The Climate Reality Project has branched out from their entertaining video used in their 24 Hours of Reality event to highlight how we are already paying the cost of carbon pollution with an interactive website.
The Cost of Carbon website allows people to enter their name and location and then pins the results on the site. The infographic puts your location on a world map and then gives you a pie chart of risks; flooding, drought, hurricanes, wildfires, landslides and storm surges. It then links those extreme weather events to how they could affect your livelihood in the future from higher food prices and water scarcity to property damage, loss of wildlife and higher insurance premiums.
Once you’ve worked out what your risk from carbon pollution is, you can scroll through and see what risks people in other locations are facing. Geoffrey in Cambridge, Massachusetts faces a higher risk of hurricanes. Heather in Washington DC faces a risk of increased drought. Here in Vancouver, Canada, I face a risk of drought as well as landslides and floods, which could put at risk crop yields, food prices, water quality, cause ecological damage and result in more asthma and allergies.
The aim of the campaign is to grow popular support for a price on carbon pollution by connecting the dots between carbon pollution and extreme weather events. The interactive website is an effective way to personalize and localize the impacts of climate change, as well as make that connection.
More specifically, this week the Climate Reality Project built on the campaign with a Social Cost of Carbon letter-writing push to encourage the White House Office of Management and Budget to approve the increase in the social cost of carbon that’s being opposed by fossil fuel lobby groups. By making the issue local and personal, the Climate Reality Project hopes to change the narrative around extreme weather events and create wide-ranging popular support for a price on carbon.
