My hometown of Grand Forks, British Columbia has a small yet diverse population. Historically the Doukhobors, an ethnoreligious group who fled Russia to escape persecution from the Czar, came to farm the land and practice pacifism. More recently, government-funded low-income housing has attracted people from larger urban centers. Conservative undercurrents have always been present due to the low cost of living and the lumber industry that employs the majority of the community. Pick-up trucks are the norm, and a number of them fly Canadian flags to protest our Liberal government. In this mix of people, I was raised in an environmentally conscientious household. My parents eat organic food, recycle, and love being outside more than the average person. As a teenager, I found their eco-friendly lifestyle to be annoying and inconvenient. In retrospect, I realize it likely shaped my perspective on climate change.
In 2018, the year that I graduated from high school, my hometown experienced a once-in-200-year flood. Our downtown core, including my parents' business, was destroyed. Lower income areas became floodplains, and residents of these areas had to evacuate on small motor boats with the remainder of their belongings. All socio-economic classes experienced significant loss, but instead of comparing grievances, I saw my community come together. The days after the flood were spent sandbagging all areas of our town that could be salvaged and supplying food and shelter to those in need.
The resilience I saw during this time was unlike anything I had witnessed before. In the face of an unforeseen and very personal, severe, and immediate threat, people came together in an effort to save our town, and eventually to rebuild our lives. I witnessed people that I would have never thought to engage in environmental activism begin to rally our local government for hasty flood mitigation. Our small-town opinions about climate mitigation were no longer divisive—instead, people started to unite in rebuilding the community. Conversations about how to best deal with the flood were prominent but no longer shadowed by the same political lines—instead, it was a problem that everyone had to bear. The flooding transformed what once was seen as an abstract issue—climate change—into something that was personal and imminent. People wanted meaningful and effective environmental action.
This shift in perspective made me think back to the core debate of whether self-interest or altruism ultimately drives human behaviour. Was the change that I had witnessed in my community the outcome of each individual wanting to help themselves, or did this crisis promote a selfless concern for the wellbeing of others?
More recently, the devastation of the wildfires in Los Angeles has affected a wide range of individuals in the community, from low income families with few resources to fall back on to Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Responses to rebuild have spanned all income levels. According to reporting from The Guardian, residents from all over the city gathered to deliver food, blankets, face masks, and water to those who were displaced. Angelenos also congregated to bring water and food to firefighters—many of whom are serving out criminal sentences as they fight the fires. Community groups saw a huge increase in engagement, like The Peoples Struggle group, which went from around 20 volunteers to over 100 during the fires. Celebrities also got involved – from Selena Gomez volunteering handing out food and water to Taylor Swift donating and lobbying support for regional food banks and the California Community Foundation. Corporations have also donated a portion of their profits to organizations helping those most in need, for example Netflix and Comcast pledging to donate $10 million towards relief and rebuilding.
Despite the huge amount of wealth disparity in LA, the way people came together reminded me of how my community of Grand Forks responded to the flood. In both cases, new social norms emerged from the aftermath of a crisis. The common focus was to rebuild the community, directing resources towards those most in need. There was recognition that everyone had lost so much, but also an urgency to share resources from folks with more to those with less to ultimately rebuild stronger together.
A 2023 study by Yale University compared the public perception of the threat of global warming in both India and the United States (US). The majority of the Indian community believed that global warming would negatively affect them, their families, and their country. Environmentally, India has experienced widespread food insecurity and water shortages due to rising temperatures. Poll data illustrated that 85% of respondents were worried about global warming and 78% had already personally experienced the effects. These statistics reflect the population’s personal relationship to climate change. Didactic learning about global warming remains low—55% of the people polled in India reported that they knew little to nothing about global warming—but public desire to engage and learn about it is high. 82% of the Indian population polled believes global warming is happening, and 75% are in favour of having it taught in schools. This desire to combat climate change, in the absence of societal structures reaffirming that it exists, suggests that personal experience drives climate opinions.
In contrast to India, the 2023 polling data from the US shows that 56% of the public believe global warming will not affect them personally, and an equal percentage believe that the US president’s view on climate change is important to them. A 2024 study by Yale University reports an even lower share of Americans—47%—who believe that climate change is affecting the US. However, 70% of Americans believe that climate change is happening. The coupling of these statistics suggests that Americans do not feel a personal threat of climate change and clarifies the societal movement towards climate activism that I witnessed in my hometown.
When experiencing a significant crisis, I believe that people act out of self-interest, but self-interest is not synonymous with selfishness. In Grand Forks, the self-interest that I witnessed was expressed as the need to protect and rebuild a town that my community loved. The divisions between various people in the community became less important than the community itself. On a more global level, we are still surrounded by the natural world, and our individual and collective lives rely on the assumption that it is stable. But when our socially fabricated perception of environmental stability begins to waver, we frantically act to protect it.
Climate action becomes meaningful when we collectively realize that acting in environmental ways is the only way forward to preserve our present. Until each of us feels our individual well-being is threatened, we may continue to argue about our differences while overlooking our common need to protect our environment. By prioritizing a stable and resilient environment, we can protect and strengthen our communities. Rather than waiting for disaster to strike to motivate environmental action, the lessons learned from Grand Forks and LA show that proactively engaging in protecting our environment and community is in fact in our own self-interest.
Since growing up skiing and hiking in British Columbia, Caitlin Tkach has been motivated to protect the environment. She is starting a Masters degree in Journalism this fall, with a focus on climate.
This piece is a guest article written for the Center. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center.
