Coming from the indie music supervision space, Rosie Howe is currently working as a music executive on the original series team at Netflix. Some of the shows she’s worked on include Wednesday, Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, Kaleidoscope, Cowboy Bebop, and Archive 81.
Rosie is a member of the Guild of Music Supervisors and spends her free time providing helpful feedback and educational resources to musicians starting out through workshops, panels, and one-on-one sessions. She has been featured on Behind the Music podcast, panels and workshops for The Grammy Museum, Billboard, The Guild of Music Supervisors, Synckeepers, Music Biz Mentors, and has contributed to the magazine-style blog Ms. In The Biz.
THE ISSUE:
Climate change has led to extreme temperatures around the world this summer and continues to have a 'threat multiplier effect' on the chance of natural disasters occurring, such as the one that happened in the last few days with the tragic wildfires in Hawaii.
Here's some insight from an interview with a fire expert:
“Our most disastrous wildfires in U.S. history have been associated with extremely strong wind events,” said Crystal Kolden, a pyrogeographer and associate professor at the University of California, Merced, who once worked as a wildland firefighter herself.
Experts said that while it can be difficult to tease out the exact fingerprints of climate change on individual extreme weather events, the Hawaiian wildfires demonstrate the risks associated with human-caused global warming.
“When we talk about climate change, we always say that it exacerbates the likelihood of an event because it loads the dice,” Kolden said. “There has always been the potential for hurricanes to pass near Hawaii. There has always been the potential for drought in Hawaii. But it’s all happening more frequently. And when it happens, it’s more extreme.”
As such, climate change acts as a "threat multiplier," increasing each individual risk and exacerbating them if and when they collide, said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.
“Every extreme event today is occurring over a background of an altered climate,” she said.
For instance, warmer-than-usual oceans can fuel the formation of bigger and stronger hurricanes. Higher temperatures from global warming also make droughts more frequent and intense, and dry vegetation, including non-native grasses and shrubs, burn quickly and provide dangerous fuel for wildfires.
“And then on top of that — the icing on the cake or the straw on the camel’s back, so to speak — you have climate change,” Hayhoe said. “It’s a threat multiplier, an exacerbator, an amplifier.”
ACTION:
TWO options for an action you can take this month (feel free to do both if you feel so inclined!)
1. Make a donation to Maui United Way's disaster relief fund or to another, similar organization of your choosing.
2. Write to your Senators to support S. 1138, the Fossil Free Finance Act. This bill would require big banks to stop financing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and reduce their financed emissions by 50% by 2030.
Here's how to contact your senator: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
Here’s a sample letter to your senator:
Dear Senator [name],
I’m a constituent from [zip]. Thank you for the work you do to represent our state.
I care deeply about climate change and have been especially concerned this summer about the excessive heat all over the country and the wildfire disaster in Hawaii.
Please vote to pass the Fossil Free Finance Act and do everything in your power to reduce our nation's greenhouse gas emissions and switch to using more clean energy as soon as possible.
Thank you for your time.
[your name]
RESULTS:
$637 raised for Maui Wildfire survivors
12 letters written to senators