I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to read the results of a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showing that three-quarters of Americans are not very worried about the effects of climate change. After all, a lot of money and energy has gone into sowing doubt when it comes to climate science.

The inundation of daily data, from gossip to war to financial news to games and local weather that we call the Information Age also makes it easy to miss the links between various developments unless those links are helpfully made in the media, but then, often with round-the-clock media, the links take on an alarmist character. And unless it affects them directly, people can only stay in a state of panic for a short time before they get dulled to the noise.

FlowerHouse, a project in Detroit to transform a ruined home with fresh flowers.
All images: FlowerHouse

After all, how many people really care that climate change is responsible for the sudden death, in the space of a single month, of half the remaining population of the curiously snouted and endangered saiga antelope? Tens of thousands of wild antelope just dropped dead. But does that really affect anyone’s day-to-day life? Maybe if it were half the dogs in the country. Or half the cattle. The saiga antelope are strange, unique and far away. But we need to talk about these weird animals as if they matter. Because they do.

The lack of climate worry would be a problem if the United States itself didn’t weigh so heavily on the global climate change balance, both in terms of cause and effect.

In 2012, the top 10 GHG emitters accounted for more than two thirds of the global emissions total. Find the newest data on global greenhouse gas emissions on the CAIT Climate Data Explorer, click here for an interactive version of this graph.
Source: World Resources Institute.

It’s not just the production of greenhouse gases, or the consumption of energy and goods, either. Wars – and the U.S. has a lot of influence when it comes to wars, both actively and in weapons manufacture – have a major environmental impact. And wars are already being fought over the effects of climate change, too – water wars, oil wars. We need to be aware of the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict as if it matters to us personally, because it does.

I hear from many people, and I read, that great hope is placed in major technological breakthroughs, big fixes for big problems, solutions that will absolve individuals and industries and countries from having to reconsider what the desire to stick to business as usual really means.

FlowerHouse promotes sustainability and responsibility to American-grown flower farms.

The fact that three-quarters of the population in one of the world’s major contributors to climate change isn’t worried at all about climate change is probably one of the main reasons that real solutions aren’t being implemented on a wider scale. Sure, renewables are making progress, but fossil fuel production and consumption have expanded dramatically in the U.S. over the past few years.

A recent study says that worriers tend to be creative problem solvers. So, by extension, a nation of non-worriers isn’t going to engage overmuch in problem solving because they don’t see the necessity.

I’m not advocating round-the-clock worrying, which doesn’t do anyone much good.

Some people try to ignore climate change as just another turn of the global screw, too big for humans to fix.

Some groups, mainly in the U.S., try to divert attention from imminent climate change impact on crops, lifestyles, water supplies and shorelines. Apparently, 300 million people have something else to think about, and I know that plenty of those people have real, pressing issues that are as important to them as future notions of rising waters and wild temperatures.

Still: Talk about the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Paris as if it matters. Because it does.

Change is coming, it’s coming soon, and sugar-coating that reality will just make adjusting to the changes harder when they are no longer something that can be ignored.

The FlowerHouse is a collective effort to reclaim what’s been abandoned, condemned and neglected.