Kathleen Tierney
University of ColoradoClimate Change and Hazards: What We Know and Need to KnowThe connection between climate change and natural and environmental hazards is an obvious one. Climate
change and variation contribute to some hazards such as flooding, drought, heat waves, and wildfires and may
be increasing the severity of others, such as hurricanes. Climate-generated environmental changes will amplify
the impacts of future disasters; for example, sea level rise and the erosion of coastal ecosystems will intensify
the impacts of coastal storms, and pest infestations and drought will make forest ecosystems more vulnerable
to wildfires. Other climate-hazard interactions include feedback effects; hazards like wildfires and volcanoes
influence climate through their effects on the atmosphere.
What do we know: What does Sociology bring to the table for studying the human dimensions of global
climate change?
There is another way in which climate and hazards are related, which involves how insights derived from research
on natural and environmental hazards can be transferred to better understand various dimensions of climate
change as a societal issue In fact, it may not be too much of a stretch to argue that a considerable amount of
what has been learned—and not yet learned—about the societal dimensions of hazards and disasters is directly
applicable to climate-related issues. Key areas of overlap include the following:
• Risk perception and awareness
• Risk communication
• Mitigation of negative impacts
• Agenda setting
• The role of politics and economicsRisk Perception and Action
US research supports the notion that hazards and their management do not rank high as issues, either
for the public or for political leaders. This is especially true for parts of the country that are not highly-hazard
prone. Even in areas where hazards are widely recognized and risk perception is high, other issues such as crime,
schools, and jobs take precedence. Political careers are not based on advocating for disaster loss reduction,
owing in part to the limited time horizons of most political leaders. Relative to other societal problems, hazards
command only very limited media and public attention, except in the aftermath of major disasters. Even then,
public concern is short-lived, focusing primarily on the plight of victims in the immediate aftermath of disasters.
Hazard risk perception and concern are influenced by a wide variety of factors, including education and
other indicators of socioeconomic status; past experience with hazards; community attachment; gender; race;
ethnicity; and family composition. With respect to technological risks, perceptions are also associated with trust in
institutions, broader world views, and political beliefs.
Many of the most serious disaster threats, such as large earthquakes in urbanized areas, constitute low
probability/high consequence events and are thus subject to the same perceptual biases that accompany other
events and consequences falling within that category, in that occurrences that appear very unlikely tend to be
ignored.