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1. Municipal finance shapes urban climate action and justice

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-01924-4  

   Diezmartínez, Claudia V; Short_Gianotti, Anne G (March 2024, Nature Climate Change)

   Implementing climate policies and programs in cities requires significant investments that inevitably entangle climate action with urban climate finance – the mechanisms and practices city governments use to pay for climate efforts. Here, we use U.S. cities as a case study to examine how climate finance impacts, and is impacted by, the pursuit of urban climate action and climate justice. Drawing on 34 expert interviews, we show how municipal financial decisions and budgetary practices are shaping how, when, and for whom cities are responding to climate change. We demonstrate how public spending decisions are intertwined with the logics of debt financing and examine the impacts of these relationships on cities’ climate investments. We showcase the structuring impacts of finance on climate action and the built environment, and we introduce pathways through which climate and justice considerations are already being integrated into, and potentially transforming, municipal finance in the U.S. 

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2. Broadcast Meteorologists’ Views on Climate Change: A State-of-the-Community Review

   https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-19-0003.1  

   Perkins, David R.; Timm, Kristin; Myers, Teresa; Maibach, Edward (April 2020, Weather, Climate, and Society)

   Abstract Broadcast meteorologists—highly skilled professionals who work at the intersection between climate scientists and the public—have considerable opportunity to educate their viewers about the local impacts of global climate change. Prior research has shown that, within the broadcast meteorology community, views of climate change have evolved rapidly over the past decade. Here, using data from three census surveys of U.S. broadcast meteorologists conducted annually between 2015 and 2017, is a comprehensive analysis of broadcast meteorologists’ views about climate change. Specifically, this research describes weathercasters’ beliefs about climate change and certainty in those beliefs, perceived causes of climate change, perceived scientific consensus and interest in learning more about climate change, belief that climate change is occurring (and the certainty of that belief), belief that climate change is human caused, perceptions of any local impacts of climate change, and perceptions of the solvability of climate change. Today’s weathercaster community appears to be sharing the same viewpoints and outlooks as most climate scientists—in particular, that climate change is already affecting the United States and that present-day trends are largely a result of human activity. 

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3. Closing the concern-action gap through relational climate conversations: insights from US climate activists

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s44168-022-00027-0  

   Fine, Julia Coombs (December 2022, Climate Action)

   Abstract Several studies have found that relational climate conversations can be an effective method of increasing conversational participants’ concern about the climate crisis and encouraging them to take collective action. However, little work has yet examined how such conversations are practiced by climate activists, a group with expertise in relational organizing. Drawing on surveys and semi-structured interviews with climate activists across the USA, this analysis finds that activists frequently have climate conversations with friends and family, most of whom are politically progressive and somewhat to very concerned about the climate crisis. These findings might seem to suggest that climate activists only have climate conversations with like-minded others, producing an echo chamber effect that could entrench the political polarization of the issue. However, climate activists report strategic reasons for choosing like-minded audiences, such as personal response efficacy. Additionally, they report that one of their primary conversational goals is to move people who are already concerned about the climate crisis to take collective action in accordance with values of climate justice. The results identify obstacles to collective climate action even among concerned audiences and suggest that relational climate conversations can be useful in overcoming these obstacles. Graphical Abstract 

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4. Waking from Paralysis: Revitalizing Conceptions of Climate Knowledge and Justice for More Effective Climate Action

   https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221095495  

   Marion Suiseeya, Kimberly R.; O’connell, Margaret G.; Leoso, Edith; Defoe, Marvin Shingwe; Anderson, Alexandra; Bang, Megan; Beckman, Pete; Boyer, Anne-Marie; Dunn, Jennifer; Gilbert, Jonathan; et al (March 2022, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science)

   Despite decades of climate science research, existing climate actions have had limited impacts on mitigating climate change. Efforts to reduce emissions, for example, have yet to spur sufficient action to reduce the most severe effects of climate change. We draw from our experiences as Ojibwe knowledge holders and community members, scientists, and scholars to demonstrate how the lack of recognition of traditional knowledges (TK) within climate science constrains effective climate action and exacerbates climate injustice. Often unrecognized in science and policy arenas, TK generates insights into how justice-driven climate action, rooted in relational interdependencies between humans and older-than-human relatives, can provide new avenues for effectively addressing climate change. We conclude by arguing for a shift toward meaningful and respectful inclusion of plural knowledge systems in climate governance. 

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5. Climate change greatly escalates forest disturbance risks to US property values

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ace639  

   Anderegg, William R. L.; Collins, Timothy; Grineski, Sara; Nicholls, Sarah; Nolte, Christoph (August 2023, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract Anthropogenic climate change is projected to drive increases in climate extremes and climate-sensitive ecosystem disturbances such as wildfire with enormous economic impacts. Understanding spatial and temporal patterns of risk to property values from climate-sensitive disturbances at national and regional scales and from multiple disturbances is urgently needed to inform risk management and policy efforts. Here, we combine models for three major climate-sensitive disturbances (i.e., wildfire, climate stress-driven tree mortality, and insect-driven tree mortality), future climate projections of these disturbances, and high-resolution property values data to quantify the spatiotemporal exposure of property values to disturbance across the contiguous United States (US). We find that property values exposed to these climate-sensitive disturbances increase sharply in future climate scenarios, particularly in existing high-risk regions of the western US, and that novel exposure risks emerge in some currently lower-risk regions such as the southeast and Great Lakes regions. Climate policy that drives emissions towards low-to-moderate climate futures avoids large increases in disturbance risk exposure compared to high emissions scenarios. Our results provide an important large-scale assessment of climate-sensitive disturbance risk to property values to help inform land management and climate adaptation efforts. 

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