How has climate change affected you and your people?

[sonrisa]

How has climate change affected you?

(Evacuation is included in "inconvenience")

[rubytue]

Minor. Things like trees into fences during hurricanes. But, I’m not sure I’d say they are definitively climate change hurricanes. They happen here (mid-Atlantic). And we haven’t been affected by any of the bad years or super storms. We’ve been lucky in that.

[sonrisa]

Oct 1, 2020 11:38:51 GMT -5 rubytue said:

Minor. Things like trees into fences during hurricanes. But, I’m not sure I’d say they are definitively climate change hurricanes. They happen here (mid-Atlantic). And we haven’t been affected by any of the bad years or super storms. We’ve been lucky in that.

Yeah, you have to make your best judgment of what qualifies. Obviously, if you used to do tours of the great barrier reef and have been fired because of bleaching you have a straight line. But for many things, you have to make your best guess. 

[isabel]

Mostly just air quality due to fires for me. But I’m expecting that to get worse over time and I’m scared we’re going to get to a point where we can’t really be outdoors during the summer as a general rule due to poor air quality.

[goldengirlz]

I really worry what all this smoke is doing to our lungs from these historic wildfires. I’m not as careful about not breathing in smoky air as I probably should be, especially since so much of our lives need to be lived outdoors these days.

I’ve noticed that my anxiety around not having clean air has definitely risen since the 2018 Carr fire.

[pixy0stix]

This tangentially qualifies. I lost my job 13 years ago to the Bush administration trying to kill climate change science by defunding NSF.

[gretchenindisguise]

We've been fairly lucky re: smoke where we are in SoCal, but it's always on my mind.

For us it's been heat. Not many homes around us have a/c and we were told "it's really only a few days out of the year that you wish you had it." Now it's numerous weeks over the summer where we are sweltering. When our lease is up in 2 years, we will seriously consider moving to a house with a/c - if we can afford it.

[sonrisa]

Oct 1, 2020 11:46:42 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

I’ve noticed that my anxiety around not having clean air has definitely risen since the 2018 Carr fire.

My anxiety rocketed up with the Tubbs and other 2017 wine country fires. We had left the windows open that night and awoke to the smell of smoke. Many of the people fleeing Sonoma and Napa came down here so there were dazed, sooty people everywhere suddenly. Our neighborhood is similar to Coffey Park and watching how quickly that burned during the middle of the night was vivid.

I've worked hard to mitigate smoke, anxiety and lung exposure since then. I never leave even a small window open at night or when we are away from the home. We have air purifiers for inside and N95s for outside. But we really don't go out during smoke. We don't exercise outside over 70 and don't go outside or to school after 100/110. COVID actually made this year easier. We don't have to leave the house. The other day, I knew smoke anxiety had taken over Tuesday I saw wisps coming around a hill and my first thought was "fire!" not fog. 

[sonrisa]

Oct 1, 2020 11:52:18 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

This tangentially qualifies. I lost my job 13 years ago to the Bush administration trying to kill climate change science by defunding NSF.

Absolutely qualifies. MFer exacerbated this shit. 

[isabel]

Oct 1, 2020 11:52:42 GMT -5 gretchenindisguise said:

We've been fairly lucky re: smoke where we are in SoCal, but it's always on my mind.

For us it's been heat. Not many homes around us have a/c and we were told "it's really only a few days out of the year that you wish you had it." Now it's numerous weeks over the summer where we are sweltering. When our lease is up in 2 years, we will seriously consider moving to a house with a/c - if we can afford it.

This doesn’t directly impact my family, but it’s a huge issue in the mountains of Colorado too. Homes generally don’t have AC because it wasn’t necessary. Now when we go up there during the summer, we have to deal with high indoor temperatures if we stay in a condo. It’s very unpleasant. I can’t imagine living there full time. It’s too hot to be without AC for several weeks now instead of just a spattering or days in July and August.

[wildrice]

My family had to evacuate from Houston area during Harvey, but they had no property damage so it ended up just being a precaution.

I think we are all suffering from more extreme weather as a result of climate change, but I put I am generally untouched because feeling too hot in the summer is a pretty minor complaint compared to what many others are more directly experiencing. I have AC at home so I am able to escape it if I want to. I hate feeling like I can't go outside because of the heat, but technically I could and I'm lucky that I can choose not to.

This year has felt like a tipping point for a lot of things, climate change being one of them. It's been on my list of concerns since I was a kid but it always felt like something we'd pay for in the future vs something super immediate. It's really starting to feel like the future is here, though, and I'm very concerned we aren't going to be able to fix it now.

[picaflora]

I went with minor inconvenience. Our rainy season is getting much wetter, and causes flash flooding issues. Most of it isn't around areas newly built up, so I don't think it's due to that. Our house (and workplaces) are higher up in elevation that it doesn't directly affect us, but it can be challenging to get home sometimes. We live in a valley in the VA mountains, so only those right along the river tend to have flood insurance.

Our dry, hot, part of the summer is also getting drier and hotter. It usually only lasts a couple of months (July - August), but each year for the last 4 years we've broken the record for the number of days over 90. We were over 90 degress every single day in July. We do lose some of our garden crop if we aren't careful about watering in July, and the local farms definitely suffer as well. The past 2 years the apple orchards have run big sales early to get people to come get apples off the tree before the crop is lost.

[lilypad1126]

Where we live currently seems relatively untouched by it. We may get more extreme temps during summer or winter, but I'm not on a coast where I have to deal with hurricanes or in a state that deals with fires. This is about the only good thing I can say about the area I currently live in. But it does play a part in where we might make our next move.

[shauni27]

My husband manages ski areas; the winters here have been slowly getting worse and worse and the ski seasons shorter and shorter. We have concerns that within our lifetime his career will be impacted.

Summers here have been getting hotter for sure. We just experienced the worst drought in our state's recent history.

I have dread about WW3 constantly due to climate change.

[konapoppy]

I am actively thinking about where we may need to move to. The Bay Area is just so hard to leave.

[aprilsails]

I put in that it hasn’t impacted me or my family or my area in any significant way, however there have been tiny changes recently and things are getting hotter for sure. It has significantly impacted my work. I am doing sustainability studies and zero emission studies for existing and new buildings all the time, and it has been heartening to see some of the recommendations being put in place. It’s too bad it took until climate change was actually knocking on our door to see these improvements. I’m in Canada by the way.

[BlondeSpiders]

I am lucky to have only been inconvenienced in a minor way. The smoke has gotten really bad the past 3 summers here in WA, but the fires are not close.

We did scrap our plans to move to NorCal specifically because of the fires (and the blackouts) so that's an impact.

[abs]

I feel like those of us along the gulf coast definitely have felt major impacts. Every hurricane turns into a major one due to the gulf being so warm year round now. We very rarely get cold weather anymore. Summers last weeks if not months longer than they used to here in Houston. Then there is the PTSD from random flood events we get in the Spring and of course hurricanes like Harvey.

[macmars45]

When I lived in the Seattle area prolonged extreme heat with no ac. It's mid 80s-mid/upper 90s from July-August with smattering of hot days in May & June as well. When I was a kid and would visit family there it routinely would be mid 60-mid 70s in July/August.
Wildfire smoke is bad. We now own multiple air purifiers specifically for the weeks of smokey weather every summer. The last 4 years have been exponentially worse than previous years.

[Susie]

I have good friends who have suffered inconveniences (Bay Area poor air quality, fire risk, blackouts, etc.), and immediate family that has suffered semi-regular flooding during hurricane season, but am myself lucky to be relatively untouched by immediate and personally felt impact.

The biggest impacts for us are the very, very, very rare hurricane/remnants that cause flooding this far north, and some of the bomb cyclones/winter events.

[ChillyMcFreeze]

Well, I still have a giant nature-made skylight in my living room thanks to Hurricane Sally a few weeks ago. I grew up on the Georgia coast, so I'm used to hurricanes and occasional evacuations, but they seem much more frequent.

My parents own a rental property that's ocean-view, and the condo complex has vacated the ocean-front units permanently because they're expected essentially to fall into the sea in the next 10 years. Beach erosion is a huge problem.

[minzy]

I have not yet been deeply impacted physically by climate change. However, I am not joking when I say the climate crisis has become the pivotal framework for how I view the rest of the life I want to live. It has provided remarkable clarity on what matters and what does not.

@@as a mother, it has motivated me like nothing else. I already have a science background, but I have read about it extensively the last few years. I have made changes personally and household wide, and I have hosted a few parties to talk about it with my friends (from which an active Facebook group has grown to about 80 people). I have argued for change before my HOA, at school board meetings, as a panelist at a climate conference, in letters to voters, and I did a ton of legwork on a local issue. I have positioned myself as a leader in several local organizations where a seat at the table means I can bring it up. I am not perfect and it will never be enough, but I will try until I die.

[jamaicam]

I have put minor but I am scared it will be more major in time.

I live in a small island developing state so we are particularly vulnerable to climate change. As the Prime Minsiter of Barbados said at UN this week (I will paraphrase but...) 'We are the people who may lose our entire countries and we didn't F this up. We didnt cause it. You all did. But we are paying the harshest consequences.' Fortunately Jamaica is a bit larger and has big mountains so we shouldnt be flooded, but we are still affected by worsening hurricanes and hotter summers. Also, a large portion of our capital city is at a height that means we will be flooded if/when sea levels rise.

[nospaekae]

We farm and have been dealing with drier weather the past couple years. Pretty severe drought this summer and low water table due to almost no snow last winter. Our input costs are up and we're trying to hold off on raising prices, but may need to next year.

[cattledogkisses]

I live in New England, which is the land of extreme weather, so it's hard to parse out what's due to climate change. I will say that in 2020 we ran our air conditioner way more than we ever have before. We had multiple heat spells where it topped 100*F for days on end, which practically unheard of here. We've also been in a pretty serious drought since the beginning of the summer.

[chickadee77]

I live in SWFL, so we have fires in the winter/spring and hurricanes in the summer/fall. We've had to evacuate for both fires and hurricane and had minor damage from Irma, no damage from fires, but our air quality can get bad. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't like that hurricanes seem to be spinning up out of nowhere - like, we used to have at least a few days' notice, but for the past year or so, it's like, "Oh, so hey, there might be a Cat 3 this weekend!"

[ajj]

I have had both friends and family lose all of their belongings and homes to fire.

[loira]

The smoke these past few years has been awful.

On a larger scale, COVID-19 and the West coast fires made it very clear that American policy on climate, health, and other issues has a major effect on Canada. I worry that we will pay a heavy price for our shared border, and (when I put on my tinfoil hat) I worry about our sovereignty.

[penguingrrl]

Many people in my town lost their homes to Sandy, which I consider a climate change related storm.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Not a ton personally, but I live in Minnesota, so we don't get wildfires or hurricanes or anything. We had April blizzards the last 2 years, which isn't unheard of but unusual 2 yrs in a row.