This guide explores how disruptive crises (like the COVID-19 pandemic or climate-fueled extreme weather events) have profound impacts on societal mindsets. They can cause us to deconstruct narratives (“working from home does not work”), set new norms (“we don’t let our child play with other children anymore”), shape new identities "I feel like a victim"), establish new values: (“we shall sacrifice to save others” – universalism) or build up emotions (the rise in hedonism, fear, loneliness or gratitude). After a disruption has impacted individual mindsets, societies negotiate renewed collective mindsets, i.e. narratives, norms and values, through collective sense-making processes. This happens through diverse, mostly unstructured communication ranging from political discourse to social media chatter.

Research-based recommendations for organizers and advocates include:

• Use the "disorientation phase" following an emergency experience to introduce and amplify radically new stories that reestablish meanings. 
• Use sensing activities, observation, and scenario planning to speed up the "re-orientation phase," including proposing and evaluating possible post-crisis trajectories.
• Match their messages of change to existing crisis experiences and strategically create experiences that reinforce the mindset change they want to create.

Three-quarters of Florida respondents support funding “natural infrastructure” (solutions to reduce flood risk, such as restored beaches, wetlands and marshes) as part of the American Jobs Plan. Natural infrastructure solutions were supported by 86% of respondents, including 82% of independents, 81% of Republicans, 87% of coastal respondents and 88% of inland respondents. 89% of respondents supported preventive measures to reduce the impact of natural disasters before they occur. There was little divide among rural and suburban respondents. 85% of suburban respondents supported preventative measures, compared to 84% of rural respondents.             

This interactive webinar covered the process of how this collaboration between environmental justice and labor forces was facilitated, how they built a shared vision around resilience, a rundown of the report's key findings, and a guided activity for how to apply the report's insights to participants' local communities and organizing work.

Survey of 500 Texans in the immediate aftermath of the extreme cold weather and resulting power outages found: 

• Respondents expressed concern about extreme cold (78%), power outages caused by weather events (83%), and access to clean drinking water (76%). Concern spanned community types, and was highest (80%) among rural respondents. 
• 79% say it should be a priority for the U.S. to pass legislation to address climate change
• Majorities across Texas support a wide range of legislative measures to prevent future power outages, including: increasing use of clean energy (77%), improving energy efficiency (92%), increasing existing energy storage capabilities (88%), making power sources more resilient to extreme weater (93%), and modernizing the U.S. power grid more broadly (83%).

• A majority (58%) of Iowa farmers recognize climate change is happening and (at least partially) driven by human activities. 18% understand that it is caused mostly by human activities (vs."more or less equally by natural changes in the environment and human activities") -- an 8 percentage point increase from 2011. 
• A majority of Iowa farmers are "concerned about the potential impacts of climate change on [their] farm operation" (51%); that seed companies should be developing crop varieties adapted to coming changes in weather patterns (64%); and that they should take indiviudal steps to protect their farmland from increased precipitation (58%).
• The University Extension was the most trusted source of information about climate change (as was the case in 2011), with 60% of farmers selecting trust or strongly trust. Scientists and soil and water conservation organizations were both trusted by 50% of respondents, followed closely by farm groups at 47% and family and friends at 46%.

The SENSES Toolkit is a collection of visualization tools that explore a variety of climate change and clean energy scenarios scenarios including:

• Closing the Emissions Gap: How current, global decarbonization plans match up with the long-term targets of the Paris Climate Agreement
• The Role of Land for Food Production and Climate Protection: How current land-use practices accelerate climate change
• Net-zero Pathways for Industrialized Countries: Simulations that outline possible pathways to net-zero emissions by 2050 for the US, EU, Japan, and Australia

In addition to the scenarios, the toolkit includes practical guidelines of how to use climate change scenarios for three key user groups: policymakers, the financial sector, and regional audiences.

California and the US are increasingly beset by climate-fueled disasters like wildfires, extreme heat, and power blackouts. These events put additional stress on frayed hard and social infrastructure systems, and disproportionately impact working-class communities of color. To adapt to these changes, society must update our notion of disaster response to increase resilience in these systems before disasters strike. This report offers two models for this response: 1) building and normalizing resilience hubs where community members gather and organize both in good times and bad, and 2) increasing in-home resilience by recognizing homecare workers as effective agents for assisting vulnerable populations and bridging authorities and the frontlines. The report goes on to recommend specific ways to set up resilience hubs, train care workers, and develop forward-thinking emergency response plans to avert human disasters after natural disasters.

Politics & Global Warming, December 2020

Nationally representative polling from Sept. 14-16 shows that 39% of US adults say that climate change has contributed “a lot” to recent natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, with a further 34% saying climate change was responsible for “some.” Black and Hispanic adults were the most likely to say “a lot” (49% each), with White respondents at 36%.

Other highlights:

• Roughly half (48 percent) of U.S. adults are “very concerned” about the impact of climate change on the U.S. environment.
• 4% of adults say they are considering moving now due to natural disaster concerns, and 16% say they would consider a move in the future.
• 39% if adults say they are “very concerned” about the impact of climate change on the U.S. economy.
• The percentage of adults who say they are “not concerned at all” about climate change fell to 8% in this survey.

A recent poll looking at American attitudes towards new regulations on development in the wake of record numbers of wildfires and hurricanes show broad support for policies to increase resilience and help protect communities from floods and fires. In addition, 75% of Americans say they have personally felt the affects of climate change 75% of Americans say they have personally observed effects of climate change

• A majority of Americans support policies to increase resilience to and help protect communities from wildfires including: prohibiting development near fire-prone areas (58%), requiring people to purchase fire insurance (60%), removing dead vegetation in forests (76%), helping Americans who lose their homes due to fires (79%), increasing the number of firefighters (85%), and requiring use of fireresistant building materials (87%).
• A majority of Americans similarly support policies that increase resilience to and help protect communities from floods, including: prohibiting development in flood-prone areas (57%), paying people to move to live in safer places (59%), requiring flood insurance (66%), helping Americans who lose homes due to floods (77%), requiring new building codes to minimize flood damage (84%), and doing construction to encourage quicker water drainage (87%).