SPEAKER_02: TED Audio Collective.
SPEAKER_01:
You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hulme. We often think about climate as weather conditions,
but there's another definition of climate that gets fewer headlines. And public health social worker, LaPrecia Berry Daniels, calls on us to pay more attention to that definition in her 2023 talk from the TED Countdown Summit. Why a different way to think about climate is crucial after the break.
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SPEAKER_02: Like TED Talks? You should check out the TED Radio Hour with NPR. Stay tuned after this talk to hear a sneak peek of this week's episode.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you and welcome to Detroit. Has anyone told you how we greet each other here yet?
What up, doe? Not what up, dog. What up, doe?
Very well.
In Detroit in 2021,
we experienced a 100-year flood.
A rain event dumped seven inches of rain on Detroit. Cars were stranded on highways.
People were literally swimming and kayaking down residential streets.
Homes, businesses, infrastructure were inundated with heavy rainfall,
resulting in over a billion dollars in flood damages. It was unlike anything we had seen before.
Wait a minute. That's not true.
Because in 2014,
Detroit had a 100-year flood.
Four to six inches of rain were dumped on Detroit.
Cars were stranded on highways. People were literally swimming and kayaking down residential streets.
Homes, businesses and infrastructure were inundated with heavy rainfall
and sustained over a billion dollars in flood damages.
Now, I'm no mathematician,
but 2014 to 2021 is not 100 years.
I am a public health social worker, and what that means is I focus on developing interventions
that help to improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities.
In particular, I'm concerned with preventing harm. I think there are ways that we can learn from the past
in order to apply some lessons
so that we do better when preparing for near future
and distant future climate crises.
So let's start by thinking about the past.
My grandparents were born and raised in a small town in the southern US, Volodya, Alabama.
They decided, like many families in the 50s, to leave the South and to move north to pursue a better life.
In particular, my grandfather went to leave the agricultural industry
and find work in the automotive industry.
So my grandparents, Martha and Booker O'Neill, packed their four children, their hopes and dreams,
their practices and prayers, their tried and true traditions
and headed north.
Bology was a small farming town with about nine surnames,
about 150 residents,
and the cows outnumbered the people.
It was very different than Detroit. Detroit was wildly different.
At the time, it was the fifth largest city in the US, so it had a little over a million residents,
busy streets, an active nightlife. What they experienced when they came here
could be considered, in some senses of the word, climate change.
I know that's different than how we usually think about climate change,
but stay with me, I'll make sense of it as we go.
When families moved here from the South, they experienced weather in ways that they never experienced it before.
A lot like what we're experiencing right now across the globe. They had to contend with snow and Detroit
and very short and mild summers
that really didn't compare to the summer heat that they were used to. There are two definitions of climate.
The first is the one that we all expect to talk about during this summit. Climate.
The general weather conditions usually found in a particular place. And then there's another definition of climate that we'll get to later
and talk about how that affects climate change.
For the first time ever,
families that arrived here from the South were experiencing this new climate,
and they had to have strategies in order to adjust to the new climate.
They used three key strategies.
Acceptance, aid and adaptation.
So first, acceptance.
They had to acknowledge that they would not experience the weather
the same way that they had experienced it in the past. They had to recognize that they could not deny, avoid or alter it.
As we do a better job of accepting that this is our new climate,
then we can do a better job of planning, preparing, responding and recovering.
We have to realize that climate change is not a distal threat.
It is at our front doors, or in the case of Detroit,
during the floods, in our basements.
The second strategy they used was aid.
When folks arrived here in the city, they set up communities,
communities of mutual aid,
where they helped and supported each other.
They helped each other find housing and jobs and land to grow food.
In part, our ability to adjust to climate change
is reliant upon our willingness to support each other.
In 2014 and in 2021, when there were floods in Detroit,
residents responded, neighbors, congregations, friends responded,
when government was not nimble enough
to respond to the critical needs of community members.
The third way that they survived this new climate was adaptation.
They had to recognize that it was important to invest in the tools
that they would need in order to adapt to this new climate.
They had to get shovels.
They had to have sand and salt to deal with icy conditions.
They had to cover their windows with plastic to keep the cold winds from coming in.
We must take action to adapt for our current and near-future climate change,
and it will take us all.
Community members, community organizations, business, industry,
local government must come up with plans
and then put those plans into action.
In the 50s, many who migrated north
thought that they would escape Jim Crow laws.
What they found is a new form of racism in the north.
Bigotry, racism and discrimination
limited their access to healthy housing,
the best neighborhoods, the best jobs, political power, et cetera.
In the 20s, 2020s,
bigotry, racism, discrimination
limit access to healthy housing, the best neighborhoods, political power.
You know where I'm going with this.
It is important, then, that we pay attention to the second definition of climate,
and that has to do with the social conditions
and political conditions and feelings and opinions that get in the way of us making progress on climate change and in other areas that we're trying to make progress in. So the three strategies are acceptance, aid and adaptation.
When we're looking at climate change, we also have to be mindful of how social and political conditions
can stifle progress and get in the way of our progress toward
preparing and planning for climate change. Being thoughtful about how we apply these three key strategies
that worked in the past to our present circumstances while remembering to center community voices
and experience and honor community assets
is our best bet at success.
In 2014, it rained, and we were surprised and not prepared.
In 2021, we weren't that surprised, but still ill-prepared.
It's going to rain again, no surprise.
We have to make sure that we're prepared.
We can be prepared for the next climate-related crisis
by accepting that climate change is our current reality,
creating and supporting formal and informal systems of mutual aid
and adapting our thinking and actions to prepare for current and future crises.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: As the Taliban came back to power, Shabana Rasidj-Rossach managed to evacuate her entire school of girls to Rwanda. Four days later, August 29th, is when we resumed classes for our students.
What leadership looks like, even when you're forced to flee your country.
That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour on the YouTube channel. Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
