after an earthquake.  Millions of dollars are spent every year to design new buildings, and remodel old buildings. 

There is a 20 percent chance we will be hit by a big earthquake in the next 50 years. There is a small chance one happens but we might die.  Should people understand a threat based chance? How do we engage people to take action to prepare for a statistic?

Climate change is a statistic: over decades the change in average atmospheric temperature is a change in the climate.  The consequences of climate change are not a statistic.  They are real and happening now.  

Oregon now has warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers.  But the results are not felt by everyone across the state.  The economic and health burden is not felt by everyone.  Low income families and those without proper healthcare have the worst outcomes while the wealthy and those able to pay for healthcare do not suffer.

Oregonians have a common vision, values and beliefs about earthquakes.  Ideology or politics does not matter when we talk about earthquakes.  But when we speak or write about climate change, misinformation, misunderstandings and fallacies took root over the past 50 years.  Overcoming 50 years of propaganda will not be easy.  The fossil fuel industry that has brainwashed American citizens.

Climate change is real and happening now.  We need to prepare in the same way that we prepare for a magnitude-8.0 or higher earthquake.  Like an earthquake, climate change has a very low probability and is an existential threat.