Escalating environmental extremes contribute to an estimated 150,000 deaths each year, and the World Health Organization conservatively projects they will result in 250,000 deaths annually between 2030 and 2050. Addressing these extremes will require people to take adaptive and mitigative measures – many related to the energy sector – to reduce human suffering and death. In this talk, I will present recent work my group is doing to understand adaptive and mitigative behavior in response to personal exposure across a range of threats. We find that Californians are generally supportive of public safety power shutoffs (PSPS) to reduce the risk of wildfire; yet worries remain about PSPS and its impacts, especially among those who are the most vulnerable (i.e., low-income, have respiratory illness). We also find that more personal negative experience with exposure to wildfires and smoke, and attribution of that experience to climate change, are associated with greater intention to purchase an electric vehicle and climate policy support. The talk will conclude with a brief discussion of current and future work.

Bio

Gabrielle Wong-Parodi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth System Science and Center Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Dr. Wong-Parodi is an interdisciplinary social scientist who seeks to understand how people make decisions to address the impacts of climate change, and how robust interventions can empower them to make decisions that serve their lives, communities, and society. She has a B.A. in Psychology, M.A. in Energy and Resources, and Ph.D. in Energy and Resources, all from the University of California, Berkeley.