WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Dean Sherwin frowned. He had heard a speaker at the sea-level rise conference he was attending say that half of southeast Florida would be crippled by 2030.

Sherwin stuck up his hand and said that she should correct her choice of language. Some roads would have to be rebuilt and some people would have to retreat from the coast. Half of South Florida's flood control infrastructure would be overwhelmed if the Atlantic Ocean rises by a projected 6 inches above 2010 levels. But half of South Florida will not be "crippled," he said.

The schoolroom chilled as attendees looked at him as though he were a climate denier.

But Sherwin is not a climate skeptic. He is a retired green builder with solid credentials -- "I was trained by Al Gore!" he later exclaimed, referring to the former vice president's Climate Reality Project. Sherwin just thinks that when it comes to climate change, people should avoid using such words as "crippled."

"I think we should be careful; it is important not to be emotional like that," he said later in an interview.

That's especially true in southeast Florida, which is becoming a real-world laboratory for studying successful climate action. While it has a more visible threat, the region mirrors other parts of the United States where the population is, at best, disengaged and, at worst, in denial about climate change.

And yet commissioners of four counties -- Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe (of the Florida Keys fame) -- banded together in 2009 under the Southeast Florida Regional Compact and, unlike most places in America, took concrete actions to address climate change. The challenge now is to not unravel the good work and to keep progressing on climate action.

Last year, the compact released a 110-point action plan to curb carbon emissions and adapt to climate change, especial sea-level rise and hurricanes. The success has attracted scientists like Dan Kahan, professor of psychology and communication at Yale Law School.

Communicators "should be down there seeing how it is that the Palm Beach County in Florida, which is not Berkeley, Calif., or Cambridge, Mass., adopted the 110-point climate change plan," he said.

South Beach flooding

Some reasons were evident at the sea-level rise conference held at a West Palm Beach preparatory school that, ironically, is funded by the energy magnate Bill Koch. Perfectly coiffed, elegantly dressed teenagers hustled around, organizing. The audience was as white-haired as it was tanned.

Other Southeastern coastal states, from the Carolinas to Louisiana, haven't done much about climate change, but planners in southeast Florida are engaged.

"I think part of it is geology," Bryan Myers, energy and climate change coordinator for U.S. EPA Region 4, said during a panel at the conference. "It is not necessarily a Democratic or Republican issue in southeast Florida, because you look out the window and you see it [the threat from the ocean]. They are just not seeing it in other parts as dramatically."

Not seeing the potential impacts makes it easier for politicians to avoid action. To deal with climate change, lawmakers have to make tough choices on a problem that is largely a threat to future generations. Rather than deal with the complexity, they mire the conversation in acrid debates over "belief" in climate science (ClimateWire, July 24).

In southeast Florida, politicians have moved past the polarized science debates. They use climate science in decisionmaking without making a big deal about it, said Kahan of Yale.


At the conference, Kristin Jacobs (D), Broward County commissioner and a co-founder of the compact, took the podium to point out that in her county, "climate change is not a belief. It is real, and it is happening."

The projections for coastal Florida are sobering. By 2030, sea levels could rise by 3 to 7 inches above 2010 levels; by 2060, by 9 inches to 2 feet. In 2100, 37,500 acres of Florida farmland could be lost as salt water intrudes into groundwater aquifers.

High tides bring home the message

Twice a year in southeast Florida, high tides surge through stormwater drainage canals underlying cities like Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale. These "King Tides" creep up some people's driveways, collect at the base of air conditioning units and flood streets closest to the ocean.

The flooding is in part due to global sea-level rise. Through the 1900s, the global oceans rose by 1.88 millimeters every year as glaciers melted and water expanded due to heat. Off southeast Florida, sea-level rise is slightly higher than the global average, at 2.3 millimeters per year.

Floridians originally dug Miami and other southern coastal cities out of the swampy Everglades by draining fresh water out through a system of canals. But now the same canals bring the ocean into some people's homes.

"When your sewer lines are backing up or the Intercoastal [Waterway] has flooded back up through the roadway and has turned your swimming pool into salt water, do you care what party the person is from when they answer the phone?" Jacobs asked. "You don't. You want answers."

Lawmakers like Jacobs and Shelley Vana (D), commissioner of Palm Beach County, have used flooded streets as a way to talk across party lines on adapting to climate change. Two of the mayors in the compact are Republicans and two are Democrats. Municipal governments are similarly diverse.

"I think at the local level, we have more contact with our people so we are not polarized," Vana said. "We just work, we just grind. That is what we do."

And there is more of it to be done. The 110-point action plan released by the compact needs to be adopted by cities making the zoning and development decisions along the vulnerable coast. So far, Broward County governments have joined in, but most municipalities from Palm Beach, Monroe and Miami-Dade have not.

Barbara Eriv of the League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County said more residents have to voice their concerns at city council meetings and call their mayors. Eriv and her colleagues have been documenting flooded streets in Palm Beach to inform residents that climate change is happening in their backyards.

'Don't just say we are doomed'

Getting people to make that phone call is among the biggest challenges in climate science communication. Communicators have tried a number of tactics to get people involved. Some choose to scare people by using apocalyptic images of extreme weather events and low-probability, high-impact scenarios such as the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet. That would drown Florida in 16 feet of water.

But such appeals could backfire, according to a study published this week in Risk Analysis. Fear tends to threaten people and psychologically distance them from the phenomena, the study found.

The best way to communicate may be through trusted authority figures presenting facts and imparting hope that the future can be fixed. "It is about framing messages," said Keren Bolter, a geosciences graduate student at Florida Atlantic University who studies climate risk communication. "When you talk to people about this, don't just say we are doomed, find a nice way to create a sense of urgency but balance it out with some sense of hope and a call to action."

So far, the messaging in South Florida has been split between dire and hopeful, Bolter said. Some scientists say South Florida could be imperiled in the next decades, receiving up to 6 feet of water. That's much more than the projections of most climate models.

"No, we are not going to see property loss in our lifetimes," Bolter asserted. "You are not going to see the mean sea level be higher than the foundation of your home because 99 percent of commercial and residential property is above 2 feet."

Pushing climate 'down the road'

While President Obama has stressed the need for states and federal agencies to work on plans for adaptation, action is firmly stalled in Tallahassee, where the Legislature is dominated by Republicans in both houses. Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Scott, also a Republican, says he is "not a scientist" when asked about climate change.

Vana, the Palm Beach County commissioner, had a ringside seat on the political dialogues.

"I was in the Legislature for six years, and in those six years, it went from total denial, 'it is not happening,' to 'well, it is happening but there is nothing we can do about it,'" she said.

The inaction is because state lawmakers are not pressured by the public, said Bobby Powell, a Democrat in the House of Representatives. People living in central and northern Florida, away from the ocean, are disengaged from the climate discussion. Until salt water comes out of taps in those regions, it will be difficult to see meaningful progress at the state level, he said.

"I get phone calls about why the bus isn't on time or what am I going to do about all this crime," he said. "Those are the things people are thinking about immediately. So when it comes to climate change, until you turn on your faucet and salt water comes out, this issue is pushed down the road."

So, action may happen only in places like southeast Florida where people are dealing with flooded streets and calling up their lawmakers.

Sherwin, the green builder from Palm Beach County, plans to attend the next city council meeting and talk about the threat of sea-level rise. His city, Lake Worth, is considering a $63 million bond issue to modernize its infrastructure, but the plan does not account for climate change.

"It is a hard message to get across because there is like, 'yeah, yeah,' and people roll their eyes," he said. "They are not doing much to address the future. Maybe they don't feel it's necessary because it's too far off. But I'm going to go to the commission meeting and have my say."