An Overview Of Our Solution
Through grassroots data collection and storytelling, the Climate Cost Project is changing the way Americans connect to climate change by highlighting how it is already impacting their lives. Participants in the project’s programs share their financial and personal stories of being impacted by climate change, creating data and media that can be used by researchers, planners, advocates, journalists, and the public. The project demonstrates climate change is an immediate problem that already touches the lives and finances of Americans. In addition to contextualizing the impacts of climate change for its participants, the project documents uninsured costs, many of which are excluded from current cost estimates. The project aims to change personal and community calculations when voting and acting locally for mitigation and adaptation measures. (climatecostproject.org)
- Population Impacted: 30,000 impacted to date, 50 million targeted
- Continent: North America
Last name
Organization type
Context Analysis
Extensive research shows that people value current costs and benefits more than future costs. This is a vexing problem for climate action, because mitigation costs are up front and relatively clear. In contrast, many Americans perceive damages as happening mostly in the future; even those already experiencing climate impacts often don’t contextualize them in terms of climate change. On the policy side, economic analyses tend to focus on impersonal aggregate data (e.g. insurance records, high level economic variables) that exclude costly uninsured losses. This both grossly underestimates costs and fails to speak directly to personal experiences. This may explain why Americans rate climate change low relative to other concerns (PEW 1/25/18). If current impacts are more directly tied to people’s experiences on the ground, and costs better estimated, it may be possible to improve policy analysis and impact public opinion and behavior toward addressing climate change.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
The Climate Cost Project surveys immediate economic and emotional consequences of climate change through an online portal called the Climate Impact Census, and through personal stories told through the Witnessing Change Video Competition (WCVC).
The Census gives cities and individuals an opportunity to report financial costs and qualitative losses they’ve experienced (e.g. medical debt, lost careers, emotional trauma, etc.) from specific climate impacts as well as successful adaptation and resilience strategies. The goal is to create an understanding of the immediate costs of climate change and benefits of mitigation and adaptation policies. Targeted audiences for this data are journalists, planners, researchers, advocates, and the general public.
The video competition adds an additional visual and emotional complement to the Census, through filmmakers helping local community members share their personal stories in short video format. The target audience is the general public.
Type of intervention
Describe your behavioral intervention
The project uses data and personal experiences to make immediate climate costs clear relative to mitigation costs, in order to help people and cities improve their decision-making capacity for mitigation and adaptation solutions.
We break down adoption of behaviors into ‘content creation’—survey participation and community filmmaking—and ‘content consumption’—using or viewing the survey data, qualitative stories, and videos. Content creation helps individuals and cities take count of their quantitative and qualitative experience of climate change through reporting data and personal stories. On the ‘content consumption’ side, exposure to the financial and emotional costs of climate change experienced by individuals and cities (e.g. city budget implications, injuries, lost jobs, debt) can help the public understand the links between lived impacts and climate change. The goal with each of these is to ultimately change personal and community calculations when voting, being polled, and acting locally for mitigation and adaptation measures.
In terms of adoption, the project finds that just by engaging participants, it is already meeting a need for many impacted people. Whether or not they have yet contextualized their situation in terms of climate change, they have a desire to be listened to and share their experiences. Much of the work that we do in terms of ensuring adoption, therefore, falls into the category of successful relationship building and outreach (see below).
As needed, please explain the type of intervention in more detail
We have modeled our programs using a storytelling framework because evidence strongly points to storytelling as being one of the most effective forms of communication (Roth and Gibbons, 2012). Grassroots-level cost data and stories shared by participants can be invaluable tools for shaping choice architecture, through journalists, community organizers, and researchers using them to increase public understanding; through improving cities’ understanding of current climate costs relative to mitigation costs within their own area, and in comparison to other municipalities; through sharing content widely on the internet; and through the creation of educational materials that link specific experiences and impacts to climate change.
Describe your implementation
Using our tick-borne illness work as an example, we demonstrate how our programs work together to clarify links between impacts and climate change.
The 2017 winning WCVC video highlighted the emotional and financial impact of Lyme disease on two patients’ lives. It was viewed over 10,000 times and widely shared by Lyme disease organizations, many of whom had not previously considered climate change as an issue within their community. This engagement helped us build further alliances, and gain their support and trust to work with us reaching Lyme patients for the Census (https://www.climatecostproject.org/about-tick-borne-illness-survey). As survey takers, patients detailed their personal experiences with Lyme disease, including costs they have had to pay out of pocket and multiple other hardships mentioned in the previous section. These costs, like many climate costs, have not yet been captured, and shed new light for researchers, journalists, and community organizers on the seriousness of impacts. Our preliminary data shows that half of respondents spent at least $30,000 in unreimbursed medical-related expenses over the course of their illness, and one-third at least $75,000. Over half reported debt to friends, family, and creditors, and 40% had to draw down some or all of their assets, including home equity, retirement savings, and children’s college funds.
It can be challenging to engage groups who have not previously thought of impacts they are facing in terms of climate change, so this work required extensive outreach, building alliances, and being careful to remain non-partisan to appeal to a wide group of people.
Key success factors and enabling conditions included people’s willingness to share their information and stories, filmmakers’ interest in find compelling stories, interest by organizations and individuals to share our media and engage with the stories being told, and tangible output from journalists and advocates using our content.
External connections
In addition to the constituencies discussed under Implementation, we have engaged:
1) Educational institutions and students: a) Rutgers University’s Program in Science Learning helped to incubate the project; b) the 2017 video competition invited a wide range of submissions from high school and university students; c) the University of Maine and MDI biological laboratories, which runs a citizen science data base, supports the Census portal and survey infrastructure.
2) Filmmakers: a) in addition to inviting submissions from film students, we have expanded the competition to all adult filmmakers; b) our judging panel for the 2018 competition consists entirely of professional environmental filmmakers who support the project.
3) Cities: One component of the Census focuses on impacts confronting municipalities. For this section of the online portal, we are asking municipalities to fill out information on how much they are already spending dealing with climate impacts. Currently the city of Tampa, Florida is helping pilot this section of the portal. They believe that using the tool and having the data will help provide a key missing piece to policy discussions about adaptation and resilience measures.
4) Environmental organizations: The Climate Cost Project worked with Protect Our Winters to co-brand one of our 2017 winning videos and help promote it. That video was viewed over 16,000 times.
Who adopted the desired behaviors and to what degree?
Through direct relationship building with filmmakers, cities, and individuals impacted by flooding or tick-borne illness, and extensive outreach through traditional and social media, the project has reached tens of thousands of people.
The first year of the WCVC received submissions from talented filmmakers, and the winning videos were viewed 25,000 times on social media and used by partner organizations. Since the launch of the first Climate Impact Census survey on tick-borne illness, the project has been approached by advocacy organizations and national reporters interested in using the cost data to report personal stories and tangible climate change costs. You can listen here for preliminary results: https://soundcloud.com/whmp/estimating-the-cost-of-lyme-disease.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
The Climate Cost Project is designed to effect large-scale policy changes driven by changes in public awareness and participation. This is a long run project to increase adaptation and mitigation activity at a high policy level. As such, micro level behavioral data on actual emissions reductions is not really applicable to our programs. The project’s long-term goal is to engage constituencies at a local and national level who are being affected by climate change, but not currently engaged in working toward solutions.
What were some of the resulting co-benefits?
The most obvious co-benefit from the project’s work is that it calls attention to the immediate needs of affected people that have previously been ignored, for example, Lyme disease patients. While the project believes it is important to contextualize impacts in terms of climate change, it is also drawing attention to important public health and economic issues. This is the case for flood-affected people as well, many of whom experience damages for which they are not insured and experience significant economic hardship as a result.
Part of the aim of the project’s urban work is to call attention to adaptation and landscape solutions that can help mitigate the immediate costs the project is documenting. Having clearly recorded cost data on existing impacts will help make the case for more nature-based solutions that have biodiversity, local health, and water benefits. If people understand climate driven degradation of nature, it will be easier to talk about restoration benefits.
Sustainability
The Climate Cost Project is currently funded by grants and individual donations. There is no cost to the people who participate in the program, and we believe it is critical to keep it that way. We have considered having an entry fee for the video competition, but do not wish to limit access to talented filmmakers in disadvantaged communities.
Return on investment
To reach our current stage of development, the project required approximately $400,000 in resources for program development and implementation, social media outreach, the Climate Impact Census survey infrastructure, and artistic content for the video competition, Census portal, and Climate Cost Project website.
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
The Climate Cost Project’s philosophy is that grassroots data collection and storytelling should be done with local knowledge and participation.
While the CCP staff is promoting the project at a national level, the Census was designed to be deployed at any geographical or institutional level. A city, town, or county could administer the tick-borne illness survey with its population; health care providers and researchers could administer it with a patient population, etc. The portal has a back end database that provides specialized data reports for any local implementation of the program.
Nationally, the project is working toward creating a database and visual stories about climate impacts in the United States, including a user interface where people can find information on impacts and costs by zip code, and view video stories on impacts from around the country.
There is no similar bottom-up effort involving immediate climate costs that merges data collection and storytelling.