Communities will bear the brunt of climate impacts across the world. Even though climate change is a problem which must be addressed nationally and internationally, the impacts are very much local. Resiliency to climate impacts starts in our communities. A new collaborative storytelling effort, the Climate Listening Project, is connecting the conversations about climate change impacts and resilience starting in Western North Carolina.
The Climate Listening Project is an effort to help communities share their climate stories. Sharing concerns about climate change, climate impacts they are seeing in their daily lives and ideas for how to address those, we prepare ourselves to face climate change. This climate resiliency effort focuses on communities and local impacts and aims to improve their resiliency by sharing experiences and knowledge of their surroundings.
Here is our first video:
Western North Carolina is a region known for its outstanding natural beauty. And our economy is very dependent on a stable climate. From the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway, to our agriculture and fishing and our adventure recreation industry, this community (like all others) relies on healthy and healthy natural surroundings and stable climate. Individuals, businesses and groups are developing community-based resiliency efforts like our green tech sector, craft beer industry and farm-to-table restaurants. And as we begin to see the local consequences of climate change, we will depend on our greatest resource, our people, to face the impacts and create solutions.
Sharing concerns about climate change, sharing impacts we are seeing in our daily lives and ideas for how to address those, we prepare ourselves to face climate change. Climate resiliency must focus on local impacts and a community can improve its resiliency by sharing our experiences and knowledge of our surroundings.
View and read some of the WNC Climate Listening Project stories on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/wncclimateproject. Share your own stories on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #MyClimateStory.
Take action: share your climate story with the EPA by commenting on the new proposed Clean Power Plan and showing your support of first-ever limits on climate disrupting carbon pollution by December 1, 2014: click here